Lunchtime Quickie: Odori-Don: Can Food Be *Too* Fresh?

Comments

Sorry, that's just cruel and disgusting. And that's coming from a hunter, fisherman, and family farmer. Yes, I know some folks are going to say any use of meat is cruel and inhumane, and that my criticism of this is hypocritical, but I don't care. If you're going to eat an animal, particularly one as clever as an octopus or squid, kill it quickly and be done with it.

NateMan on July 20, 2011 at 12:02 PM

Wow. I know terrible things get done to chickens at factory farms, but that just seems mean spirited...

hcb on July 20, 2011 at 12:03 PM

stupid.

"Hey everyone, look at my trendy novelty toy food! Eating things like this shows everyone how cultured I am!"

Urgutha Forka on July 20, 2011 at 12:09 PM

I believe the squid is dead already and the sodium in the soy sauce is triggering electrical impulses in the muscles, much like what is happening here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YZJt_Bw3…

Maybe creepy, but probably no cruel.

LJM on July 20, 2011 at 12:09 PM

I'll try almost anything once. As long as the situation is what @4 described, that is.

suddenlyorcas on July 20, 2011 at 12:13 PM

@4, I really, really hope you're right, but nothing would surprise me about the Japanese. :P

NateMan on July 20, 2011 at 12:15 PM

#4- nope, this squid is, in fact, still alive. They don't kill it until after it's done its soy sauce dance.

Vide: http://tinyurl.com/3pjeeug

None for me, thanks. I'm too afraid of what Cthulhu would do to me....

jp on July 20, 2011 at 12:15 PM

That poor squid :(

samktg on July 20, 2011 at 12:18 PM

My food is killed by somebody else. And I feel sympathy if the creature is made to suffer. But octopus are eaten live all the time in the ocean.
So, I can see how some people eat them this way. They are delicious.

Vince on July 20, 2011 at 12:19 PM

I'd eat that in a (literal) heartbeat.

Banna on July 20, 2011 at 12:24 PM

@7, I stand corrected. I still believe the legs are moving because of the soy, and all the organs are removed with the head, but the brain is just behind the eye, so who knows what the thing is experiencing? I love seafood, but it's not really appetizing to me, either.

LJM on July 20, 2011 at 12:27 PM

@4, 7, etc I was hoping the same thing, but alas. I'm in the "I'm a meat eater and this is cruel" camp.

starsandgarters on July 20, 2011 at 12:34 PM

Yeah. I have no problem with eating meat. I have no problem with killing, cleaning, and butchering what I eat. But this is cruelty.

Fifty-Two-Eighty on July 20, 2011 at 12:39 PM

<>

HOW IS IT ALIVE WITH ITS HEAD REMOVED?!!!! Creepy ewww blech no!

Callie on July 20, 2011 at 12:44 PM

Well, I had quoted the part of the article that said that it is alive with its head removed, but Slog ate that part of my comment.

Callie on July 20, 2011 at 12:45 PM

Speaking of horrifying cruelty - shark fins, often used in soup, are obtained by sawing off the fins while the shark is still alive and then tossing it back in the ocean to either drown or bleed to death.

Once you start using/viewing animals as products (assembly-line slaughterhouses, etc) there is no limit.

on July 20, 2011 at 12:49 PM

@15: No doubt while the article was still moving.

Slog is cruel. So, so cruel.

TVDinner on July 20, 2011 at 1:05 PM

Some freshly killed seafood, especially if kept on ice, keeps its reflexes. I bought a live tilapia once at the market and watched them brain it with a club, scale it, slice it open and gut it. They put it in a bag and handed it over. I popped it in the fridge when I got home, and then a couple hours later, made the mistake of wrapping my hand around the slippery thing while pulling it out of the bag so I shouldn't drop it on the way to the steamer. The dorsal fin flexed hard, stabbing my palm with its spines.

Revenge of the dead fish. I'm guessing the skin and muscle tissue of farmed tilapia has pretty low oxygen requirements, so while the fish as an organism was dead, there was enough live tissue to get even with me for buying it.

If that squid or octopus or whatever was actually alive, it wouldn't be sitting there quietly in that bowl. It would have climbed out and headed for the exit. It's been carefully killed so as to not stress it, and kept on ice until serving. Note how the movement slows down after the first of it. I'm guessing, as the muscles are flexed, they use up whatever stored energy they have left. The critter can't circulate any more oxygen or fuel to the muscle because it's dead. Or a zombie.

