With a case of the bubonic plague being contracted in Mongolia after consumption of a wild marmot, we consider whether disgust at certain foodstuffs serves a protective purpose.

We all experience disgust, but do we really think about it? In our latest podcast, we list some of the more disgusting foods we've come across while discussing why we find somethings more repugnant than others.

A few things we mentioned in this podcast:

• Boy eats marmot, dies
• Neural basis for cheese disgust
• The mystery of disgust
• The disgust test

For more information on Aleph Insights visit our website https://alephinsights.com or to get in touch about our podcast email [email protected]

Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering podcast produced by me, Fraser McGruer for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts, we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm here with Sara Nonu and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights, and this week we're discussing disgusting food. And due to the lockdown, unusually, we're recording this remotely. Nick, I think you've got a story for us. Lead us in.

Yeah, well, we've all heard of people either loving or hating Marmite, but what about Marmot? Where do you stand on Marmot? Because a kid in Mongolia ate a marmot, apparently.

I'm looking up what a marmot is.

It's apparently a kind of ground squirrel and died of the bubonic plague as a result of eating this marmot. Yeah, kid died of bubonic plague.

And the marmot probably died as well, yeah.

The marmot probably wasn't too happy about the whole situation either, but it got its revenge, I suppose. But I think marmot certainly isn't something that I eat a lot of. And I think if you look at the kinds of foods we tend to eat in Europe, it's very restricted, really. And I think we tend to find unusual food like marmot a bit disgusting. And I think I'm intrigued by disgust and how it relates to food and why it is that we find the food. Is there any objective rationale? Is it right that we find it a bit disgusting to eat snails and marmots? Or is that just sort of culturism and prejudice?

Yeah, and that's it. Should we be eating more marmots? So discussing food, talking of discussing food, well, you're going to have troubles with that in the UK because we're well renowned around the world for our wonderful cuisine, world-class cuisine that we have here, just ask the French. But fortunately, we've got a non-English person here amongst us. Tell us about UK food, Sarah. Yeah, I think you've done a bit of research into this. I don't know if it was more personal of British foods that you find disgusting or whether you managed

to find some on the internet. Tell us. I think I had to go to the internet for this purely because we have quite a European diet in New Zealand. We have standard three meat and veg. Okay. No, meat and three veg. Three meats and veg, I like it. Three meats and veg, everybody. So I did a bit of research and there were a couple of things that I had seen around the place, but obviously not wanting to try them, I forgot about them. But going through my research, one of the things that I found was jellied eels. That's definitely not something I'll be trying. Black pudding, not a fan. Also, white pudding. Hadn't heard of that before.

They're very different, actually. There's two different types of white pudding, but I can go

into that shortly. I'm sure. Yeah, that's still going to be disgusted, no doubt. Haggis, not a fan of that. Stargazy pie. I don't know what that is. It's a fish pie with a fish head sticking out.

Yeah, that's exactly it. That's not. I think it's a famous regional pie from Cornwall,

from Mousel, I think. Okay. Yeah, it looks unappealing just in the photos. And then the last ones were faggots and spotted dick. None of those sound appealing.

You're just going for that because they sound funny. Yeah. I think just to perhaps enlighten some other fellow foreign listeners. Please, please don't. Black pudding is a blood pudding, so it's made of dried pig's blood and it's absolutely delicious fried. It's really nice. Now, I first had black pudding when I was too small to know what it was, and I suspect if I was 20, you know, when I discovered it, I probably wouldn't even try it. Haggis is well known. It's made from the pluck or the I think it's the lungs and the liver and a couple of other bits of the lamb. I love haggis and I don't like offal, but I love haggis. And Sarah, when you say you're not a fan of it, am I to understand that you haven't actually haven't actually tried it? Well, the

thing is, I just like most of these things here that I've listed are either offal or seafood related, which just aren't my thing. I'm more down to giving something a good try. I don't try not to knock it until you try it. But just the thought of offal is just off pudding.

I'm with you. I'm with you on that. But like if I could not sit down and eat a kidney. I'm not against. I really wish I wasn't like that. But the thing is about haggis is it really is delicious. Like you don't it doesn't taste of offal. Surprisingly spicy as well. And I think like a lot of foreigners have this belief that haggis is one of those really disgusting, weird regional foods which must taste awful, but the locals like it for some reason, probably to torment tourists. No, it is really, really delicious.

Yeah, I have to say out of the list of things I gave, haggis would be the one thing I would try. I would not try anything else on that list.

Well, I have to get you over for the next Burns supper.

Yes, that sounds good.

