Cold, raw sheep's brain and other popular foods

I used to think I was an adventurous diner. Until I went to a Uyghur restaurant where the signature dish was "cold raw sheep's brain."
Suddenly I was filled with longing for instant noodles, and bitterly regretted the times I had maligned that simple, wholesome foodstuff.
I've had noodles on the brain lately, though not literally.
You see, I wrote a column last week saying that curry was probably the world's most popular foodstuff. Readers rushed to correct me. An e-mailer named Hayat said noodles were far more universal.
Journalist Wyng Chow said: "I would personally argue that sweet and sour boneless pork is the world's most popular food. Even my Jewish friends love it. They consider pork to be kosher as long as it's smothered in sweet and sour sauce." His Indian friends love it too.
"No, the burger is the world's top dish," said another reader, showing me quotes to that end from magazines (all American). Another reader said the pizza was the world's favourite food, and showed me two articles backing this claim from Italian publications. Clearly, this is a matter of national pride.
I Googled "world's most popular food" on the Internet. Wheat is the number one food, said the Discovery Channel website. No, it's cheese, said a website promoting a book called The Cheese Bible. No, it's chocolate said a website selling boxes of chocolate online.
The incontrovertible answer to the question was: there is no incontrovertible answer to this question.
So I went to the see the smartest man I know, my mentor/bartender.
"Burgers, bread, cheese, pizza and chocolate are all recent arrivals in Asia, popular with the young," he said. "But if older Asians don't eat them, they're not on the chart. You see, Asians eat more food than any other group of people on the planet. That's because there are more of us. "
The world's top food is rice, he said. "You eat rice for breakfast (Coco Pops), rice for lunch (rice noodles), and rice for dinner (sushi), and wash it down with a cup of rice (sake)," he explained.
He had a point--especially since noodles are often a sub-group of rice.
The other day, I saw my children slipping packs of instant noodles into their schoolbags.
"Will the school supply boiling water and sterilised bowls and clean forks?" I asked.
They looked at me as if I was from another planet. "You don't need all that stuff," said my daughter. "You just eat them."
They simply open the packets and crunch their way through the dry, raw noodles. Each portion comes with a small packet of monosodium glutamate to sprinkle on for flavour.
I'm not sure what this proves, except that young humans and old humans are actually unrelated species, one of which morphs miraculously into the other at a certain age.
Anyway, I decided that this issue was pretty much settled, when I had an idea. My office is near a university canteen which serves thousands of meals a day.
I asked the staff's opinion. The number one dish among all diners, Chinese, south Asian and Western, was curry, they said. Back to square one.
Meanwhile, I expect to get some mail from Uyghur readers with their nomination for world's most popular foodstuff: cold raw sheep's brain.

Depress your appetite further by visiting our columnist's website: www.vittachi.com.