[Eisenstein]

If I were to cook a pork chop in the kitchen of some of my middle eastern relatives they would feel sick and would probably throw out the pan I cooked it with (and me from their house as well).

Isn't this similar to why people unfamiliar with that style of seafood would feel sick -- cultural views on what is and is not normal food -- and not because of their view of mortality?

[Dalewyn]

You're not grasping the point, which I don't necessarily blame you.

Imagine that to cook that pork chop, the chef starts by butchering a live pig. Also imagine that he does that in view of everyone in the restaurant rather than in the "backyard" kitchen let alone a separate butchering facility hundreds of miles away.

That's the sushi chef butchering and serving a live fish he grabbed from the tank behind him.

When you can actually see where your food is coming from and what "food" truly even is, that gives you a better grasp on reality and life.

It's also the true meaning behind the often used joke that goes: "You don't want to see how sausages are made."

[Eisenstein]

I grasp the point just fine, but you haven't convinced me that it is correct.

The issue most people would have with seeing the sausage being made isn't necessarily watching the slaughtering process but with seeing pieces of the animal used for food that they would not want to eat.

[Dalewyn]

But isn't that the point? If someone is fine eating something so long as he is ignorant or naive, doesn't that point to a detachment from reality?

[Eisenstein]

I wouldn't want to eat a cockroach regardless of whether I saw it being prepared or not. The point I am making is that 'feeling sick' and not wanting to eat something isn't about being disconnected from the food. Few people would care if you cut off a piece of steak from a hanging slab and grilled it in front of them, but would find it gross to pick up all the little pieces of gristle and organ meat that fell onto the floor, grind it all up, shove it into an intestine, and cook it.

[ImPostingOnHN]

> Few people would care if you cut off a piece of steak from a hanging slab

The analogy here would be watching a live cow get slaughtered and then butchered from scratch in front of you, which I think most Western audiences (more than a few) might not like.

[Eisenstein]

A cow walks into the kitchen, it gets a captive bolt shoved into its brain with a person holding a compressed air tank. Its hide is ripped off and it is cut into two pieces with all of its guts on the ground and the flesh and bones now hang as slabs.

I am asserting that you could do all of that in front of a random assortment of modern Americans, and then cut steaks off of it and grill them and serve them to half of the crowd, and most of those people would not have an problem eating those steaks.

Then if you were to scoop up all the leftover, non-steak bits from the ground with shovels, throw it all into a giant meat grinder and then take the intestines from a pig, remove the feces from them and fill them with the output of the grinder, cook that and serve it to the other half of the crowd, then a statistically larger proportion of that crowd would not want to eat that compared to the ones who ate the steak.

[abduhl]

Most audiences wouldn’t like freshly butchered cow - freshly butchered meat is tough and not very flavorful, it needs to be aged to allow it to tenderize and develop.

[sensanaty]

I grew up with my farmer grandpa who was a butcher, and I've seen him butcher lots of animals. I always have and probably always will find tongues & brains disgusting, even though I'm used to seeing how the sausage is made (literally).

Some things just tickle the brain in a bad way. I've killed plenty of fish myself, but I still wouldn't want to eat one that's still moving in my mouth, not because of ickiness or whatever, but just because the concept is unappealing. I don't think this is anywhere near as binary as you make it seem, really.