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Eating insects and changing American culture

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Philia

Member
Yeah. Lets get on that.

tilda+snowpiercer.gif
 
Some insects are delicious. Non Pai was a favourite of mine in Thailand. Especially flavoured with cinnamon. I agree people need to get over the phobia.
 

Xyphie

Member
I'd have a hard time eating something served with visible exoskeleton because of cultural conditioning. If locust looked like shrimp when cooked I'd probably have no issues.
 

kirby_fox

Banned
Take those larvae, make them look like bacon, sell them as a cheaper green alternative with a new name.

Cheap bacon like meat, I bet people would try it.
 

slit

Member
I'm sick and tired of hippies trying to force this on the population. :p

Get it through your heads, I'M NOT EATING BUGS!
 

Philia

Member
I'd have a hard time eating something served with visible exoskeleton because of cultural conditioning. If locust looked like shrimp when cooked I'd probably have no issues.

Now this is the right idea. I'm a HUGE HUGE fan of shrimp. But with shrimp, you don't see their antennas or legs. They're all pulled. If bugs can be processed like with shrimp, I'm all for it.
 

Magypsy

Member
Had grasshopper once, was fucking delicious

A supermarket chain where I live is going to add grasshoppers and mealworms to their stores soon, can't wait to get all cuisiney with that shit

Insects, highly recommended!
 

Horseticuffs

Full werewolf off the buckle
Listen, there is NO way this is going to become common until we reach a point where we can't afford as a species to NOT eat them. It will be thrust upon us and we will have no choice.

Once, on a podcast, I heard that like 80% of the biomass on our planet is just different types of ants. That is the vast majority of all living weight on Earth is ants. Just ants. We could solve starvation a billion times over, if you think about it.
 

HoosTrax

Member
I want to think of them as being not so different from krill, shrimp, prawn, crawfish, etc. But none of those things I just mentioned are typically poisonous, have mandibles and stingers, etc. I think in my subconscious, it doesn't seem too different from trying to eating needles filled with arsenic or something. (In reality, they're probably not poisonous...much...and the chitinous bits are probably pretty brittle)

At the end of the day, I guess it comes down to what you were raised eating. I have no issue with the idea of eating things like tripe, gator, snake, frogs legs, rabbit, rocky mountain oysters, snails, raw sushi, etc.
 

Nikodemos

Member
PSY・S;149500331 said:
So what would I be eating?
The actual meat, from the body. Gut contents are basically wood shavings anyway, not particularly nutritious, while the head is hard chitin. Many other edible larvae, like mopani worms, are prepared similarly.
 
There is a (post-apocalyptic?) movie where they sold bars that is made up of insects for nutrients. What movie am I thinking of?

Edit:



Haha! That's the one. Snowpiercer!!

I'd give you flak over forgetting the name of a movie just over six months old ... but it was relatively forgettable.
 

Osahi

Member
I ate insects. And it's actually no big deal. If you look at it, it's not 'more gross' then seafoods like crabs, prawns or anything like that.

I haven't eaten a lot of it. Just a tapenade which had bugs in it (had an extra touch of nut flavor compared to normal tapenade), and a dish from an african food truc on a music festival (it was with worms, but barely visible). It helps if you start out with something where the bugs aren't identifiable. :)

I'm at the moment eagerly awaiting the moment when my local supermarket starts to sell insect burgers. They are Ok'd here for consumption and are available here and there, but the market is still very small
 

G.ZZZ

Member
I'd rather go Vegetarian if scarcity is really an issue (which actually isn't but whatever). This is as much as a non-issue as having too many women in one night.
 

Zaptruder

Banned
The way to get insects into our food culture is to appeal to the avant garde high class foodies.

Low class to high class, then jack up the price/demand has been a successful strategy with other foods like lobsters and prawns... which are literally the bugs of the sea.

Also, turning insects into protein meal and using that as ingredients for other more processed meals (that can nonetheless be presented well - a lot of cutting edge cuisine is highly processed in novel ways after all).

If they can get the taste of it right, I'd imagine that they could get things like insect burgers and insect chips to sell well.
 
The way to get insects into our food culture is to appeal to the avant garde high class foodies.

Low class to high class, then jack up the price/demand has been a successful strategy with other foods like lobsters and prawns... which are literally the bugs of the sea.

This is why I don't eat them.
 

lenos16

Member
I've tried some fried insects before, it's actually quite tasty and I can certainly see them being much easier to farm than mammals. Sounds like a good protein solution for future space colonies as well. Hell unleash some cockroaches on a halfway terraformed Mars and you will probably be swimming in high nutrient protein soon.
 
