After watching The Land Before Time for the hundredth time, my seven year old asked me today, “Do you cook dinosaur meat for your customers?” And while I normally would have smiled and pinched her cheeks, this question made me think for a minute. Surprisingly, the answer was, “Yes!”.
Many of our foods have very interesting origins, and some are derived from sources you would never expect. This thought entertained me for the rest of the day and I began to do a little research — sort of tracking down a long lost family tree — on the quirky foods that we eat. Some of you may find this disturbing, but I hope that most of you will find this as interesting as I did.
Dinosaurs – A long time ago, the Earth was filled with dinosaurs. They roamed what are now our oceans, swam what are now our deserts and flew in our skies. Then a large explosion wiped them out. Fast forward a few years later (a few million to be exact). The planet’s continents shifted and buried much of the dinosaur leftovers in underground pockets where they fermented for a long time and turned into a thick, flammable, black viscous carbon liquid. Then a Texan shot a hole into the ground, and — “Yeehaw!” — petroleum was discovered. It was taken to a factory where it was turned into a thousand different things, many of which you actually eat.
This article appears in Jul 15-21, 2010.