Horse meat
Ever wonder why in Western culture horses are generally not eaten? The answer might be surprising. Horse meat has been a regular part of the human diet since prehistoric times. In fact, humans in the New World ate horses into extinction. Horses are still part of the diets of many cultures, but in most of the Western world today not only is horse meat not eaten, but doing so is considered disgusting (yes, I know about France. I’m coming to it). So how and why did horse meat go off the menu? Nowadays we think of horses as pets, and we don’t eat our pets, so that would seem a logical answer. But treating horses as pets is a very recent occurrence. For all the rest of human history horses were either wild animals or were domesticated as draft animals or for transportation. Oxen and cattle served similar purposes and humans ate them with gusto. So why not horses? The answer goes back to the year 732, when Pope Gregory III issued a papal decree banning Christians from eating horse meat. His