“The contrasts between French and U.S. culture are endless but I can’t think of an instance quite as stark as attitudes toward horse meat.” American journalist Michael Johnson writing in the New York Times in 2008, after being served horse meat for the first time in his life in Bordeaux.
The French eat horses. Lots of peoples do. As do lots of people. Americans don’t. And it is not entirely an individual choice, this food taboo is is enforced by loud social opprobrium of public violations. In 2012 public horror scuttled a plan to put horse meat on the menu of a trendy New York city restaurant.
Trivial, compared with many cultural differences, but n interesting example of the way in which national cultures differ even in a globalizing world.