Insects are quite common in Mexico, except in the north because most of them are toxic there. So far my experiences are:

Gusanos de maguey
tacos-gusano-maguey.jpg

Crunchy, a lil bit salty and so good with guacamole. The guys taste so good, some people eat them alive but then you have a gooey, moving mess in your mouth. If you're looking for bugs in your diet, this's the bug you're looking for.

Chapulines
7655375_orig.jpg

AKA grasshoppers, with or without chilli powder. Honestly they lack of flavor and their wings feel like paper when they go through you throat, but on the other side they are chaper and a nice snack if you add lemon and chilli powder.

Jumiles
6539910493_702790ddfa_n.jpg

A distant relative of roaches, taste like medicine and feels like medicine. Overall not a nice treat but in theory they're super healthy, the reason why this particular insect taste like that is because they have an insane amount of iodine inside its body.

Escamoles
escamoles.jpg

Basically ant eggs/larvae, and my those things are super expensive. Sometimes is even more expensive than caviar, taste is a lil bit acid but overall pretty good, however don't execpt a big plate of these things most restaurants just serve small portions.
 
It only seems weird because I'm not used to it. Ultimately, eating a bug is no different to eating a pig, a cow, or fish. If I can find a way to overcome the psychological horror of eating bugs, I'd probably end up enjoying them.
 

cajunator

Banned
as long as its not spiders or scorpions I will eat almost any bug. SPiders in particular taste very earthy and vile. The best tasting are ants, honeybees, crickets, grasshoppers, mealworm, and waterbugs.
 
Now this is the right idea. I'm a HUGE HUGE fan of shrimp. But with shrimp, you don't see their antennas or legs. They're all pulled. If bugs can be processed like with shrimp, I'm all for it.
Well I am up for that. Except Roaches I hate those. Crustaceans and bugs are related anyways. I should try out grasshoppers.
 

mr jones

Ethnicity is not a race!
Where is this 80 percent at? I have friends from Iran, Vancouver, South Africa, Trinidad, Italy, and Germany. All of them are weirded out by eating insects. Outside of a tequila worm, and some chocolate covered bug that I tried, I just don't see myself eating bugs. I have a hard time eating lobster because of how crazy it looks.
 

Nikodemos

Member
Jumiles
6539910493_702790ddfa_n.jpg

A distant relative of roaches, taste like medicine and feels like medicine. Overall not a nice treat but in theory they're super healthy, the reason why this particular insect taste like that is because they have an insane amount of iodine inside its body.
Shield bugs? People eat shield bugs in Mexico?
 

cajunator

Banned
Actually I was at the New Orleans insectarium just Saturday and theres an insect snack cafe in it where you can try different bug things.
 
Hmm... There are craploads of them around here, particularly in autumn. Unfortunately, this damn city and everything in it is so horrendously polluted I might as well make salsa from alkaline batteries.
That's a rule for bugs, the taste depends on what they eat. That's the reason of why the bugs from northern Mexico are toxic, most plants there are toxic too.
 

MadSexual

Member
I've only tried those super crunchy dried crickets that are seasoned and pretty salty, no not exactly an ideal nutrient source as prepared. They weren't bad at all considering the crunchiness is generally thought to be one of the less appetizing aspects.
 

sasimirobot

Junior Member
Tha-meb-2-xs.jpg


fried bamboo larva are awesome!

similar in texture and taste to french fries, the insides evaporate when fried, topped with Thai spices these are the perfect beer food.
 
The only time I wanted to eat an insect was when I was reading A Dance with Dragons and reading about the honey spicy locusts in Meereen. The idea of something being sweet, spicy and crunchy at the same time sounded really good while I was reading. I satisfied that by eating a bag of BBQ chips.
 

Koozek

Member
Recently I'm really interested in trying it! Some friends that were on vacation in Thailand told me some of the insects tasted like chicken and were delicious. The first time might be strange for most but I'm sure we'll get used to it quickly, especially if it's fried well with nice seasoning/spices^^
 
creating meat from beef is one of the most wasteful practices humans are doing to destroy the planet. Any solutions to resolve this should be looked at seriously.
 
I think the easy way to go about this is to do something like cricket flour. I've never used it, but I saw a guy pitching it on Shark Tank and it sounded like a good idea to me.

cricket-flour.jpg


Looks very inoffensive, and is efficient protein.
 
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