Maybe it’s because I cried my eyes out as a kid at the end of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, that I felt a twinge of indignation when I saw that a bunch of Swedes had bar-b-qued E.T.

How dare they!?

So, of course I know that E.T. isn’t real even though he lives in all of our hearts, and neither is this E.T. effigy which was part of a project called Exploring the Animal Turn Symposium at the Pufendorf Institute in Lund, Sweden. The purpose of the project was to “provoke discussions and questions on what is at stake in our practices of eating.”

Some of those questions asked by symposium, according to their statement:

What would it feel like to eat an alien? How can we dearly love and grieve some non-human species while accepting the industrialised slaughter of others? How can we cater to the needs of eaters who seek a surrogate for the sacrificial and ritual aspects of convivial, meat-based, barbecues? What are our ethical responsibilities towards fictional organisms?

My question is “who in 2016 can even eat this thing?” Why do I ask?  THEY MADE IT OUT OF GLUTEN.
 

 
More after the jump…