What we eat is very often dictated by the culture we live in. Most Americans would gag at the thought of eating horsemeat: in France, it’s a delicacy. Bugs? Yuck. But it’s said that more than a thousand species of insects are an important protein source for about 80 percent of the world’s population.

Some people reading this have never tasted pork, many don’t eat meat at all, and the rest of us can usually accept that. But as for rats, cats, and dogs, let’s not even go there (or to China, and a few other places where many people think they’re yummy).

I bring this up because of an interesting article in last Saturday’s Wall Street Journal: “Let Them Eat Dog,” by Jonathan Safran Foer, who has just written a book, Eating Animals.

He somewhat facetiously suggests that euthanizing three to four million cats and dogs every year represents a tremendous waste. These animals are produced without any agribusiness infrastructure, and their disposal is an ecological and economic problem. “But eating those strays, those runaways, those not-quite-cute-enough-to-take and not-quite-well-behaved-enough-to-keep dogs would be killing a flock of birds with one stone and eating it too.”

This interests me because my latest book, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Self-Sufficient Living, touches on the same topic, albeit from a somewhat different perspective. (Unlike Jonathon Safran Foer, I am not a vegetarian.) Yes, food is cultural, not rational. But what if — just supposing, don’tcha know — what if changing climate and/or water shortages or any of a myriad of economic factors made it impossible for average Americans to eat beef, chicken or pork? After all, those factors are already present in much of the world, and account at least in part for the food cultures we consider bizarre. We might not think much of entomophagy (the practice of eating insects) today, but what if we were starving? Once we got used to it, how long would it take to discover our favorites?

You can look at it from the other side, too. Vegetarians have notoriously disgusting descriptions of “eating flesh,” but you can make anything sound good, or bad, depending on your culture.

To a gourmet, a cheese might be smoky, velvety, creamy, tangy, bloomy, and as many other adjectives as might be applied to fine wine. Clifton Fadiman called cheese “milk’s leap to immortality.” Caseophiles can rave about the subtle flavors the local forage contributes to true sheep milk Greek feta, extol the delicacy imparted by cave aging, and marvel at what various bacterial cultures can do for taste and texture.

On the other hand, if you wanted to discourage the consumption of cheese, you might take a cue from the Ugandan native who watched Andrew Zimmern (of the Travel Channel’s “Bizarre Foods With Andrew Zimmern”) slicing some Cracker Barrel cheese — after a hard day of sampling flying ants, big grasshoppers, and lungfish from muddy brackish waters. The Ugandan shuddered with disgust as he said, “I don’t know why you Americans let your milk rot and dry it into little squares.”

Or you might just say that cheesemaking involves the use of mammal stomach lining (rennet), different strains of bacteria that are injected and smeared onto the spoiled milk, and of course, mold.

I also pointed out in my book that “you have probably eaten a lot more insects than you realize: Guess what happens to all the flour beetles, weevils, and other insects found in granaries. Insects are said to be common in canned fruits and vegetables.

“The U. S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has a list of allowable ‘unavoidable defects’ in foods that you ain’t never gonna see on the nutrition label. Tomato juice can legally have up to 10 fly eggs per 100 grams, or five fly eggs and a maggot, or two maggots. Ten grams of ground thyme can contain up to 925 insect fragments and two rodent hairs. In eight ounces of golden raisins there might be the equivalent of 10 whole insects and 35 Drosophilia eggs.”

Maybe it’s best to just not know, or even think, about such matters. And yet, when I read about how many people are out of work (and money), how many of those have already become homeless, and wonder how many more will follow, it’s difficult not to speculate on possible outcomes. Carry this out a few more years with climate change, water shortages, overpopulation, soil depletion…

How loyal are people to their cultural beliefs and arbitrary taboos when they’re starving?—Jd