andthe story of "we are what we eat" begins in 1825, when, two months before the author's death, Physiologie du gout (Physiology of taste) appears. With this volume, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin becomes, along with Alexandre -(Balthazard)-Laurent Grimod de La Reynière, the founder of the gastronomic essay genre. In the specified volume, Brillat-Savarin postulates: "Dis-moi ce que tu manges, je te dirai ce que tu es." (Tell me what you eat so I can tell you who you are).
40 years later, the German philosopher Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach writes in the work Concerning Spiritualism and Materialism "Der Mensch ist, was er ißt", (man is what he eats). Only after the First World War, nutritionist Victor Lindlahr uses, in an advertorial for "'United Meet Markets" published by Bridgeport Telegraph phrase that continues to career: "Ninety per cent of the diseases known to man are caused by cheap foodstuffs. You are what you eat". (Ninety percent of disease known to man is caused by cheap food. You are what you eat).
Okay, okay. The expression is used figuratively, because otherwise, at a mot-a-mot understanding, we would be, at least during this period, lamb with salad or quinoa with avocado, depending on the self-restrictions that coordinate our diet. Or, in the fall of 2019, a Chinese from Wuhan would have been a pangolin or a bat. (Batman, batman!).
Like any generalist categorization, it refers to a long consumption exercise, to a ceiling on the number of ingredients (with accents of monophagy in quite a few historical cases) or, sometimes, fixed to an exception perceived as a dishonorable culinary habit. We use dysphemisms to identify populations whose gastronomic predilections have become stereotypes (cultural and often constrained by the context) that jump out at the eyes: rice eaters, sausage eaters, polenta eaters or broskari. Culinary bullying.
But let's get back to our Easter sheep or other people's guinea pigs.
There are serious studies about what was eaten at the Last Supper. The general perception says that the lamb would have been in the foreground, that's because we confuse Good Friday with the whole period of the Easter Holidays. The lamb, a symbol of the escape from Egypt (but also a seasonal food in the spring), was traditionally sacrificed at Easter. In 2007, Pope Benedict XV announced that lamb would not have been served at the Last Supper. The pope at the time said that the Last Supper took place before the ritual sacrifice of lambs, which was a common Passover tradition in Jesus' time, and therefore Jesus himself took the place of the lambs.
Most likely the meal was one according to the norms of the Seder (Hebrew festive ritual) with unleavened bread, bitter herbs and pistachios, olive oil, a stew of beans or beans, honey, figs, pomegranates, raisins, olives with hyssop (from the mint family ), Haroset (a sweet, dark paste made from fruit and nuts) and unfermented wine.
But what happens to the original dishes on the Last Supper table?
They undergo changes in most reproductions of the most famous table of all time. The artists (thousands of kilometers and hundreds of years away) adapted the table to the local specifics and even to their contemporary culinary fashion.
In Leonardo da Vinci's case, Jesus and the apostles eat eel and oranges, a combination frequently found in the Italian Renaissance.
Matei Pleșu, in the book Amintiri din cucătaria lumii, a small anthology of tastes, moods and expectations, published by Humanitas 2012, tells an eloquent episode of our story: "In the cathedral of St. Bartholomew in Frankfurt, in the northern transept, there is a painted wooden bas-relief with the Last Supper. On the plate in the middle of the table is not fish, but a sausage. Maybe even a little blood, if we go by the color. A candid and natural adaptation to the cuisine of the place. I would have thought that I was nauseous or that I had a sinful look, if I had not known about the 16th century stained glass window of the Cathedral of St. Maria zur Wiese in Soest, in which Jesus and the twelve apostles feast on ham, black bread, pig's head, beer and schnapps. Like the peasants of Westphalia".
The examples can go on, but I would like to stop at just one: the painting of the Last Supper, from the Cathedral Basilica of Cusco, Peru, painted by Marcos Zapata in 1753. In the middle of the table sits a ruddy and appetizing guinea pig, a specific element of a Peruvian meal. I immediately remembered an episode of "No reservation" with Antony Bourdain in which, invited to the table, he had to choose his future food from a box shaped like a coffin, full of fluff. Just like we choose live carp from the aquarium at the hypermarket. Or the lambs in the shepherd's fold. Even when we are not present, our requirements (18-25 kilograms live) are an indicator of the slaughtered animal. Bleah, right?
Well, they also say bleah after they saw the same late Bourdain licking himself after eating hot mice directly from the barely burnt pig somewhere in Maramureș. We all say Bleah, on various episodes of "Bizarre foods" with Andrew Zimmern. It's almost impossible to control your disgust and not gasp at the chubby palm-ringed worms sizzling on the grill, or at the Balut, the fertilized egg with an almost fully developed embryo eaten in Asia.
