Gross. But everyone needs a mission, I guess.
Yeah, eating bugs isn’t new… for third-world countries.
A reasonable blog on atheism, religion, science and skepticism
Follow Patheos
Atheist:
Subscribe through RSS
Follow Patheos on
Faith Channels
Religion Library
Topics
Resources
Copyright 2008-2012, Patheos. All rights reserved. Terms of Service | Patheos Privacy Policy
Blech! My stomach turned just looking at the still, let alone the actual movie!!! EW!
Ew. Just. Ew.
I’d like to believe I’d be ok as long as it was cooked. But if I felt them moving in my mouth I think I would vomit.
But cooking them takes out all the yummy crunchy nutrients!
That’s not true of everything. You have to cook tomatoes to get the benefits of the Lycopene. I would just hope that it is the same with bugs.
I would like to point out what I saw at the end of that video. There was an ad generated by Google for Terminex. Not really making bugs feel welcomed.
Hey they’re not mutually exclusive — we spray poison on our other foods, too!
I saw something like this on the discovery channel. They had three people test out a bunch of different insect foods and try and objectively judge the food.
For them, they enjoyed bread with tiny black crickets ground into it (probably because the flavour wasn’t strong) and found fried meal-worms to be okay, but they didn’t like this one dish that was a giant water beetle (which they show in the video near the beginning). Apparently that beetle is so big that it’s wings have an actual muscle-like tissue, but it’s very bitter.
I’ve always wanted to try something like that bread (with some ground up insect in it) or chocolate covered grasshoppers or even something with meal-worms in it. I have even heard mosquitos bread in a controlled environment (which, i suppose, most insects for eating are made in) are one of the best insects to use, for being easy to grow and giving lots of protein.
I think with the stigma for insects being gross in our society, it will be a long time before this is ever used to it’s full potential. I think it could be a great alternative food source though.
However I feel alone in this opinion. =P
I’m up for eating all sorts of bugs, as long as I don’t get any legs stuck in my throat and I don’t see anything that looks like a head looking back at me. Ground-up deep-fried bugs can’t be any worse than the average school lunch. Of course, we’ll have to be careful not to hoover up pesticides, heavy metals, and all the rest of our modern pollutants, too.
You mean the stuff we get from fishing in our seas already?
An example is our Baltic sea up here, the environmental toxins are so heavy in the fish that sweden is the only country that is allowed to fish and only herring. Of cours people can to private fishing, but the fish in te stores are from the waters outside norway not from the baltic.
In another world, people probably look upon the eating of mammals and birds with utter disgust. Here, we’re incredibly seperated from the reality of it. After all, we never see the dying animal, its eyes looking up at us as its throat is cut. We never see the horrific, mostly machine, processes that the carcasses go under. We never see how unsterile the farming and butchering process really is. We never see the indirect causes of farming these animals: the destruction of land, the pollution of water through their fecal matter, the always-increasing quantity of methane in the atmosphere. All we see is a neatly cut and packaged steak in the meat section at our local grocery store.
Insects, on the other hand, are produced at almost no cost to the land they’re raised on, don’t scream when killed, and require minimal processing to consume. Actually, dried out they can last quite a long time. They are healthier for human consumption, containing more protein and less fat than beef for example, and are not subject to hormones or chemicals in their growth – their growth is already so efficient, any more catalysts would be redundant. Granted, pesticides are an issue because insects are not conventionally farmed here and therefore are usually found in fields and land where pesticides are already being used for agriculture, but in a formal institution such chemicals would not be present. And, insects can be raised on things we would otherwise throw away: table scraps, even newspaper (although the latter is not a very substantial diet – rice is better).
Insects are environmentally sound, and are inevitably going to be consumed in unprecedented proportions in the not so distant future. Our land is already being tapped to its near potential, and we can’t afford to waste it on an inefficient product as meat. Think about it: we grow vegetables, then we feed them to animals, then we feed on the animals. This seems a bit inefficient. Back on track, sure, insects may be a bit bitter or gooey or gross, but that’s only because we haven’t been consuming them since day one of our misguided lives. Alcohol is an acquired taste, but we struggle through the unpleasant part because society has deemed it acceptable, with rewards. Insects are socially condemned, so there is little reward to consuming them. But society changes to meet new realities, and the approaching reality is a massive food shortage, a global struggle for land and resources, and an ever-growing population. Can we really hold on to old practices, when they’re what got us to where we are today?