And also, by the way, just this, I think one of the another food in the UK that we really like and I love apparently. So I was reading a couple of years ago there was this riot at a refugee center in the UK and unrest had been bubbling there for a while and eventually all, you know, everything hit the fan and it all hell broke loose. And the reason why they just had enough of baked beans and they just kept the authorities persisted in giving them baked beans and the refugees just could not take it anymore. And so, yeah, a riot broke out. And I thought I was slightly surprised by that because I thought I find, you know, I love baked beans and I find them pretty innocuous, to be honest, but turns out not.

I'm going to put baked beans on my list too.

Well, there were really, I mean, a really quintessentially American food stuff that for some reason has has turned into a kind of really British thing. I think Americans are probably quite surprised by the extent to which British people love their baked beans.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I guess this, I guess what we're sort of leaning in towards here is sort of a cultural relativism, possibly, because I certainly want one of the thing is, you know, I remember when I lived in Brazil and one of the things they talked about is whenever I used to talk about cooked breakfasts, they were just horrified that we'd have sausages and bacon. And, you know, and and if you start talking about blood sausage to them, what actually they quite like that over there. But but they eat all sorts of horrible things. Their national dish is a stew where you put all the offcuts in and it comes from the days of slavery. Is that feijoada? Yeah, well, yeah, it's it is feijoada. Yeah. And it's just this sort of black bean stew with like horrible bits of pig cut off it and stuck in it. So, you know, they were disgusted by what I thought was good for breakfast. And I was definitely disgusted by what you buy their national dish. So where do we go with it? I mean, the first sort of port of call for us is, is this all about culture or relativism or at least relativism? I mean, is that a good point to lift off from Nick?

Well, I think I start by sort of outlining, I think what I would say is this sort of naive theory that everyone intuitively has, which is that there is objectively such a thing as disgusting food that that is the unreflective view that people have. And the example that I would give is dogs. Now, I, for one, love a bit of love, a bit of Pomeranian pate, Alsatian à l'orange. I mean, I love dogs are really tasty. No, that's not true. It's not legal to eat dogs in Britain. Is it not?

Is the true part that they're tasty then?

I don't know. Just want to check that. But one thing, I mean, they probably are if cooked in the right way. But that is that I pick that what I pick the dog example, because that's the one that I think for British people, they would probably out of all of them would find most disgusting, most close to cannibalism. And, and, you know, this, if you ask people, what, why is what's wrong with that? People will seek to justify objectively. Now, a dog is no more or less sentient or worthy of concern, really, than something like a pig. Pigs are very intelligent, probably more intelligent dogs in some way. And, you know, but people always try and make people say things like, oh, well, we dogs are disgusting because they're carnivores or eating dogs is disgusting because they're carnivores. Well, let me tell you about a little thing called cod and tuna. Tuna is an alpha predator. It's a carnivore. You know, there's the Jaguar of the seas. And yet we gobble it up. Chickens are naturally omnivorous and they eat animals, admittedly, small ones, you know, it doesn't make sense. I suppose what I'm saying is, yes, I'm veering towards saying that it is totally relative. Now, we can question whether that's true. But it's odd that people don't believe people don't believe that people believe that their emotion of disgust that they have about certain food is something that is an objective appraisal of some characteristics of that food. Whereas what we probably think is it's actually something about that person's about you if you find a food disgusting and not really about the food, whether that's, you know, whether total relativism is is is the only other hypothesis we can discuss. So, Sarah?

I think I would definitely agree with what Nick said. I think there's a lot of ignorance in terms of food and culture and people forgetting that, you know, food is part of cultural identity. It's often filled with historic tradition. And also the things that people find disgusting are things that have been passed down. And they're usually a case of if you're looking at things like that have been fermented or are sitting in the dirt, it's a case of that's the way that cultures for hundreds of years had to preserve their food. And they've just kept that with them. And one example I actually do have of that is from back home. Back home in New Zealand, corn was bought in by the Europeans and the British when they came. So it's not a natural, it's not naturally growing in New Zealand. So in a way for the Māori people to keep corn is they fermented it. So if you can imagine fermented corn does not smell good. It smells awful from what I've told. I have not tried it. I have not smelt it. My husband has and he's told me it was one of the worst things he's ever smelt in the world.

Can we just, sorry, just can I just ask, is this, are we talking like kernels of corn, like which might look like sweet corn?

Yeah.

Pickled and fermented, like I guess like kimchi but with sweet corn?