In an episode of Final Table, the professional cooking show on Netflix, Chef Mark Best, one of the icons of the new Australian cuisine, wins a test after cooking all the organs/less common parts of a fat country hen: claws, crest, rump, slight. In the end, he says that he would recreate the entire dish at home, for the family, and put it on the table with one exception: the dumplings. You know, those unhatched eggs, little balls of yolk that hang from the back of the slaughtered hen that many of us search for in soups. Exactly the ones that our parents chose for us and gave us a prize if we ate everything from the plate. Exact. Those. Those were the only part of the chicken that wouldn't have been put on the family table by a big chef because they're unhatched eggs and after all, poo! Bleah. Because the habit of consumption is a path, acquired, shaped and chiseled by cultural parameters that vary from one area to another. What disgusts us is considered a delight thousands of kilometers away. What disgusts them is a delicacy for us.
I write all this because I have seen an unprecedented wave of attacks on some culinary habits of others. A visceral hatred was planted in our souls like a well-sharpened corkscrew towards the bat-eating Chinese. I know the springs. But the hatred multiplied, reaching the point of blaming an entire continental gastronomy. No discernment. Now Asians have become: eaters of bats, beetles, rats, grasshoppers, dogs, cats. They are no longer the rice farmers of old. "God curse them and let them all die!" is one of the most frequent reactions on the Romanian net, but not only. That after all, God in Leviticus explicitly forbade the consumption of bats and insects. But the same God, also in Leviticus, also prohibited the ostrich, but allowed it to be consumed "of all the winged insects that walk on four legs, you shall eat only those that have the whistles of the hind legs longer so that they can jump on the ground ". In our case, the Romanians, most of the ignorant Christians curse those who consume locusts and crickets. Another small part owns ostrich farms. But above all else, that we just don't expect all commentators to know the Old Testament by heart, Asians are cursed because of them this damn virus spread.
In the second half of the 19th century "several Anglo-Saxon entomologists tried in vain to convince Europeans of the benefits of eating insects (Nm How would the European lunch look like today?). They seem to have been impressed by their confirmed consumption in the English colonies, in America, in Africa, and in Asia. The American Charles Valentin Riley, "first entomologist" of the State of Missouri advises us to eat locusts to fight against their invasion, which is decimating the crops of the Rocky Mountains. In 1885, British entomologist Vincent M. Holt published Why not eat insects?. Showing that they could serve as additions to the diet of the poor. Holt writes, making explicit reference to the colonies: «though uncivilized, most of these peoples are more fastidious than we are in regard to the quality of food. They regard us with far greater horror for eating a dirty animal like a pig or raw oysters than we do for them when they appreciate a properly cooked meal of grasshoppers or palm worms.'' to eat?, Jacques Attali, translation Dan Petrescu, Polirom publishing house 2020)
In the desperation of isolation from home I saw Chefs sharing videos of the markets full of Asian culinary oddities. Because some "Chiefs" do not understand cultural differences. Because he would swallow two portions of unchewed belly soup at the same table with someone who can't even stand the smell of him. Because we usually don't care and indulge in ignorance. We are so crazy that we saw a video where Asians are cursed for eating frogs. Their m*ie. This, although we call the Italians broscari & macaronari, and the English call the French "frog legs". This, despite the fact that in Dobrogea, Buhai de balta or pond chicken has been consumed for many generations. Bread or steak. Or stew. Know that you can find it in enough supermarkets, in the frozen section, to not be so drastic with the Asians.
I miss the days, that is, last year, when eating bats was seen, not necessarily with good eyes, but as a curiosity on Parika Tv or Food & Travel Chanel. From the times when the consumption of bats was relegated to the curiosities section of Culinary Art magazine, no. 11/1995:
“Frozen bats for…steak
In the island of Guam in the Pacific Ocean, the territory belonging to the United States, lives a species of bat - the bizarre mammal with membranous wings - which is much in demand by the 50,000 inhabitants of this territory, Why? For its culinary qualities, being considered a special gastronomic specialty. Those with a lot of money can afford to pay $25 to $40 for a fresh bat. The demand being very high, the number of these mammals has decreased significantly, so that now only 500 specimens live on the island. In order to prevent the total disappearance of bats, experts from Wild World Funds requested that local legislation protect this species that has a very important role in pollinating the flowers of some trees that grow on the island. As such, 7,000 frozen bats are imported from the Philippines annually. Lovers of culinary delights also have to settle for frozen bats."
Let us return, now at the end, to the nutritionist Lindlahr and his quote: "Ninety per cent of the diseases known to man are caused by cheap foodstuffs. You are what you eat". For some time the world has been haunted by another "pandemic". It's called cancer. It also comes from bad food, and from certain food E's, and from some over-processing. But this scourge only brings death, not restrictions imposed by military orders, so it's easy for us to focus our hatred against the one who, last fall, asked for a medium rare bat or pangolin in a market in Wuhan.
The title is inspired by: "Identity values in Dobrogea. Food that unites and divides", coord. of Ophelia the Widow
English 
Romanian 