Bugs--an untapped source of protein, in this hemisphere.
Yeah, I'd try a well-cooked well-prepared bug.
Hey, Roger. Lobster is my favorite food. Not in the bug family, but if bugs taste like lobster, I'll be out in Central Park with a net by the end of the week.
Me too - is that considered a bug? I always thought and said I'd try just about anything - except bugs and monkey brains.
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Linkat
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Tue 9 Aug, 2011 06:57 am
@Roberta,
Losters are the best - they are shell fish - isn't snails like that some sort of shell fish?
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sozobe
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Tue 9 Aug, 2011 07:41 am
When sozlet was very little -- signing but not talking yet -- she examined a ladybug closely and then popped it in her mouth. (I dove to intercept, but too late.) She chewed it thoughtfully and then signed "spicy!"
When I was little (6-10), we'd ride minibikes and motorcycles at my grandparent's farm in Nebraska.
Occasionally, one would swallow a bug.
Some of them were, indeed, spicy, and we called 'em "pepper bugs."
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DrewDad
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Tue 9 Aug, 2011 07:47 am
@Letty,
Letty wrote:
I love escargot
I'd be willing to bet that a bug dipped in garlic butter would be pretty tasty.
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tsarstepan
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Tue 9 Aug, 2011 08:12 am
@roger,
roger wrote:
I don't even eat lobster, and the Spanish word for lobster is remarkably similar to the word for locust
More lobster for me then!
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tsarstepan
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Tue 9 Aug, 2011 08:13 am
@Roberta,
Roberta wrote:
Bugs--an untapped source of protein, in this hemisphere.
Yeah, I'd try a well-cooked well-prepared bug.
Hey, Roger. Lobster is my favorite food. Not in the bug family, but if bugs taste like lobster, I'll be out in Central Park with a net by the end of the week.
I'd certainly join you in that endeavor! We could open a Red Bug franchise and profit as from the venture too.
Of course, insects are small packages, so primates have to swallow a lot to match one fruit’s worth of energy. Our closest evolutionary relatives, chimpanzees, solve this problem by using sticks, leaves and grasses to “fish” ants from colonies — generally catching hundreds to thousands of ants per fishing session. At the upper extreme, one study estimated chimps in Nigeria can nab upwards of 22,000 army ants in one meal.
(In that study, researchers counted ant heads in chimp poop samples. To understand what proportion of insect heads make it through digestion into feces, one of the authors did a self-experiment several times: That researcher ate 100 ants “immobilized in whiskey” and counted the heads in “subsequent excreta.” For science!)
I heard something about this on the radio a while back.
The biggest drawback is people are squeamish about eating insects. There was a story about how people wanted action taken when it was revealed that every jar of peanut butter contained x amount of insect parts.
The result was a less healthy jar with no insects but plenty of pesticides.
People don’t like the idea, and they don’t like seeing recognisable insects in their food.
The conclusion the radio programme came up with was mealworm flour, ground mealworms whose high protein flour could be used to make all sorts of things, cookies were the preferred recipe and they went down well with the presenters mostly because they looked and tasted like ordinary cookies.