I'm assuming so. And think of it going into the freezer, seeing an ice cream container, thinking it's ice cream, opening the lid and you see fermented rotting corn that is letting off an awful smell. Now to most people that's disgusting, but to the Māori people, that is something that they've been brought up with. That is something that they know because that is something that's been instilled with them. It's not necessarily something that we, yes, we could find it disgusting, sure, because it doesn't sound appealing, but that's not disgusting to them. And I think there needs to be that respect and that understanding of where these foods come from and that tradition and why they have, why it's been done like that.

Yeah. It's funny fermentation, isn't it? Because fermentation is a real, it's a real kind of touch. I mean, fermentation is in a sense, it's sort of controlled rotting, right? So, you know, cheese is the product of fermentation, but also beer and curiously Marmite, of course, you know, another famously divisive food. But yeah, I mean, I think that there probably are, and I don't know if you've got any more details on it, sorry, but there probably are things that are common across, you know, I know people, different cultures find different things disgusting, but I think fermentation is probably one of the things that is common to things that people say are disgusting as is the use of like what we would now consider to be waste meats.

Yeah. I assume it would come down to a lot as well about how things are being fermented and what is being fermented. For example, when I was doing some research in Tahiti, they ferment rotten fish, they decompose it in salt water for a few days and then they do some other stuff with it. Now that to me does not sound appealing in any way you put it.

Yeah, there's a lot of weird fish things in Scandinavia. I think they have a thing called lutefisk in Norway, which essentially they stick it in lye and leave it for a year or something. And then it's apparently delicious, but you have to eat outside because it smells so disgusting.

Yeah, I liked what you were saying then Nick about can we find, although it all seems to be quite relative, is there anything that we can find that's common? And one of the things you said there's fermentation. The other thing is to a greater or lesser degree awful. I was trying to think of another thing. I mean, I thought about maybe, you know, insects, but of course, famously, there are all sorts of places where they eat insects. Yeah, and of course, that we're inconsistent

on that as well, because shrimps, arthropods, crabs are arthropods. They're essentially big. You know, I mean, small shrimps are essentially insects. I mean, they're very similar. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we, you know, it's not, it's not even like, yeah, we're not even particularly

consistent about that. No, no. Anything else out there that I mean, can we think of anything

that sort of everyone in the whole world goes? I mean, I've looked more generally about that, about disgust. And it is a genuine puzzle. Actually, there isn't a unified theory of disgust. And the puzzle is this, that, as we've said that there are things that are things that what we find disgusting can vary dramatically that Charles Darwin actually made an observation about when he was in South America, he said that a native touched some preserved meat he had, I guess, ham or something. And, and the native found the texture of the meat really disgusting. Darwin found a sort of native touching his food disgusting. And he says, you know, even though he wasn't dirty, there's just there's something about clearly, the things we find it's disgusting can vary quite widely. And, and young children do not. Children don't like sour foods and bitter foods, but they're not disgusted by them. They're not disgusted by anything, as anyone who's had kids will tell you, they will happily sit there and eat their own poo. And, you know, small children, and they have to be taught that certain things are disgusting. That's so on one hand, we've got well, it can vary very widely. But on the other hand, actually, there are so many universals about things that are considered disgusting. Okay. And but yes, there's so there are things like bodily fluids, body products in general. Certain animals are always found disgusting cockroaches, for example, death and corpses and contact. Yeah. So I was gonna say, yeah, dirtiness, so poor hygiene, weird sexual practices. And I won't go any further into that. I love the way you just did that. It was naughty.

Yeah, I like the way he lent. He lent right into his mic. Yeah, talking of talking of certain

sexual practices, violations of the human envelope. So piercings and and puncturing the body. And actually, then sort of seems to be the case that people use disgust as a way of expressing moral distaste as well. So people experience disgust at immorality. And apparently, common across cultures is the use of disgust, like your behavior is disgusting, is actually that's that's that sort of phraseology used across different cultures. But yeah, I've got a few more discussed things. I've got a disgust test we could we could take. And also an interesting and interesting disgust question to provoke to provoke. Okay, so I want to hear the disgust test

and the disgust question. And then I want to go on a little sort of pitter patter around the world and sort of, you know, talk about other come back, bring it back to disgusting foods. And I've got a question as well. Let's have the disgust test, Nick. Well, I know there's first of all, there's

the disgust thought experiment. Okay, which is that you might you might be tempted to analyze disgust in terms of the potential harm it would do you or in terms of taste, like, like, maybe it's just disgusting tastes. I found this brilliant thought experiment. I think it was created by this guy called Rosen, who is like a very famous disgust ologist. Three glasses of water in front one contains a very bitter, but essentially harmless chemical and will be unpleasant to drink. The other contains a tasteless chemical that will make you quite make you very ill, make you make you sick and vomit. And the third is water that's been extracted from from dog poo. But completely clean, right, chemically, absolutely totally clean. Now, which of those would you least want to drink?

