The sampling of Alien food
- Thread starter John200
- Start date
I thought I heard somewhere that the Klingon diet requires arsenic, but I'm not sure if that's 'canon' or not.
I've always figured that while some food is easily digestable by humans, there could be incompatibilities with others.
And in other cases, I think that you might not see the effects unless you were on a steady diet of that species' food--particularly in the forms of malnutrition and dietary disease. Consider this: if a cat is fed according to a human diet, dietary deficiency would be the result due to insufficient amounts of taurine. And that's on Earth. Imagine how other species' requirements might differ from those of humanity! And of course heartburn, and also Montezuma's Revenge is a major threat as well.
And in other cases, I think that you might not see the effects unless you were on a steady diet of that species' food--particularly in the forms of malnutrition and dietary disease. Consider this: if a cat is fed according to a human diet, dietary deficiency would be the result due to insufficient amounts of taurine. And that's on Earth. Imagine how other species' requirements might differ from those of humanity! And of course heartburn, and also Montezuma's Revenge is a major threat as well.
I also imagine that when people live on other worlds long-term, in some cases there have to be special dietary supplements taken with each meal. In all seriousness, I bet that during the earlier days of space exploration, diseases like scurvy and pellagra made a brief reappearance, as well as rare types of poisoning (rare on Earth, anyway).
Well, let's put it this way. It always seems everytime someone is sampling an alien food it's in a social situation...and think about it, how many times have you been invited over to someone's house and they cooked a meal and you didn't like it.
You had to eat it, didn't you? I know I did.
You had to eat it, didn't you? I know I did.
I doubt that arsenic is an essential part of the Klingon diet. Maybe they take small amounts of poison to show how tough they are, like the religious cults in Appalachia that handle venomous snakes and drink strychnine to prove that the Lord protects them.
I reckon that, before these social occasions begin, people take supplements or are given hyposprays that aid digestion, counteract Montezuma's Revenge, and so forth. Dr. Pulaski gave herself an antidote in order to participate in Worf's Klingon tea ceremony so doping oneself up before an alien meal is probably the norm.
There's no particularly good reason other than the mind-boggling one given in "The Chase" why more than half of any carbon-based aliens we encountered would even have the same chirality (handedness) to their proteins, which I think would make incompatible food more or less indigestible.
On the other hand, absent chirality issues, you'd probably have as a good a chance not dying eating alien stuff as you do any random potential food item on Earth.
On the other hand, absent chirality issues, you'd probably have as a good a chance not dying eating alien stuff as you do any random potential food item on Earth.
One of the ENT novels actually dealt with the issue--the crew crossed into a universe where they could not eat the food except for one that couldn't provide all of the nutrients they needed, due to everything being stereoisomers of what they needed back in their own universe.
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