Over my life as a GI and living for two years in Northeast Thailand and Viet Nam, as well as my career as the Global Quality System Manager for a large adhesive company, I've been exposed to many cultures. One thing I find as universal advice - Eat Local. You have the opportunity to travel over new horizons, and, most importantly, it demonstrates lack of cultural bigotry.

In my travels I discussed my customs, but also showed a genuine interest of the customs and culture of my hosts - Who, I might add, were at the time the subject of my quality system audits.

In every country I visited, even in Europe (especially the Netherlands and France, I was told how un-typical I was. In fact, our initial managing director at the Guangzhou, China plant did not bother at all to hide his contempt for everything Chinese. He stayed in a 5-star hotel during the week, and ate only American and Italian food. On Friday he joined his family in a posh apartment in Hong Kong.

Me, I talked Chinese history, politics, and ate lunch in the canteen with the employees.

At our Mexican plant I went to a Oxacan restaurant, and despite my avoidence of insects, after 4 tequilas had an order of roasted grubs, the kind you find in a bottle of mescal, and mistakenly called worms. It was served with a bowl of ant eggs (with a few ants mixed in) and was eaten with salsa and tortillas. Not bad. I preferred the ant eggs to the grubs. Genuine local food eaten for hundreds and hundreds for its protein in the improverished state of Oxaca.

Anyhow, the Argentines eat parts of cows that we feed to the pigs. The Chinese eat anything that has been, is now, or might be alive. All it needs to qualify for food in China is a carbon atom tucked into the molecule somewhere. Thailand and Viet Nam it is not unusual to see people eating cockroaches (big ones, too, not like ours) and large bare-tailed rodents (we call them rats) in stews.