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Several species of flatworm have made a home in metropolitan France
- solipsistnation 8y ago'A colleague once tried to put a flatworm in his mouth, Justine recounted. The man still describes it as “one of the worst experiences of his life.”' ...why would you do this?
- matte_black 8y agoAt some point someone must experiment in eating something unknown, perhaps several times in different ways, in order to determine if there's potential for it to be palatable for a mass audience. If you discover something truly remarkable and capitalize on it, you can become very rich very quickly.
- ironjunkie 8y agodo we live in the same century ?
- maltalex 8y agoCan you propose a more current way of checking whether a thing tastes good?
- amenod 8y agoFinding someone else to eat it?
- jxub 8y agoHowever the responsibility has to fall on anyone on that chain of delegates.
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y agoRecursion doesn't mean that you get to ignore the base case!
- Falling3 8y agoIt never ceases to amaze me the extent to which a humanity's response to new life is either: "Can I eat it?" or "How do I kill it?".
- RandallBrown 8y agoIt actually makes a lot of sense from a survival of the fittest standpoint.
- ggg9990 8y agoNot that surprising when food and safety are two of the most basic human needs.
- Semirhage 8y agoYou forgot the classic third option, “Can I have sex with this?”
- hartator 8y agoProbably the first option in fact.
- bassman9000 8y agoAnd that's why you're here, now
- rubzah 8y agoOnly in France...
- himom 8y ago... or SE China. ;)
- nostalgeek 8y agoWell we eat snails and frog legs so maybe he thought there was a business opportunity...
- blattimwind 8y agoClearly a frenchman. And it tastes bad, too, so it's a perfect match for French Fine Cuisine.
- scrollaway 8y agoI know you're trying to make a joke, but once you get past the snail&frog stereotypes (which really aren't that bad), French cuisine is some of the best in the world.
- blattimwind 8y agoI'm well aware.
- jxub 8y agoRegarding French gastronomy, and specially comparing to the Spanish which I know the most about, I heard a French acquaintance saying that it's pretty bimodal, with lots of so-so places to eat and many amazing but expensive spots, leaving little place for the middle of the road reasonably good and inexpensive places. Could someone confirm that?
- scrollaway 8y agoI'm biased because I'm french :) But french food, like every other food, is average in most places. There's certain things we do really well, which somehow nobody else does. Bread for example. If you're into meat, there's excellent paté both in the north (Bretagne) and south (Corsica and PACA), and some of the world's finest beef in central france (Limousin). Corsica also has amazing Saucisson. We also do really good pastries. One French specialty is called the Calisson, you can find loads of it in/near Aix-en-Provence (Calissons d'Aix). These things are all very commonplace and not expensive if you live there. And as long as you stay out of big restaurant chains, fast food, etc it's very easy to eat healthy and delicious food in France. I miss my country.
- blattimwind 8y ago
- baxtr 8y agoWe’re humans. We’ll try ANYTHING
- picsao 8y agoWait till 4chan gets its hands on these..
- fhood 8y agoFor science. How else would we know what they taste like?
- buckminster 8y agoOne of William Buckland's ambitions was to taste every animal, and he made a good attempt at it. He reckoned moles and bluebottles were the most revolting. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Buckland https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Buckland
- majos 8y agoThis guy's Wikipedia page has a "Known eccentricities" section. Worth reading.
- seszett 8y ago> 'I have eaten many strange things, but have never eaten the heart of a king before', and, before anyone could hinder him, he had gobbled it up, and the precious relic was lost for ever." The heart in question is said to have been that of Louis XIV. The heart of Louis XIV has also been said to have been used for the ochre colour[0] of a painting by Drölling, Intérieur d'une cuisine. It is also on display at the Saint-Denis basilica[1] and doesn't really look like something that could be eaten at all, much less "gobbled up". In reality though, it has more likely been destroyed altogether in 1793. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummy_brown https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummy_brown [1]https://i.pinimg.com/originals/fa/ac/a1/faaca139521085b6fe5fb5353c1c345c.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/originals/fa/ac/a1/faaca139521085b6fe5f...
- kingbirdy 8y agoNon-mobile link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Buckland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Buckland
- satori99 8y agoI know of someone who put a garden slug in his mouth as a drunken party dare. He contracted meningitis and encephalitis and damn near died. It was years before he was even reasonably healthy again.
- trhway 8y agothe first joking thought was that French cuisine will get a new dish ... after reading the article i see that it is only half a joke as there has already been a tasting attempts. So there is only a technical issue of finding a good way of cooking them - like for some other foods which are unpleasant/toxic in uncooked state. May be these worms is what going to save our future overpopulated Earth from hunger?
- webkike 8y agoOverpopulation is a myth
- sykh 8y agoIt seems to me that overpopulation is presently a reality. As far as I can tell there are way too many humans given our level of consumption. At the rate we kill off other species, destroy ecosystems, pollute, and generally make large portions of the planet toxic I think it's clear there are too many people.
- ericschmidt 8y agoIncorrect, we have a huge surplus of resources by any measure. We're simply not very good at distributing and allocating those resources, which gives people the illusion of overpopulation. The world is not overpopulated — resources are just under-distributed. As for your environmentalist remarks, you're just being pessimistic. Al Gore in "inconvenient truth" predicted the ice caps would be melted by 2017. Didn't happen. Tech will save us from whatever Doomsday scenarios you're imagining, bro: it's already saved us a million times before— and history rhymes and repeats. The "Modern Religion of Environmentalism" (as Peter Theil refers to it in Zero to One) is really just pessimism in disguise. I'm an optimist so I'm more of a member of the Technology Religion. ️
- bryanlarsen 8y agoThere are several definitions of overpopulation, making you both right. The first definition refers to a population so large that resources get depleted so much that the population crashes. The canonical example is lemmings. Another definition refers to a population so large that it causes widespread harm to the ecosystem. So it's a myth by the first definition and a reality by the second.
- Jazgot 8y agoarticle is behind paywall
- MayeulC 8y agoTry opening it in private browsing? It might be that you've read too many of their articles (should be stated on the paywall). I say this out of general experience, the article was not pay walled for me.
- cwkoss 8y agoI'm always surprised by how little we understand the soil under our feet. For example, Glomalin is a soil protein produced by fungi which can constitute more than 10% of soil by weight (as is strongly correlated with 'tilth'/high quality soil). It was only discovered in 1996! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glomalin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glomalin
- pvaldes 8y agoChange "metropolitan France" by "most temperate Europe and USA" and you will have a more accurate picture. I have those hammerhead worms in my garden and you could probably find them in your closest local garden center too. The "scientists just noticed then now" claim is false, of course. Very curious creatures.
- ableal 8y agoFunding idea: ask homeland security to pay for flora and fauna surveys. I suppose that CDC already does that for virus and bacteria ...