Department of unfortunately leading indicators

The price of rat meat has tripled in Cambodia as inflation has pushed other kinds of meat out of reach of the poor.   There's nothing inherently awful about eating rats, as long as they're cooked--I've eaten squirrel and possum, and they're quite tasty.  But as Jared Diamond points out in Collapse, the minute societies have access to large-animal protein, they generally stop eating things like mice and bugs.  This is probably because they are a lot of work for a little protein, but they acquire the disgust attached to the food of desperation.  People who eat rats are people close enough to the verge of starvation to overcome that disgust.

Cambodia is suffering from two broad problems plaguing Asia.  Almost all of the governments are deliberately inflating their currencies in order to keep them cheap against the dollar and thus stimulate exports.  That rapid (double-digit) inflation is pushing many goods out of reach of the poor.

The other problem is that China is getting rich.  Over the long run, this will be a great thing for everyone.  In the short term, however, richer Chinese are competing for things like meat and rice in local markets.  Several Asian nations have banned the export of rice in order to counteract that pressure, but this is stopgap at best--in the short run, you may may rice cheaper locally, but in the long run, you've hurt local farmers, and the rice will probably leak across the border anyway.  Vietnam is basically built like a noodle--few farmers are too far from the border to bring their crop somewhere else.

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2008/08/department-of-unfortunately-leading-indicators/4035/