Researchers have studied genes and food preferences in populations from Georgia to Kyrgyzstan (pictured).
LISA ZILLIO/SISSA MEDIALAB
It wasn't quite the lowest point of the expedition. But Paolo Gasparini was decidedly uncomfortable at a banquet in the small town of Alga, Kazakhstan, when he was given the honour of dividing a boiled sheep's head among the gathering. He could sense the silent alarm of his young colleagues, fearing that soon they would be politely chewing on an eye or an ear. Fighting nausea, Gasparini, a medical geneticist at the University of Trieste, Italy, sympathetically sliced each of them just a taste of skin, passing the traditionally valued sense organs to the village elders./.../