Ever Realized Just What You're Actually Eating?

Tweet

This evening during dinner my friend pointed out to me, as I was eating some delicious fried shrimp, that it had not, in fact, been de-veined. Now oddly enough I knew what this meant and as I examined my knowledge about shrimp I realized I also knew that most shrimp *isn't* de-veined in most places where I tend to eat such things. This was no exception -- we were in a casual dining environment. For those not in the know, de-veined shrimp is shrimp whose veins and "other connecting passages" have been removed. Shrimp are simple little things -- as my friend pointed out, they just eat plankton. They digest it, and like most other critters, they poop out what's left after they've digested everything they can in the food they've eaten. When a shrimp isn't de-veined, guess what stays? Ever look at a shrimp and notice that spiffy-looking "blood vessel" that runs all the way down the "spine?" Heh. That's not a blood vessel. That's not blood inside. It's ... something yuckier :) Now I've eaten countless shrimp, both before and after learning what that stuff is. After all, it's cooked at high temperatures, it's in minute amounts, and it's not the same exact stuff humans produce (it's much simpler, organically speaking). For some reason tonight, though, when it occurred to me (thanks to my friend's reminder) that I was essentially eating fried shrimp crap along with my tasty shrimp, my appetite just completely died on me. Now I'm still very likely to continue eating shrimp, but there was something special about the realization tonight and it just twisted my stomach into knots. So let's hear it, gang! Have you ever had a dining moment like this? We all realize when we're eating burgers that the meat was once a cute furry cow standing on a pasture (or crammed tightly amongst other cattle on a meat farm, but I digress) but it doesn't generally bother us. We know caviar (something I've never eaten, btw) is fish eggs, but folks still eat it anyway. When has a meal suddenly turned undesirable when you get a flash realization of what it is you're actually eating?