#500 Nibbles and Bits

There’s an old urban legend about Spam—the meat product, not the internet scourge. The legend is that Spam is much favored at those Polynesian islands where cannibalism once existed because it tastes like the meat of human. And here I thought it was because it didn’t spoil in the tropical heat. But it raises an interesting question. Does it? If you kind of like spam, like I do, does it mean that you are more inclined to cannibalism than, say, a wheat germ-gulping, kelp-flossing vegan?
Brief aside here. I’m never able to say vegan without thinking of that Star Trek series where all the different humanoid species with varying degrees of wrinkled forehead hung out at a space station. And it’s interesting that in all the episodes I remember of that show—which aren’t many because I’m even less of a trekkie than I am a cannibal— there were never any that actually dealt with cannibalism. Or even inter-humanoid snacking. And you would think that if you took the entire universe as opposed to, say, one small section of southern ocean on one small planet, you would be able to find at least one humanoid species that was up for a little cross-cultural buffet. Star Trek never even had anyone making the mistake of accidentally gobbling sentient chickens. And everything odd and foreign supposedly tastes like chicken.
Folks who eat gamey dear and bear swear by it. And love nothing better than plucking pellets out of a hindquarter of wild duck. So I suppose developing a taste for exotic human parts or spam is possible, and would make it hard to settle for relatively flavorless missionary cow. Still, depending on diet and all, I’d be willing to bet people taste pretty different from person to person. Corn-fed in Iowa or granola-fed on the coast. And forget about any form of human-eating when asparagus is in season. But Spam is always consistent. And, legends aside, it’s more popular in Appalachia than Micronesia. Because everyone knows Spam comes from the parts of the squirrel no one else wants.
America, ya gotta love it