I remember my grandmother killing rabbits to cook them with rise (“paella”) and killing a turkey on christmas, letting his blood flow while it was still alive- the blood was used for other things. They were tasty.
We are not that separated.
I don’t. I don’t drink alcohol because the taste is eww. It also makes me feel sick (not like hangover sick, more like instant hearburn sick).
I also don’t drink pure coffee, though I find it also far less sickening than alcohol, because I don’t like the taste of it (but I love the smell).
I suppose I wouldn’t mind insects if I didn’t knew what it was – I am quite sure I’d be unable to consume something I found gross.
I am aware there are those strange anomalies in society who don’t drink – I’m one of them. I won’t analyze you that far, but I’ll bet you ignored peer pressure because the cons outweighed the pros.
That said, I would think that peer pressure (= society) is what would make you feel bugs are “gross”. Most people are afraid to touch them, actually.. I’m not an avid eater of them, but we were all kids once, right? lol
Dear one, I was a kid in big town. Bugs weren’t all that common; pollution ate them. ;) But yeah, bugs are gross because I suppose I learned to consider them gross.
To be honest, I didn’t face a lot of peer pressure to drink. But I am ridiculously stubborn about what I ingest or don’t (I’ve terrible feeding habits). I’ve also the handy excuse of medication, though alcohol wouldn’t exactly affect it; I don’t drink because I don’t like it, no matter if people think I don’t drink due to meds or whatever.
Actually, going alongside my last comment, I have a question: are there, in any place in the world, to your knowledge, any laws in place to prevent the processing and distribution of insects for consumption purposes? I will only hold this belief as long as I have to, but I’ll bet there are laws in place, because these would reflect society’s goals. I know there are limits on foodborne pollutants, such as rat feces (expressed as a percent of the food’s weight), so maybe insects fall into this category?
I know that the FDA has regulations for the percentage of mass that can be from insects when grains are processed. I do agree with you that there would be places where insects are explicitly outlawed from being processed and distributed as per that specific societal aim. But I would think that most places would be ok with it, so long as your goal was healthy distribution of insects. That is, if it is the desired and controlled product, and not an unwanted and variable imperfection.
I doubt there are laws in Brazil regulating or prohibiting the distribution of insects as foodstuffs. At most, I suppose they control pathogen infection that can happen through insect infestation, but I doubt distributing bugs as food is expressely illegal.
Doesn’t really seem like an issue for me. I dislike cockroaches and beetles so I’ll opt from that. But I have eaten larva before, and it wasn’t that bad. I’ve even had them in a beverage once, which my Grandfather made. It’s a part of an old diet they used to eat in the countryside where he grew up. Now it’s detested. I don’t really see the difference in eating larva and eating prawns/shrimp tbh.
If this does become accepted, the main thing I’d want is that some regulation is applied. I wouldn’t want to buy insects that came from under someone’s musty cupboard or just came off from a dead animal. I need them clean and fresh.
They sell little packages of grubs at the back of this candy store near my house. It’s kind of a novelty item – you know, for the people who want to try something interesting and ‘edgy’.
We ate deep fried bamboo grubs in China – crunchy, but somewhat bland in flavor. Ah well, can’t have everything I suppose!
I highly recommend Andrew Zimmern’s ‘Bizarre Foods’ on the Travel Channel – that’ll really open your eyes as to what is regarded as food.
I could imagine to eat crickets like the ones i give my lizards. Crickets that have been bread in an environmentally friendly/sound environment.
But i think i would also prefer them in something like bread the first couple of times until i get used to the taste.
I have had the ‘gourmet’ bugs in chocolate. Really pretty hard to taste an insect when it’s covered with chocolate. I had bees, ants, and one other that I can’t remember. It was exactly like big pieces of crispy rice in a Crackle bar.
But I think it’s true that we’ll all be eating more bugs in the future. Human’s are apparently too stupid to limit their numbers effectively, and there will be nothing else to eat when there are 12 billion humans on this tired old world.
