I was once having a conversation with some Filipino anglers in San Diego about eating fish and my ideas on what was safe. I was looking at a bucket filled with small fish and asked if they really got much food from those fish. "Of course, we eat the entire fish, nothing is wasted" In discussion they mentioned how good the eyes were, something I had never tried (then or now).There are many different beliefs among anglers.
Typically western cultures waste a significant portion of the creature due to cultural hangups. I'm not calling anyone out or anything because
I suffer from many of the same irrational cultural biases. Typical biases include eyes, tongues, various organs, or even the entire family/genus of
certain species. Much of this may have originated far back in time when it was more difficult to preserve certain parts of the creature, or certain
parts would spoil more rapidly and/or be more prone to carrying illness or toxic elements (ie parasites or if a creature is able to eat toxic plants
then the toxins may build up in one organ or anther while the flesh is safe).
I recommend forcing yourself to try some of the things that you typically would not consider eating. It may not be delicious, but unless you can
find a reason other than "that sounds gross" for avoiding something, perhaps you WILL find a new favorite food. I'll give you an example of
finding something truly delicious while I was in Chengdu (in Sichuan) China. Spicy hotpot is essentially the regional favorite. There are super
spicy restaurants serving hotpot (that looks like a roiling mass of lava from the chili and oil floating on top of the boiling water) everywhere, and
one of the most popular items to eat in hotpot was the throat of a pig. Not sure what part this was, it wasn't meaty but it wasn't fatty or cartilage
either. However, it was absolutely delicious. It soaked up the flavors of the hotpot and mellowed/blended them in a way that none of the other
ingredients could come close to matching.
I still have a borderline phobia about eating brains and nervous system tissue though, but that's a borderline irrational paranoia from back when
Mad Cow disease was rampant in the news...
So my advice is... if you don't think it'll kill you or make you sick, go ahead and force yourself to try it!
