• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Could you eat INSECTS?!

I know someone who ate chocolate-covered ants.
But I've never once tried them myself.
 
Isn't there an allowable amount of bug parts in such foods as peanut butter and hot dogs?
 
We eat a lot of stuff that might be off-putting in its basic form — thickeners derived from algae and seaweed, gelatin from animal bones and hooves, cheese that gets its color and flavor from mold. The aforementioned insect-derived dyes have been used for centuries. As long as the ingredients are listed by name, what’s the point of specifying that the colorings are extracted from crushed bugs?

The irony is that, in processed foods, cochineal extract and carmine are probably the most natural ingredients.
 
Face it. What's inside a hot dog is EXPONENTIALLY more disgusting than picking up a bug and chomping down on it. Hot dogs slathered in chili, mustard, relish and ketchup taste awesome beyond words sometimes...but if you stopped to think about what comprises the meat of the wiener you might gag a little.
 
Most of our food is grown outdoors. I seriously doubt it would be practical to harvest grain, fruit or vegetables with high volume/economical equipment without getting some insects into the collection bin. There might be ways to sift some of them out, but I suspect there are many foods that insects or their wastes can't be completely separated out of.

What's worse than finding a worm in an apple?

Finding half a worn! (You bit off the other half)
 
I've accidentally sucked flies, gnats and mosquitoes into my mouth and swallowed them. I imagine a lot of us have. So...yes. We can eat insects.
 
My jr High Social Studies class made and eat cookies with night-crawlers in them.
 
I ate a fried grasshopper once. BIG MISTAKE. Yuck, yuck and yuck.

I ate a fried grasshopper once. BIG MISTAKE. Yuck, yuck and yuck.

You shouldn't have gone back for the second helping, you know...

... talking of which, didn't we just do this thread a few weeks or so back?

Anyway, my answer: probably not, short of life-saving situation. In any other setting, I'd probably try fried grubs or something like that, but anything crunchy? Not so much.
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top