I have eaten tarentulas in Cambodia. Except for the behind, it was pretty tasty. Really. The legs were crunchy and oily.
Humans are carnivores and we can digest almost anything. But it doesn’t mean we should. I believe, there’s a good reason the diet of my ancestors was vegetables + meat + fish, and no insects. I don’t know if it’s in genes… it might. Is lactose intolerance defined genetically? I think so. There might be some insect-eating gene as well. I don’t see enough reasons for me (or anybody else from non-insect eating part of the world) to switch. We already see a disaster at almost every place where the eating patterns were artificially changed by the food industry / nutrition pseudo-science (the US as the most notable example). The fact that insects are “natural”, or have good proteins, doesn’t change anything. I trust Michael Pollan books on food (“Carnivore’s dilemma”, “In defense of food”) and his advise: do not eat anything that your grandparents would not recognize as a food.
Aha, I’m going to be commenting on this thread a few times it seems..
I wouldn’t unconditionally assume your grandparents’ diets as ideal – I hate prunes. But really, there’s no way they ate perfectly; all food was covered in animal fat and there were no real regulations. And, someday we will all be grandparents, Science allowing, and we know we don’t eat well today – can our grandkids carry on our traditions?
I’d bet insects are omitted from our diet for a similar reason that shellfish are omitted according to Leviticus 11:9-12; way back in the day, it was decided that it was not worth the risk to eat them. Insects are, after all, quite poisonous in some cases, and so picking up the wrong one would have consequences. The only poison mammal I know of is the duckbill platypus, which I wouldn’t exactly chase after anyways, and same goes for birds. Milk is actually inexplicable, since there are regions in the world where people are quite intolerant to it. Logically, we were not intended to consume milk for more than a year or two; long ago, we couldn’t rely on cows. It is unnatural. And actually, if you abstain from dairy for a long time, you cease to be able to consume it since specific enzymes in the stomach are no longer produced. We still accept it though, oddly. As for a gene against insect eating, I would doubt its existence since we can actually eat them without issue. We don’t have a genetic tolerance to a scorpion’s sting, sure, but we can still eat up its little legs and claws and whatnot. I would suggest that intolerance to insects is not biological, but societal. We can eat them, but for whatever reason we don’t want to.
I don’t know if you meant any of this sarcastically, so forgive me if I have misread, but we humans (and most primates) are omnivores. Michael Pollan’s book is “Omnivore’s Dilemma,” and his other piece of advice is “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” If we were carnivorous we would have no molars or grinding teeth, like (for example) the Pygmy Tarsier (SQUEE! … sorry), which is the only completely carnivorous primate, subsisting entirely on bugs. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmy_Tarsier) Part of our success as animals is owed to our ability to adapt and collect various foods. It has allowed us to populate many different environments, and create so many beautiful varied cultures. I can guarantee that someone’s Cambodian or Thai or African grandmother would recognize that bug as a tasty snack.
I have to agree with Kretren that the aversion to eating bugs is largely societal, otherwise there wouldn’t be so many other societies that use bugs as a food source on a large scale. Besides, I am sure that you have eaten a lot more bugs in your lifetime then you are aware of. If you are eating any kind of processed food, you have no real way of knowing what got in there, unless you have a lab to test it out. Why do you think the FDA has allowances for how many hairs and insect heads are ok in a jar of peanut butter? (http://tiny.cc/crb1d) (http://tiny.cc/mpp3d)
Also, as some one pursuing a career in Nutrition (and a background in Anthro) I have to say that, although there is a lot of junk science regarding food out there, the study of nutrition and food is not pseudo science. It is a complicated field based on sound science (organic and inorganic chemistry, math, anatomy, etc) that unfortunately is difficult to interpret and easy to manipulate. Unfortunately, as with many areas of scientific study, it is difficult for the layperson to separate the good science from the bad (see climate science, evolution …)
I am wondering how long this place has been there … I spent 6 years living just north of Pismo, and I never remember even hearing about this place. I might have to check it out the next time I pass through there, although I don’t know about live wriggling meal worms on my caramel apple. I don’t mind carpaccio or sushi, but I think I like my food to at least be dead.