Leather Storrs: Why Guinea Pigs Are A Perfect Protein

Email to a friend Permalink

Tuesday, September 09, 2014

Leather Storrs, GoLocalPDX Contributor

When you eat meat, it’s easy to get the amino acids your body demands, but animal protein, already in trouble, is approaching the dreaded “U” word: unsustainable.

Demand for seafood is such that pens of salmon, festering in their own feces and awaiting a makeover that renders them pretty and pink, seems fine.

Extinction looms over many species and they’re fighting back like petulant teens - with heavy metal. Pigs are raised in people-less facilities where antibiotics maintain order and the mountains of waste are spread in acres around the “farms” as fertilizer for non-existent crops.

Chickens and eggs play salmonella roulette and beef, the king of inefficiency, is more expensive than ever (not to mention potentially maddening). 

An alternative to traditional meat

Creative alternatives exist. Bugs are making a play, but it’s hard to imagine them getting center-of-the-plate treatment. Faux meat is gaining traction, but most of that stuff can tofurk itself if you ask me.

It’s outside the box time and, with apologies to Carrie Bradshaw, we must ask: Who will be the guinea pig… that eats the guinea pig?      

America is squeamish. We like our meat divorced from its host. Round burgers are nice. Square chicken breasts are, too. Dinosaur-shaped pellets and sticks of fish make it hard to imagine beaks and scales and eyeballs. But big rats with cute little T-Rex arms and crisp, golden skin might be asking too much. Such are the problems of the first world.

 

While not yet huge in Japan, the lowly guinea pig is a big star in South America. “Cuy” even has its own religious festival called “jaca tsariy” (collecting the guinea pigs), which celebrates patron saints.

In the city of Cusco, Peru, the main cathedral’s depiction of the last supper features guinea pig as the entrée. 

But desperate times call for desperate measures and maybe even the bumper sticker-y “paradigm shift." Guinea pigs are a perfect protein to farm. They require very little room; they reproduce like rabbits; they are relatively clean; they are efficient at turning food into flesh; they are low in fat and cholesterol and high in protein. Unlike fish or pig farms, their production does not create great piles and pools of poop that seep into the public domain.

Some say the dark meat tastes like… chicken!

Poverty still trumps politics as the mother of invention, though, and we may never be poor enough to embrace eating rodents. Why, what if one of those little Rat(tatouilles) is the next great chef? How could Aiden and Haley possibly eat their beloved Mr. Twinkles? Frankly, it would be a big stretch for me as well.

I’m all for chicken feet and pig ear and blood sausage, but at a certain point, your brain interjects and denies you the ability to consume something taboo, regardless of deliciousness. “Balut,” the partially developed chicken embryo served in shell, is my waterloo.

I suspect that the fuzzy little anthropomorphized guinea pig will remain out of reach until the pressures of population, property and pollution make it absolutely necessary. Until then, Tofurky is quietly waiting its star turn. 

Leather Storrs is an Oregon native who has served 20 years in professional kitchens. He owns a piece of two area restaurants: Noble rot and nobleoni at Oregon College of Art and Craft, where he yells and waves arms. He quietly admits to having been a newspaper critic in Austin, Texas and Portland.

Home Page Photo Credit: cjnzja via Compfight cc

Related Articles

• Critics Critiqued: Tips for Portland Food Writers

Enjoy this post? Share it with others.

Email to a friend Permalink