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I talked to my kids about eating insects the other day with the expected results in the form of 'ew' and such. We've spent so much time in modern society associ
by warble 12y ago
I talked to my kids about eating insects the other day with the expected results in the form of 'ew' and such. We've spent so much time in modern society associating insects with disease it's hard to dissassociate. For some reason shrimp which are essentially bugs are no problem because (I think) they come from the ocean, so there's an obvious mental line that can dissassociate them from other bugs.
This is a great idea if you look at the math, but almost impossible to get over the emotional response. Maybe processing the grubs/flies into something less recognizable would help, but at some point you read the ingredients and you're back at square one.
Disgust seems to be one of the more irrational and risk averse emotions, which makes sense - guessing something is disgusting when it's not has little risk, but guessing something is not disgusting when it really is dangerous carries great risk.
Interesting problem especially when recoginzing what damage our current meat production is causing, plus the base inefficiencies of it.
- Linell 12y agoThese are my thoughts exactly. While I love the idea and think it may be great for some things, I just don't see many people making the switch to eating bugs anytime soon.
- GauntletWizard 12y agoMealworm powder is catching on in health circles. I think the essential difference is that you never have to see the legs, shells, compound eyes, etc. that scream "Insect!". Grind these up, mix them into sauce or a stew, and I doubt I'd care, even if I knew the origin, just like I can see the inside of a slaughterhouse and can still eat ground meat.
- warble 12y agoA lot of what we eat (steaks, chicken nuggetts, hamburger, bacon) is dissasociated with the source form of the meat. This should probably be the inroad. If people get used to the idea that they're ingesting insects anyhow, then maybe the rest gets easier? I dunno..
- alextgordon 12y agoWhat is the point of eating insects, though? Why not just eat lentils?
- pavel_lishin 12y agoAn excellent question, I hope someone weighs in.
- bullfightonmars 12y agoI think the proposed value here is in the quality and quantity of protein provided Boiled Lentils are around 9% protein - http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/foods/show/4783?qlookup=16070&max=25&man=&lfacet=&new=1 http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/foods/show/4783?qlookup=16070&ma... Where according to this thesis project presentation grubs are 42% protein.
- alextgordon 12y agoI was puzzling over how 25% protein could turn into 9% protein, but then I realised: that boiled number is including 70% water. Obviously there is no protein in water. If you ignore the water, it's 29% protein. Alternatively, 25g/100kcal.
- dsego 12y agoAnd have my teeth rot from all the phytic acid?
- tripzilch 12y agoUmm what? You're supposed to cook lentils. Also, turns out lentils don't even contain that much phytic acid from the start. Finally, your teeth rot? How? I suppose if you didn't cook the lentils, you might want to chew and ruminate them in your mouth for a few hours (tip: no, you don't), which might be long enough for the acid to have some effect on your teeth. But if you consume them like normal, and apply some basic dental hygiene, you're going to have to explain to me how this could really affect your teeth worse than most other foods (which are usually also slightly acidic).
- mikeash 12y agoLobsters too. Can you imagine steaming and eating a two-pound cockroach? But that's basically what a lobster is. I predict that techniques will be found to make good plant-based meat substitutes or other artificial meat before anyone figures out how to make us happy with eating insects.
- debacle 12y ago> Can you imagine steaming and eating a two-pound cockroach? But that's basically what a lobster is. Cockroaches are insects. Lobsters are not. There is a huge difference there.
- integraton 12y agoInsects are more closely related to lobsters and shrimp than they are to spiders and millipedes, and genetic studies suggest that insects evolved from crustaceans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthropod#Classification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthropod#Classification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancrustacea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancrustacea
- mikeash 12y agoThey meet up much closer in the evolutionary tree than things like pigs or cows. What exactly is the huge difference? They seem fairly similar overall, aside from size and where they live.
- singlow 12y agoBut not as different as, say, lobsters and cows. Lobsters and Cockroaches are both nocturnal, omnivorous, scavenging, arthropods.
- grmarcil 12y agoThis is an absurd comparison in the context of food. When it comes to eating animals, we (Westerners) are used to eating muscle tissue. Cows and lobsters have large, edible muscles that can be separated from the rest of the body for consumption, cockroaches do not.
- headShrinker 12y agoLobsters are closely related to Spiders... yet are considered a delicacy. I even think to my self as I eat lobster, "spider, spider, spider" yet I never get grossed out at eating it. On the other hand I can barely hold a spider much less eat one...
- bch 12y ago> ... yet are considered a delicacy. But they haven't _always_ been considered a delicacy: http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-09-06/heres-how-low-rent-lobster-became-expensive-global-star http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-09-06/heres-how-low-rent-lob...
