Cooking animals or insects while they’re still alive may be nauseating to some of you. In our food culture, you do not see such an understanding of nutrition, except for a few seafood.
Especially in countries like China, Thailand, and Korea, it’s normalized enough to be videotaped eating animals alive (although it isn’t). So let’s take a look at the creatures exposed to it.
Our first example is the octopus:
Eating octopus alive is most common in South Korea. While the octopus is alive, they cut off its arms and put the still moving arms on a plate and serve. They call this dish (!) sannakji.
They even pour sesame oil on the arms of the octopus so that the live meat can slide down their throats while people eat it. I don’t know what you think, but I don’t understand why people continue this initiative, which kills about 6 people every year, still adoringly.
Example that won’t surprise most of you: Fish
For a dish called “ikizukuri” in Japan, sashimi (thinly sliced live fish / a type of sushi) is prepared from live fish. In fact, since the meat is alive, they cut it in the thinnest way so that it can be eaten easily. In fact, as seen in the picture, the meat of a live fish is filleted and served. That’s why it happens that the fish are still moving.
Another example of the love of cooking fish live is seen in the “yin yang fish” dish in China. It’s exactly the same logic as Ikizukuri. The difference is that the body of the fish is fried in oil and the head is left raw. Even when the food is in front of people at the table, it can be seen that the head of the fish moves. In fact, the thing that keeps the fish moving is the nerves in its body, otherwise the fish is often dead.
China’s ‘drunken shrimp’ dish is also quite interesting
In some parts of China, shrimp are served in a live bowl and can even bounce around on the plate. A liquor-based sauce is poured over the animals so that they do not move and escape from the plate (!). More precisely, customers pour this sauce when they start eating. They probably watch the animals like they’re watching a show before they spill.
There are even those who eat live maggots (larvae)
For example, in Australia they eat small white maggots. They even compare their taste to cheetos. Especially Aboriginal communities are known to have this habit for a long time. These maggots are probably inherited from them, as these maggots have become something like a snack for the people in the region.
They collect the larvae directly from the tree and eat them as if you were picking mulberries and popping them into their mouths.
There’s even a Sardinian version of it. Sardinians poke holes in a cheese called pecorino and just leave it outside. Thus, cheese flies come and lay eggs in the cheese, and when the eggs are broken, the larvae begin to eat the cheese. At the same time, flies defecate into the cheese, and the acid in their digestive system breaks down the cheese’s fat and softens it.
People realize that this food has thickened, when liquid starts to drip from the hole they opened and they start eating it. However, this cheese is not easy to find because it has been banned by the Italian government since 1962. Those who sell and those who sell are punished.
There are also those who choose to eat frogs
Talking about Japan’s famous frog sashimi, the frog is usually served dead and raw. But the frog’s heart is fresh and still beating because the animal has just died. This is first revealed when this animal is served live at a restaurant called Asadachi in Tokyo. The animal comes alive, then the chief takes the knife and kills it.
The chef then directly removes the animal’s heart and slices the rest of its body as raw meat. Although all the examples we have mentioned here are criticized, we can say that this is an example that many people define as torture, including the associations that protect animal rights.
Sea urchin and mussels:
Sea urchins already have a tiny bit of meat. On top of that, they are cut and consumed raw. Sometimes the meat inside the creature is also used when making sushi. Some people think that eating sea urchins is not a bad thing, as they are known to be an invasive species for algae.
However, in our country, sea urchin fishing was banned in the Marmara Sea in May 2022 to ensure ecosystem continuity.
Most of you have heard of mussels as it is very well known that mussels are cooked alive. However, the lid is always kept closed while cooking, mussels with the lid open are not cooked. It is even said that the reason why it is cooked alive and covered is to prevent food poisoning. Because bacteria can enter the ones with open lids, which is considered dangerous for human health.
Oysters and lobsters:
Oysters are creatures that do not die until they are cut out of their shells. Therefore, they are still alive when you take them out of the sea and serve them raw on an ice tray. I don’t know if we consider this as a positive thing, but because they do not have a central nervous system, they do not feel pain. This sea creature is generally consumed in many parts of the world, including our country.
Lobster meat contains natural bacteria originating from itself. For this reason, since these bacteria can multiply when the lobster dies, it is desired to prevent food poisoning by cooking this animal alive. It has been known that lobsters do not suffer when cooked alive for a long time, but this is completely wrong.
It can be said that they feel pain hormonally even if they do not have a central nervous system. In fact, according to experts, the fact that they move their tails when they are cooked alive is a sign of this because they do this as an escape reflex.
Imagine you are going to a restaurant, they put ants on your food as decorations…
Noma, a famous restaurant in Denmark, uses ants in most of its dishes. For example, Chef Rene Redzepi even made a dish where shrimp was decorated with ants. In an interview he gave, it is seen that the ants insist that they give the food a sour lemon-like aroma.
There are also claims that the chicks were thrown alive into the meat grinders.
A member of a vegetarian group in England is secretly filming on a chicken farm. Then he sees the animals separated by sex and the male ones thrown alive into the meat grinder. According to this person, this is due to the fact that male chicks are seen as useless in egg production.
In short, animal rights organizations and animal lovers think that all these examples we have given do not do anything other than make animals suffer. In other words, it doesn’t make much sense to cook animals alive. On top of that, one cannot help but question where the curiosity to consume in this way comes from. So what do you think about this? You can share your thoughts with us in the comments.
- Sources: Tree Hugger, Quora, Irish Hexaminer, Ozhan Ozturk, Science Focus
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