The Japanese tradition of raising and eating wasps (2019)
splendidtable.org
splendidtable.org
> Parasites were detected in 244 (81.33%) out of 300 (100%) examined insect farms. In 206 (68.67%) of the cases, the identified parasites were pathogenic for insects only; in 106 (35.33%) cases, parasites were potentially parasitic for animals; and in 91 (30.33%) cases, parasites were potentially pathogenic for humans. Edible insects are an underestimated reservoir of human and animal parasites. [...] Conducted parasitological examination suggests that edible insects may be the most important parasite vector for domestic insectivorous animals.
Humans can get parasites from eating the meat of mammals, such as pork or beef. Is there any reason to believe that parasites in insects pose a greater human health risk than those in mammals?
If anything, I'd suspect mammalian parasites are a bigger risk, since they are more likely to thrive in a human host – we are mammals after all.
Insects, on the other hand, are consumed whole. There's no getting around the fact that you are eating the part of the thing that walked and wallowed in it's own shit.
Pupae are an interesting exception, perhaps, though for the most part when talking edible insects I suspect people think crickets and the like.
I think the opposite is true for salmon
I could hold the opposite side, saying that our immune system is also better suited to fight against them rather than totally different parasites.
This could be cultural blindness, there's probably lots of places outside of your own culture that find eating insects the best thing ever. As hard as that may be for you to imagine, given your experience, which as it is linked to the culture/s you have lived in, is naturally limited.
Some examples that occur to me:
- Many Israelis may find eating pork disgusting
- Many North americans may find eating livestock intestines disgusting
- Many Anglo-saxons may find eating chicken feet disgusting
- Many non-Nordic folk may find eating putrid-smelling fermented fish (one is: Surströmming) disgusting
- Many non-South americans may find eating hamster meat disgusting
Yet for the people actually in those cultures they probably find it the best thing ever.
So I think it's mostly cultural (and temporal) blindness.
Here's some more ideas:
- "For Most People, Eating Bugs Is Only Natural" https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/eating-bu...
- "Eating insects has long made sense in Africa. The world must catch up" https://theconversation.com/eating-insects-has-long-made-sen...
I think cultural food preferences are probably strongly linked to food-source availability.
For anyone thinking I'm pushing some ideology, or food-preaching, cool your heels: I'm just stating some facts and making a point about cultural relativism.
When you use the world "normal" (especially for food), you probably speak with ignorance of other parts of the world.
And yeah it's more like a bunny than a true rodent. I would totally. Totally willing to eat them.
To the extent I can. Like the way I eat chicken, eat the solid contiguous meat parts, I can't skeletonize chicken like other Chileans can. Like it's incredible, nothing left but bones, like museum quality nothing left to rot, dude like if you fed the leftovers to pirañas all those fish would starve.
The reason their eating habits changed is because through economic and technological development, they were able to move beyond eating what they can to eating what they want. In short, progress.
Fermented foods interestingly aren't just a good way to preserve things for hard times, but have beneficial effects on our guts. Even the shift you're describing from hardship to plenty has a dark side, it's an abundance of a few foods at the loss of a wide variety of nutrients and flavors, some of which I am sure many of us now find 'funky'.
As for entomophagy, I see that other primates do quite a bit of it[1], though my assumption is that as we get bigger, eating enough of them becomes more work (until you can make nets...)
In SE Asia and Africa some insects command high prices. People have preferences between them.
What food you find disgusting is likely entirely arbitrary — on the proviso that reasonably large populations of other people from other cultures don’t share your preference.
Yes, some cultures do farm and raise insects. The point I'm making is that it's unusual that pretty much every culture worldwide that is prominent economically today has mostly moved away from entomophagy, considering its apparent sheer efficiency. (Whereas we pretty much universally all still farm honey)
Also, the assumption that eating insects is merely a cultural taboo may not hold water: a quick Google finds scholarly research around insect and arthropod disgust being a worldwide phenomenon, which lines up with my initial speculation. I also see academic hypotheses that this was indeed evolved due to the "parasite avoidance theory of disgust". Just like culture can be used to create disgust taboos, it can also be used to override them.
please post the search terms you used, or better, the links you found. If you claim stuff, back it up please.
There's a large tradition of eating marine arthropods (lobster, crab), and plenty of eating insects in africa (https://html.duckduckgo.com/html?q=insect%20eaten%20africa) and wider:
"Many cultures embrace the eating of insects. Edible insects have long been used by ethnic groups in Asia, Africa, Mexico and South America as cheap and sustainable sources of protein. Up to 2,086 species are eaten by 3,071 ethnic groups in 130 countries." - and there's plenty more of that
As to your points - first, I think it's more than clear from context what I meant by "arthropod"; I could have used the term "chelicerate" instead but this is far less useful. And second, yes, I know such cultures exist. My point was about "prominent economically" and "mostly" moved away. If you sort countries by GDP per capita, how far down is the first country whose dominant eating habits include a lot of insect protein? And don't you find this result surprising considering its known energy efficiency?