- derefr 12y agoLobsters are, once you get inside them, just chunks of very uniform "meat" that has very little trace of where it originated. If we could find two-pound spiders, boil them, and serve their cracked-open legs on a plate, people would probably be just fine with eating those.
- jpatokal 12y agoCalling Phnom Penh: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fried_spider http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fried_spider
- ilitirit 12y agoDepends on the part of the spider. While you may not recognize where the meat comes from, if it's the abdomen of the spider then you probably would not enjoy it at all.
- lbotos 12y agoThese guys are working on cricket bars as a protein source: https://www.exoprotein.com/ https://www.exoprotein.com/ (No affiliation, they were a few desks over at a coworking space)
- mVChr 12y agoChapulines[1], a form of fried grasshopper, are already a popular dish in Oaxaca. I've had them, they're tasty, a bit like salty, earthy, not very meaty crab I guess. In fact, there's already a cricket bar based off of this dish[2]. Americans in general are pretty squeamish about their food, but this is not true in many other parts of the world. See tripe, chocolate meat (dinuguan), balut, etc. 1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapulines http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapulines 2 http://chapul.com/ http://chapul.com/
- lsaferite 12y agoOk, having seen balut, I'd starve before I ate that.
- Blaaguuu 12y agoThat is a great idea... I've never tried eating bugs, and while I'd like to think that I could get over the stigma and try it, I know that I would have no problem eating them after they have been ground up into a meal, and worked into something tasty. That said, I was about to buy a box just to check them out, when I saw their crustacean allergy warning... I hadn't even thought of that, and I am most certainly allergic to all of the crustaceans that Americans normally eat, so I might well be allergic to other arthropods.
- meriororen 12y agoI used to go out and catch some crickets just for snacks when I was little back in my hometown. I don't think they're that bad. A little much can make you dizzy though (dunno why).
- warble 12y agoWhere did you grow up?
- Recoil42 12y ago>For some reason shrimp which are essentially bugs are no problem because (I think) they come from the ocean, so there's an obvious mental line that can dissassociate them from other bugs. Generally, we eat the innards, not the exoskeleton.
- jimbokun 12y agoAt a Japanese noodle place in NYC, my wife and I were served shrimp with our miso ramen, with the exoskeleton still in place (you were meant to peel and eat it yourself). My wife wanted no part of it, although she likes shrimp with the eyeballs and antenna and stuff already removed. Go figure.
- jpatokal 12y agoIf properly deep-fried, the entire shrimp is edible, head and all.
- eps 12y agoIf you ever watched Fear Factor, you might remember that pretty much anything is edible, including blended raw cow eyeballs and such :) It's always a matter of whether it's enjoyable.
- TheSpiceIsLife 12y agoMichelle Lotito air an aircraft and several bicycles.
- eps 12y agoHa, interesting - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Lotito http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Lotito
- prawn 12y agoI (and many others) eat school prawns shell/head/tail and all. It's common in Greece. Here's an example recipe: http://www.gourmettraveller.com.au/recipes/recipe-search/feature-recipe/2009/5/crisp-school-prawns-with-alioli/ http://www.gourmettraveller.com.au/recipes/recipe-search/fea... When a prawn tail has been shelled (but tail left on for presentation) and in tempura, I will eat the tail also.
- beloch 12y agoFor the record, a soldier fly is about as closely related to a shrimp as you are to a Cod. Same phylum, different class.
- warble 12y agoHmm. multiple legs, exoskeleton, antenna. To the uninitiated person they share a lot more in common than I do to a Cod. We're not talking science here but perception.
- amirmc 12y ago> "Maybe processing the grubs/flies into something less recognizable would help, but at some point you read the ingredients and you're back at square one." How many of the ingredients do you currently understand? Just use the latin name of the insect and no-one would notice. Given the yield, I can imagine that we'll be eating a lot of insects in the future and in many parts of the world larvae/insects are not a problem at all.
- dikaiosune 12y ago"Processed protein meal" "Amino acid complex (source: ${latin name here})" "Debuggified bugs" Lots of potential naming zaniness here. Pretty sure food scientists and marketers have this down to a...science?
- jengamaster 12y agoIn fact, insect byproducts are already used in food production. Carmine is a red food dye made from the scales of a particular bug: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmine
- minusSeven 12y agoI disagree about processing them into something less recognizable would prevent people from having them. No one actually cares reading about contents products especially if you can have in something like medicine.
- barrkel 12y agoI have great difficulty eating shrimp and have zero desire to eat lobster or crab, precisely because of the insect-like association.