[jhbadger]

At least in English, the word tripe itself means "worthless", because traditionally in English-speaking countries, where meat was cheap and plentiful, people threw tripe out or fed it to their dogs. Countries like Italy and various Asian countries didn't have the luxury of cheap meat historically -- so they incorporated tripe into their cuisine. That doesn't mean that good things can't be done with it, just that the original reason for using it was that it was cheap.