[FOUNTAIN]Frogs or dogs: Eat and enjoy

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[FOUNTAIN]Frogs or dogs: Eat and enjoy

There is a Japanese dish called oyako donburi, a bowl of steamed rice topped with chicken and egg. "Oyako" means parents and children in Japanese, and the dish is called as such because mother (chicken) and baby (egg) are put together. It sounds interesting, but is, at the same time, sort of creepy.

If you adhere to Judaism, you probably would not even look at oyako donburi. Judaism teaches, as written in the Book of Leviticus and the Book of Deuteronomy, that believers eat only land animals that have divided hooves or fish with scales and fins. The cooking process should also follow strict rules. For example, animals must be butchered with only one swoop of the knife. If you have to make several strokes, the meat is considered impure and should not be eaten. Of course, within Judaism are the orthodox and more secular groups, so how strictly you abide by the teaching varies in degree. But the devout Judaists would never cook meat of an animal and dairy food produced from it in one pot. Nor would they keep beef and milk in the same refrigerator.

Last spring, an Indian lawyer filed a lawsuit against McDonald's for allegedly using bovine ingredient in its french fries. The lawyer argued that McDonald's, contrary to the company's claim that it uses 100 percent vegetable oil for french fries, includes beef products in its oil. Beef, of course, is avoided by Hindus. Eventually, McDonald's admitted that minuscule amounts of bovine material had been added to its french fries, and apologized.

Muslims are famous for not eating pork. Recently in Israel, a suggestion was made that Islam terrorists should be buried with pigs - if the terrorists made suicidal bomb attacks. The theory goes that Muslim terrorists would then hesitate to make the attacks for fear of not being admitted to heaven.

Unlike other European countries, people in France and Switzerland eat horse meat. French people also enjoy frog meat, escargot and fois gras. The latter is the liver of a goose produced after putting the goose through cruel procedures. Because of such traditions in French cuisine, the British often call French "Frogs."

With the World Cup soccer tournament, which will be held in Korea and Japan next year, approaching, sensational media in France and the United States are resuming their attacks against bosintang, dog meat soup, a time-honored Korean cuisine. As if that is not enough, a French actress appeared on Korean television recently and repeated the word "barbaric." We would like to call her "arrogant and prejudiced."



The writer is a deputy political news editor of the JoongAng Ilbo.

by Noh Jae-hyun

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