In some cultures, rats are or have been limited as an acceptable form of food to a particular social or economic class. In the Mishmi culture of India, rats are essential to the traditional diet, as Mishmi women may eat no meat except fish, pork, wild birds and rats.[25] Conversely, the Musahar community in north India has commercialised rat farming as an exotic delicacy.[26] In the traditional cultures of the Hawaiians and the Polynesians, rat was an everyday food for commoners. When feasting, the Polynesian people of Rapa Nui could eat rat meat, but the king was not allowed to, due to the islanders' belief in his "state of sacredness" called tapu.[27] In studying precontact archaeological sites in Hawaii, archaeologists have found the concentration of the remains of rats associated with commoner households accounted for three times the animal remains associated with elite households. The rat bones found in all sites are fragmented, burned and covered in carbonized material, indicating the rats were eaten as food. The greater occurrence of rat remains associated with commoner households may indicate the elites of precontact Hawaii did not consume them as a matter of status or taste.[28]
France has several regions where people consume rat like Bordeaux.[29][30][31][32][33]
Rat stew is consumed in American cuisine in the state of West Virginia and it was also eaten in France in old Bordeaux.[34][35] In France and Victorian Britain rich people ate rat pie.[36] During food rationing due to World War II, British biologists ate laboratory rat, creamed.[37][38][39][40][41][42]
Rat meat is eaten in Vietnamese cuisine.[43][44][45][46][47][48]
Flesh of rat is eaten in Taiwan.[49][50]
Bandicoot rats are an important food source among some peoples in Southeast Asia, and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimated rat meat makes up half the locally produced meat consumed in Ghana, where cane rats are farmed and hunted for their meat. African slaves in the American South were known to hunt wood rats (among other animals) to supplement their food rations,[51] and Aborigines along the coast in southern Queensland, Australia, regularly included rats in their diet.[52]
Ricefield rats (Rattus argentiventer) have traditionally been used as food in rice-producing regions such as Valencia, as immortalized by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez in his novel Cañas y barro. Along with eel and local beans known as garrafons, rata de marjal (marsh rat) is one of the main ingredients in traditional paella (later replaced by rabbit, chicken and seafood).[53] Ricefield rats are also consumed in the Philippines, the Isaan region of Thailand, and Cambodia. In late 2008, Reuters reported the price of rat meat had quadrupled in Cambodia, creating a hardship for the poor who could no longer afford it.