Ironically, paradoxically, the number two. Do you mean the second one or the dog poo one?

See, I think that's interesting, because for me, for me, I would find I would I would not want to drink the first two. And I would want to drink the third one in the sense that I would think, well, you know, it's totally clean. I could drink that fine. But I know that I would react very negatively. I would I would find it really hard to force to force myself to drink essentially water just having known it used to be dog poo. Yeah, honestly, wouldn't bother me at all.

Sarah, I think that's quite interesting, because I think disgust and thinking about it like that is what impedes us from adopting more sustainable lifestyle choices, particularly when it comes to food and things. So people are less inclined to look for alternative sources of protein, such as insects or plant based foods, unless they're actually vegetarian or vegan. And even in terms of water, recycled water does not seem to be a thing that people would necessarily want to do. They might not want to drink water that's come from the sewer, even though it's perfectly fine. So I think it's very interesting in that that thought decision process that Nick just proposed, I think highlights that quite well. And yeah, and I and that's the thing that I feel like

I really this my disgust emotions as an enemy, I'm fighting them, because I know that it's fine. I you know, this and I think this glasses experiment is a really good one to highlight. Well, what you know, is does not seem to have enough any real impact on your feeling of disgust. And that really bothers me. I mean, I'd like to eat more waffle, you know, because it's cheap and probably tasty if you like it. And I just but I just find it disgusting. And I can't help it. You know, I really wish I didn't. It's the visual aspect of it as well. I think a lot of it

like you've got to like the food that you're looking at. And awful just does not even look

appealing, let alone. Well, I don't know. I mean, kidneys in a steak and kidney pie, for example, look kind of look like steak, but they unfortunately taste of piss, which is why I can't.

For me, it's the texture all the kind of rubbery. Yes. Yeah, I also find that problem. But you

know, but actually, if you're a sweetie, which had been made in a factory and was at the exact same texture as awful, you would be fine with it. I don't think I would actually. You're you're attempting to make yourself consistent. But I think I don't know with a food which mushroom mushroom has quite a similar texture to live. No, it doesn't yield.

So I mean, kidneys don't yield very much. Well, I think they have to be cooked properly, which is probably also another problem. But I'm cooking my kidneys wrong. That's the problem. Yeah.

Yeah. So, I think I've got quite a high threshold. What's your number?

Five. Five. Sarah, do you have a number yet?

Mine is six.

Six. Well, you'd be intrigued to know that the average US score is five for men and seven for women. So, we're very close. I actually got a three. A three. Not much, but it bothers you. Disgusting. Watching all those horror films as a kid has slightly desensitized me to things like human

hands. I'm interested to know what you found disgusting then. If you only got a three, what were your three things?

The things that I, yeah, I mean, so the things that, the thing, I mean, seeing people vomit, I do have a problem with that. It makes me want to vomit too. I would struggle with, I would struggle with the monkey. Again, it comes down to the same problem I have with, with, you know, awful. I kind of, it's nothing inherently, I don't see it as morally wrong to eat it, but I just would find it disgusting. And finally, the hotel room. I would, I would

find that quite weird to think about. Really? That didn't even bother me at all.

I was like, oh, that's fine. Yeah, it doesn't bother me. No, I like that. That was good. It was quite insightful.

Sorry, just to give credit to that test. That's a test that was developed by Jonathan Hayton, Paul Rosen and Clark McCauley. It's a subset of a much bigger test, but which we'll put a link to.

I like that. Okay, look, let's just, if we've got time, just a quick sort of dance around the world, some disgusting food, and then I've got a question. Sarah?

So I have, I, one of the things that was interesting, like came up a bit was obviously rotten foods. I mentioned rotten fish before, but also rotten shark meat, the Greenland shark from Iceland. It's considered poisonous to humans when fresh, but they bury it, hang it out and dry it. And that's a delicacy there. And there are other things too, like, whale skin and blubber. Obviously, I'm against people whaling. So in Greenland, they eat whale skin and blubber. That was purely because of the lack of vitamin C that they'd get up in Greenland. Yep, squid teeth in Vietnam, not something that I'd be, find appealing. Baby mice? Squid teeth. Yep, apparently the beacon. Oh, lovely that you can find that on the streets in Vietnam. Baby mice wine. So wine that has, rice wine that has baby mice in it that's been fermented. And then once the wine's drunk, you eat the baby mice. Apparently it has health. Who drinks that? That's in China, sorry. Apparently it has health benefits. Not, not any that I can really see, but each to their own again. Obviously fried guinea pig in Peru, not going to be trying that. Another thing that came up was barbecue sheep's head from South Africa, which they call smileys because when they're cooked, their lips shrink. So they, if you could imagine, show a very awful grin on this dried up cooked sheep head. And one of the other things I just couldn't do was balut from the Philippines, which is essentially the embryo of a chicken or a duck that so is boiled alive and then eaten.

