So, what does exotic meat taste like? Well, gator tastes like chicken. Snake tastes like chicken. Ostrich tastes like… well, beef, weirdly. Human beings taste like pork. Is there any rhyme or reason as to why meats taste the way the do? Apparently so. Joe Staton of the Museum of Comparative Zoology has put together a chart of what various exotic meats taste taste like and has even written an evolutionary taste-ology of why certain food families taste like they do. If you’ve ever wondered why everything tastes like chicken, here’s the answer.
Apparently, the reason exotic meat tastes like it does is because of some shared ancestor in the past. After all, alligators and chickens have similar biological ancestors (dinosaurs), but there’s some weirdness with the ostrich that gives it a beefy taste, at least according to Staton. When it’s put in chart form, it makes more sense than it does in written form, at least to me. It’s a pretty interesting chart, and it’s a fairly reasonable explanation for why things taste like they do to the human tongue.
It’s the next best thing to eating mice!
Tags: tastes like chicken, exotic meat, unusual meat, weird meat, the flavor of food, the source of flavor, food flavors, the taste of exotic meat, unusual food tastes, evolution, Joe Staton, food flavor chart, taste chart, why does meat taste a certain way, animal taste chart