Brooklyn Reader on July 20, 2011 at 1:15 PM

@18 I would eat a zombie. Gotta get them before they get us.

suddenlyorcas on July 20, 2011 at 1:38 PM

I've seen enough hentai to know where this is going...

Stiny on July 20, 2011 at 1:44 PM

Was this video shot in a Klingon restaurant?

playswithknives on July 20, 2011 at 1:57 PM

That's no way to treat The Treat with Eight Feet.

Fred Casely on July 20, 2011 at 2:06 PM

I would not eat that, and I would make a fucking scene if I found out anyone were serving it in my town.

And if you're wondering whether they'd really be so cruel as to do that to a live squid, go take a look at Ikizukuri, but only if you want to feel really bad about people.

balderdash on July 20, 2011 at 2:17 PM

Barbaric.

Zebes on July 20, 2011 at 2:21 PM

Here you can watch the whole process.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VepUk2ggr…
Really creepy.

tehjakers on July 20, 2011 at 2:40 PM

Anyone who eats this should be thrown into a shark pit.

very bad homo on July 20, 2011 at 2:48 PM

How is this any different than picking out a lobster and watching it get thrown (or throwing it) into a pot of boiling water?

You all know meat doesn't come naturally in shrink-wrap right?

SeattleSeven on July 20, 2011 at 2:57 PM

did anyone else have the song "pour some sugar on me" play in their head when they watched this?

tifeng on July 20, 2011 at 3:14 PM

Brendan Kiley's 2009 feature on the giant pacific octopus points out that "three-fifths of an octopus's neurons are in its limbs instead of its brain," and notes that electrical pulses can reanimate the tentacles in ways more realistic than would be possible in vertebrates.

Fistique on July 20, 2011 at 3:16 PM

@27, I think you might be getting a little prematurely smug assuming that anyone who's disgusted by this would do that either.

balderdash on July 20, 2011 at 4:00 PM

I have had live kawagani several times - pop the crab in your mouth and eat or be eaten. Never fails to impress the opposite sex.

Then there is the Korean film Old Boy, where this exercise with an octopus is a plot device....

PortervilleNerd on July 20, 2011 at 4:16 PM

Yeah, that's pretty sick. It's like that restaurant in Beijing that deep fries a fish, but only lowers it into the hot fat up to its head. It is served fried and still gulping for water. Fresh to be sure.

I guess we need to find out if all animals feel pain, and then if we find out that they do, then we need to decide whether or not we care.

I do.

Bauhaus I on July 20, 2011 at 4:37 PM

Who still thinks that animals don't feel pain? Retards.

subwlf on July 20, 2011 at 4:57 PM

That's a tough one. As Fistique pointed out, other animals like molluscs have very different types of nervous systems. It makes it hard to tell when they're "dead" or "dead enough" to not suffer (and that term is a tricky one too).

I'm very much in favor of animal welfare and am against cruel "live" preparations of food that don't kill the creature quickly. The preparation video looked like it was done quickly and cleanly, but I wouldn't rule out pain/suffering lingering. To be safe, I'd want it cut up in my bowl first; Klingon-style food that isn't suffering is fine with me.

MemeGene on July 20, 2011 at 5:36 PM

Its dead. Just twitches because of electrical impulses. Ive had "Live" octopus that was already completely cut up yet still moving.

on July 20, 2011 at 6:37 PM

Cruel and disgusting. Akin to executing someone with a carrot peeler, a little at a time.

camlux on July 20, 2011 at 11:11 PM

To be fair, squid don't really have any cognitive capacity. This is just basic stimuli response. I guess it's suffering, much like what a sea sponge would suffer.

on July 21, 2011 at 12:56 AM

YUM!!

Charles Maguro on July 21, 2011 at 4:23 AM

Haha, it seems like my food is in pain!
Whether or not this animal is actually dead is beyond the point. This is still cruelty.

Kyrie on July 21, 2011 at 7:14 AM

I kindof think it is dead when this is happening.. The heart is in the "head" that gets cut off, so there hasn't been any blood circulation for quite awhile when they pour the sauce on the tentacles. I don't know how long a squid can survive without blood flow. @39, whether the animal is alive or not is exactly what determines whether this is cruelty or not. I'm inclined to say that it's not but I'm not sure.