Oh my God. A couple of eye-openers there. Okay, look, this brings us nicely onto what I just want to finish off on, which is a really obvious question, but what is the most disgusting food that you've ever had the displeasure of experiencing? I've got a top three here, actually. So when I lived in Poland, they're really into roll mops. Okay. So I think it's pickled herring or something. Isn't it now that alone? So they, they really like drink eating that when they're drinking vodka. So knocking back vodka straight away makes you kind of want to vomit. And so let's just take it to one other higher level and just have a roll mop with it. Some, you know, pickled herring. So that used to sort of freak me out. And actually I never tried it. I think the next thing is, yeah, in Brazil, you walk into a supermarket and you go to a certain pair and you just get this waft of stench of, of dried cod, salted cod. They really like dried salted cod and it stinks to high heaven. And that's a weird kind of hangover from their Portuguese heritage because cod is a, you know, it comes from the North Atlantic, nowhere near Brazil, but that's what they like. But you know, it's something that's popped up throughout this conversation we've been having is, you know, to the top one, it can only be, you've got to go to China. So in China, I did once order dog in a restaurant and I was a bit tipsy and thought I was being quite funny. And then much to my relief, after about 15 minutes, they came out and said, sorry, sir, dogs off. So I was saved the misfortune of eating, of eating Rover. But what I did have, and I think I might've mentioned this on the podcast before is I went to this restaurant once and it there, and I had lobster spaghetti. Now you might sort of listen to that and go, Oh, that sounds quite nice. But you might imagine lobster with some spaghetti. No, what this was, was kind of spaghetti noodles that were actually made out of mashed up lobster. That sounds a bit Heston Blumenthal to me. Yeah, sort of experimental. Right. But also served at kind of room temperature. And also with the crustacean itself, like sticking up and like the shell and let's be the eyes looking at you.

I think these foods are disgusting. You're, you know, fooling yourself.

You think there's something wrong with me? So yeah. So those are some of my sort of highlights.

Sarah. For me, I think a lot of it is around, as I mentioned earlier, it's seafood, not a fan of oysters, not a fan of caviar. Definitely don't like offal. I've had kidney once when I was little in a steak and kidney pie. And I think it's scarred me for life. I think I'm very conservative in my choices. I did want to try durian, but I think the smell just kept putting me off. I think I will try it next time I'm over in Asia. Give durian a try.

What about yourself, Nick? Well, I have to say your disgusting foods are pathetic. Really? The horriblest thing I've eaten, forced myself to eat, was Andouillette. Now this is a famous sausage and it has a lot of people who are big fans of Andouillette and not to be confused with which is a thing in the US, which is nice, right? That's nice. Andouillette is essentially made with all the kind of foldy flappy bits of the inside of a, of a, I think, I say pig, but it could be, could be cow. And, and they just take all of the things like the intestines and the, and I think things like the lungs and all the kind of things that are rubbery and, and fold it up. And then they, they sort of fold them up, wrap them up into a sausage shape. So it looks deceptively like a tasty sausage. And this was sold to me by the waiter as a regional, delicious regional sausage. And the minute I cut into it, there was a farmyard waft, like, like that, which I think is part of the enjoyment apparently. And so it was a really strong smell of manure. And then I, as I just ate my way through it, that taste, the taste, it was definitely a taste of manure. It tasted like eating dung. And, and I got two thirds of the way through it for, for Britain. And then I had to throw in the towel, I'm afraid. The chips that it came with were delicious, but the Andouillette, I've, I've, I think I've done my bit and I'm not going to go for the Andouillette again. But I do encourage everyone to try it. I mean, I wouldn't want to put people off. Yeah. If you like eating rubbery, rubbery poo tasting

stuff. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I still think my, my, my mashed up lobster spaghetti is better

than that. It's delicious. I don't know what you're talking about. It just sounds like you ate lobster

in a different way. Like, yeah, it's still lobster, isn't it? I mean, no, no, no, there was just something about, I'd like to say that, I don't know, the big thing was that it was room temperature

I found really odd. Well, this is why you guys are like five and six on the discuss scale,

and I'm only a three. Well said. Okay. Let's wrap up there. Thank you as always for listening to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast. I'm Fraser McGruer. We've been here with Sara Nonu and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights. And until next time, goodbye.