Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

taste

2024-08-30 View on smbc-comics.com → 1 revision
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taste
Votey panel for taste
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Explanation

This comic features aliens (green, slug-like creatures) discussing the taste of farmed humans versus wild-caught humans. One alien says: "I don't get it. We fed them fresh ingredients, let them free-range..." Another alien, gesturing at what appears to be a natural habitat, responds: "In their natural habitat, they eat a lot more chicken nuggets and corn chips." The first alien reacts with dismay: "Aaah."

The caption reads: "Farmed humans just do not taste as good as wild-caught."

The joke is a role reversal of the real-world debate about farmed versus wild-caught food (typically applied to fish or free-range versus factory-farmed livestock). The aliens have been trying to raise humans using the principles that health-conscious humans apply to their own livestock -- fresh ingredients, free-range conditions -- but this actually makes the humans taste worse from the aliens' perspective, because real humans in their "natural habitat" eat processed junk food like chicken nuggets and corn chips. The irony is multilayered: the aliens' attempt to give humans a "better" diet backfires because human dietary preferences are themselves so unhealthy. It is also a self-deprecating commentary on human eating habits, suggesting that our natural diet is so terrible that it would be a distinguishing (and apparently desirable) flavor characteristic to alien gourmets.

View History (1) Original Comic