You’re going to be eating crickets, so just get over it

[Psihala]

We all ask our friends for favors. Usually, it's things like rides to the airport or help moving someplace new. I asked my friends to come to my place and eat crickets with me.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/youre-g...t-get-over-it/

[Seaboe Muffinchucker]

You know, not everyone eats meat, so to assume that just because crickets are going to be an available source of protein doesn't mean everyone is going to be eating them.

The article is much more level headed than the headline is (I tend to get vaguely insulted by being told to "just get over" anything).

Seaboe

[GenYus234]

12 Insects You're Eating Wrong! (Number 4 will surprise you.)

[mbravo]

Originally Posted by GenYus234

12 Insects You're Eating Wrong! (Number 4 will surprise you.)

One WEIRD trick discovered by a spider!!!! (Gnats HATE her!!)

[crocoduck_hunter]

This again? I remember how this was going to be the new protein source back when I was in elementary school.

[ganzfeld]

Originally Posted by GenYus234

12 Insects You're Eating Wrong! (Number 4 will surprise you.)

Not clicking... Not clicking!!

[WildaBeast]

Eh, it sounds slightly better than the future food Isaac Asimov envisioned in Caves of Steel where everything is synthesized from yeast and real meat and veggies are a luxury reserved for special occasions.

[ganzfeld]

I like a lot of insects. Some of them are pretty tasty and nutritious. I don't know why people don't eat them more often. I think it's just that we all ate them out of necessity in our distant past when we couldn't get larger game and we developed an elitist thinking about them. Only the lowest class of people has to eat them kind of thing.

[crocoduck_hunter]

Originally Posted by ganzfeld

I like a lot of insects. Some of them are pretty tasty and nutritious. I don't know why people don't eat them more often.

Especially given how many of the people who freak out about it have no problem eating marine arthropods.

[Avril]

I eat a plant-based diet, so no bugs for me.

Meanwhile, marine arthropods used to be the food of the poor, too. The upper class wouldn't dream of touching a lobster.

[Richard W]

Originally Posted by mbravo

One WEIRD trick discovered by a spider!!!! (Gnats HATE her!!)

The internet had a meltdown when it saw the recipe!

I've had locusts a couple of times, in Japan and China. To me, it depends how they're cooked. In Japan I bought a tub of cold locusts in sweetened soy sauce and tried to eat them as a salad, and they were fairly horrible. I doubt I was supposed to eat them like that. In China, I had some that were deep-fried on a stick and pretty good. (I also had a deep-fried scorpion. Anything that you can put on a stick and deep-fry is probably going to be OK).

So, unsurprisingly I suppose, it does depend on the recipe.

[crocoduck_hunter]

Originally Posted by Richard W

Anything that you can put on a stick and deep-fry is probably going to be OK.

Except for those centipedes that they use for toothbrushes on Farscape.

[mbravo]

Originally Posted by ganzfeld

I like a lot of insects. Some of them are pretty tasty and nutritious. I don't know why people don't eat them more often. I think it's just that we all ate them out of necessity in our distant past when we couldn't get larger game and we developed an elitist thinking about them. Only the lowest class of people has to eat them kind of thing.

I don't know if it even goes that far. I think for many people they get grossed out the same way they might get grossed out if one of the critters appeared in their home. Many people have some sort of bug-phobia. Myself, that includes some of the ostensibly "cute" ones like crickets.

[ganzfeld]

Originally Posted by mbravo

Many people have some sort of bug-phobia. Myself, that includes some of the ostensibly "cute" ones like crickets.

True but many (my guess is most) people are somewhat disgusted by the sight of dead, skinned animals and entrails and so forth as well. That doesn't seem to stop most people from eating them.

[Apollonia]

Originally Posted by Richard W

Anything that you can put on a stick and deep-fry is probably going to be OK

Not so much if you are visiting Ankh-Morpork.

Rat-onna-stick.

[Sue]

Originally Posted by Avril

I eat a plant-based diet, so no bugs for me.

Meanwhile, marine arthropods used to be the food of the poor, too. The upper class wouldn't dream of touching a lobster.

I remember reading that was true of oysters as well. It was only when they became too costly for the poor to be able to afford them that they became trendy food for the upper crust.

Anyway I don't care why I won't eat insects, whether it's because I'm snobby or because I'm elitist or because I loathe insects in all their forms. Whatever the reason I will have to be very hungry and very desperate before I "just get over it" and start eating crickets or any other insect.

[thorny locust]

I don't freak out at all about live insects, even if they're walking on me, and will cheerfully pick them up and move them if necessary. And the front of my head has no problem with the idea of eating them. But the back of my head goes 'no no no little legs squirming in the mouth!' (and yes the front of my head knows you don't generally eat them alive!)

I think I could handle, say, cricket flour as an ingredient. But please don't offer me any whole insects to eat.

[erwins]

That's where I am with it, as well. If it's mixed in with something and not really in its whole form, I think I'd be fine with it. For me, there's a connection between the crunch and squish of crushing an insect (accidentally or on purpose) and the thought of biting into one with a crunch and squish, that makes me metaphorically shudder.

But in dry powder form, mixed into...whatever, the thought doesn't bother me.

[Little Pink Pill]

“Crunch and squish,” “little legs squirming in the mouth.” If I wasn’t going to have bad dreams about this before, I am now.

I’ve worked with cricket flour before while trying to create a better liquid wildlife formula for insectivorous neonates. It didn’t work because it isn’t water soluble. So maybe you wouldn’t notice it mixed into a muffin, but I don’t understand how people say they add it to smoothies.

The linked brand below, for example, calls for 1/3 cup of cricket flour per smoothie. At 5000 crickets per pound (thirteen 1/3 cup servings) that’s...385 insoluble dried crickets in your smoothie? If that’s right, that sounds...gritty.

https://smile.amazon.com/Chapul-Cric...t%2Bflour&th=1

[thorny locust]

Originally Posted by Little Pink Pill

If I wasn’t going to have bad dreams about this before, I am now.

I am kind of hoping that anybody easily freaked out by such discussions didn't click on the thread in the first place . . .