P-Zilla on July 21, 2011 at 8:00 AM

@38 Hiya, Charlie! You're my favorite flavor of sushi, btw.

So, if tuna eat squid alive (for real, not just a trick with zombie reflexes and soy sauce), and if we eat canned tuna, I wonder... how is that morally different than eating squid alive?

Brooklyn Reader on July 21, 2011 at 8:04 AM

Yeah, BR, I think we tend to overly anthropomorphise these things. Who knows what, if anything, it's feeling. Maybe that's just a typical day in the life of a squid.

Still, I'd feel a lot better about eating it if I knew it was dead first.

Oh, and @39, congratulations. That's the most clueless thing I've read on Slog all week. Which is saying an awful lot.

Fifty-Two-Eighty on July 21, 2011 at 8:38 AM

@42: Why was that clueless? Cruelty is perpetuated only by humans- it only matters that things feel pain or suffer because *we* can recognize that. Simulating cruelty by having something dead look alive for the sole purpose of doing something to it which would be torture tends to lead me to consider this immoral from the human standpoint.
We may seem advanced enough that we can differentiate between simulated and actual cruelty. But, ethics are not light switches that are either on or off; instead, they are something more like gradients.

zobot on July 21, 2011 at 11:55 AM

I think I'm going to vomit now...

Cory on July 21, 2011 at 4:09 PM

I understand people being squeemish but some of you guys take your moral outrage too far.
I believe in animal welfare, but some of you talking as though squid and fish are humans. You tell me how cruel humans are at killing animals? Have you not seen a cat play with a mouse until it dies? I'm sure a grizzly bear is much more polite towards a human than vice versa.
The squid had it's head chopped off so it couldn't possibly be alive when it was in the bowl.
As previous people stated before it's the salt in the soy sauce that fires the neurons.
You can throw salt on frogs legs and they will twitch. You can go YouTube that. It doesn't look very cruel.
You can see the news article about that video here: http://www.news.com.au/dancing-squid-bow…

contariancanadian on July 23, 2011 at 11:43 PM

Cephalopods (which squid are part of) in puzzle tests and tool use, beat dogs in intelligence (probably some humans as well). Hopefully the squid was already passed on when this happened. Shouldn't play with your food...

on July 24, 2011 at 3:53 PM

You know, I hear there are some people who cut off animals' heads and let them die that way. Others slit their throats and let them bleed out. Some even beat the thing to death on a deck until the animal stops moving. And get this, after that, they have the nerve to chop it up, throw it on a stove, and then gnash it up with their teeth after slicing it open with sharp metal utensils!

Get the hell off your ivory tower, people...

And then after you do that, take an intro course to Biology 101 to understand how the peripheral nervous system works in relation to salts and electrolytes. Seriously...

tw3akedd0wn on July 26, 2011 at 10:32 PM

Just so everyone knows that squid is dead, the soy sauce activates nuerons in its body that makes it "dance"

on July 27, 2011 at 7:04 AM

cephalopod anatomy http://universe-review.ca/I10-82-octopus…

see the eyes in the video: it's likely that the brain is not removed when the "head" is; what is commonly considered the head is, in fact, the torso.

so yes, this thing might still be alive. and sure, squid get eaten alive in the ocean, but last I checked we weren't sharks, we're humans.

on July 29, 2011 at 10:38 AM

You stupid fucktards, the squid is DEAD. Get your facts straight before you judge things like this. Jesus Christ if there is nothing I can't stand it's people like you who are all "this is inhumane I don't care if I eat meat that comes from meat factories blah blah blah." it's so damn IGNORANT. I hope you realize that I'm wild life ANIMALS GET EATEN ALIVE. You shouldn't even be complaining in the first place, much less if the creature is already dead. Besides, the meat on your plate goes through more pain than the squid ever will, even if it was alive. Google things, idiot. Open your eyes, you're not all that innocent eating your steak and bacon either.

on August 17, 2012 at 1:18 AM

on August 17, 2012 at 1:20 AM

Lunchtime Quickie: Odori-Don: Can Food Be Too Fresh?

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