"Dear Food Thoughtz:" Peer Pressure & Shrimp Shells

This week's (?) edition of Dear Food Thoughtz counters unsolicited advice on how to eat shrimp with solicited advice on what to do with those garbage bags full of shrimp shells you have laying around.  If you have garbage bags full of shrimp shells, please don't send them to me.  But if you have a food-related concern, do not hesitate to write in to food.thoughtz@gmail.com

Hello there,

I know you are not a seafood person, but I have to ask this question to someone who cares about food, and the different ways in which it can be eaten.

What are your thoughts on eating shrimp with the shell ON? I did not even realise this was something people did until recently when a friend tried to coax me to eat it this way as the seasoning was on the shell. He argued that if I removed the shell the flavour would be lost. I am not a fussy eater, but I have to tell you, I was appalled! When I tried to put that shelled shrimp in my mouth I finally understood what some people mean when they say they are fussy about the 'textures' of different foods. Even though I doubt that you enjoy shrimp, can you see the 'leaving the shell on' side of the argument? They are crazy to eat it this way, right? If not, please explain this to me because it freaks me out?!

Sincerely

FOASS
(Freaking Out About Shelled Shrimp)

Dear FOASS,

Let me begin by admitting that I do not know what you’re talking about.  I have never eaten shrimp myself, and if I am in the presence of someone eating shrimp, I always avert my gaze because it is so gruesome and revolting.  Is this the shrimp where you have to suck the meat out, and then pile up the little exoskeletons (or peel the exoskeletons? I don’t know how to eat shrimp)?  Is that the shell?  Isn’t that the only way to eat shrimp?  I don’t understand.  I am reading a New York Times article about shrimp-shell soup stock (apparently a solution to the shell debate), and they’re talking about the difference between either removing the shell before your prepare the shrimp, or leaving the shell on during the cooking process and then removing the shell before you eat it.  Is that what you’re talking about? Or are you talking about never removing the shell and actually eating it with the shrimp meat?

At any rate, some cursory googling has indeed revealed that if you’re eating shrimps without their shells, you’re doing it wrong.  But when it comes to food and personal preference, I don’t think that you can “do it wrong” (unless you’re putting it in a different orifice, in which case you’re doing it wrong).  I mean, maybe a large portion of the global population can agree that shrimp tastes better when it’s in its shell (or maybe these people are just the most vocal—who knows), but I can guarantee that it definitely doesn’t taste better if the thought of eating shrimp that way makes you vomit.  Then it just tastes like vomit.  I hate people who say that there’s a best way to eat something.  The best way to eat something is the way you most enjoy eating it.  Maybe you could strike a deal with this so-called "friend:"  In exchange for not telling you how to eat your own food, you could give him a bag of gently sucked-on shrimp shells.  Anyone who uses the food itself (or a part of the food) as a vessel for that food is a disgusting monster.  It's like eating oysters or a person's brain out of their own skull or haggis.

I saw this weird display at the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City.  This is what eating shrimp out of their
shells is like.  It's proto-human.  That's what the museum taught me.

In closing, your name—Freaking Out About Shelled Shrimp—seems to simultaneously suggest freaking out about shrimp that has a shell but also the shrimp that has already been shelled.  Is it possible that you’re just freaking out about shrimp as a food?  I know I am.  I would recommend abstaining from it.