Weasel words. You didn't back up any of your claims.
> Nor do you have any right to demand this standard of others
I see it as just good manners.
> My comment contains more than enough keywords to retrace
No they don't (though mine do), and as you just did the work & found the sources, why on earth did you not post them, having them right to hand?
> My point was about "prominent economically"
Hmm, you did say that. It's an interesting point.
> If you sort countries by GDP per capita, how far down is the first country whose dominant
It's not about 'dominant', it's about doing it at all ("...arthropod disgust being a worldwide phenomenon, which lines up with my initial speculation") - it doesn't. If a country does it as a (say) 5% protein/energy intake was insects it would disprove your taboo/disgust theory. Or 1%.
> And don't you find this result surprising considering its known energy efficiency?
If true, and you have not quantified efficiency (although I believe you are right), yes, it's a good question.
Ugh, I didn't assume anything about you. I took it from what you said. Stop being such a cultural supremacist. I was right about you: you are ignorantly speaking from your own limited experience. That's not condescending it's the truth. Everyone has a limited experience, what you're doing wrong is saying you're way is better than others, "more normal", "more advanced": "unusual that pretty much every culture worldwide that is prominent economically today has mostly moved away from entomophagy", it's just white-washing for neo-colonialist cultural supremacy: savages eating "lower" foods, while the cultivated civilized elites eat the "better" stuff. It's bs, man.
I never said you were raised in the West. I mean this kind of "relativity-blind cultural supremacism", I'd wager is big foundation of racism.
"pretty much every" "prominent economically today" "mostly moved away from"--it's a pretty weakly worded claim (weaselly worded to take the stance of another commenter, which to me suggests you're merely arguing for troll sake, by loosening up your position to give you the most strategic room to manoeuvre. If that, I'd just say pick a topic that makes you look less dumb and insensitive).
It's also completely incorrect: Brazil, India, China -- they like their insects.
Economic prominence: admittedly, I think this view is controversial, but according to CIA and IMF China is now larger than US economically[0]. And using more traditional metrics, the BRICS block combined GDP is larger than the US, the "most of" the BRICS block (of em, "economically prominent" countries to put it, um, delicarely) eat insects.
You are the backward ignorant bogan looking into your neighbourhood and proclaiming it the whole world, while speaking of things ignorantly and arrogantly outside your ken. The Court Philosophers who would hang Galileo for challenging their Precious belief that Earth was the Center of the Universe.
Come on, man. That's not scientific. That's backward, and ugly. I'm sorry, but it's true. :P ;) xx ;p
[0]: https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/china-now-worlds-la...
2. "Pretty much every culture worldwide that is prominent economically today has mostly moved away from entomophagy" is carefully stated so as to be a measurable claim. Sort by GDP per capita and consider the percentage of insect protein in diets. The cultures at the top of the list are not merely Western or colonial remnants.
3. My point is about energy efficiency, which is value neutral. It seems obvious that human cultures have an incentive to use resources efficiently, or else be outcompeted by cultures which do (ala historical materialism). Given that (a) most every culture has passed through entomophagic periods, (b) most cultures have known how to farm insects for millenia, and (c) recent studies show this practice is incredibly energy efficient, this should imply that every economically prominent culture today should already be getting the majority of its protein from insects. We should predict millenia of insect-based cuisine as the global mainstream default, and entire supermarket aisles of produce. The fact that we do not see this is surprising, and therefore invokes caution via Chesterton's Fence.
4. It is known that some percentage of people enjoy foods which trigger the evolutionary disgust response, such as extremely bitter foods, or snakes. Perhaps this is because said response is not uniform across the population, or perhaps it can be overcome via other means. But the fact that some people do so does not preclude that the response exists for some good reason.
5. What you are calling "weasel words" are what I call being careful with the level of confidence with which one makes assertions in conversation. I am not an expert, and will not make assertions with the certainty this would permit. You too are certainly not an expert.
6. I am not interested in continuing this conversation further; I'm writing this to clarify my thinking on #3 and #4, and for the benefit of future readers. If you selectively choose to disbelieve science when it doesn't support your beliefs, without examining the underlying facts, this implies that your beliefs are not rooted in fact. I also find your insults and personal attacks distasteful.
- Many Indian vegetarians would find eating _any type of meat_ (chicken, beef, pork, fish, even eggs) repulsive.
Oh you want something fun for your catalogue of foods?
Alright so in Chile in the South in January, might as well bring a tennis racket to deal with the Colihuachos. These fucking bumbling slow things menace, they land, they eat a piece of flesh, almost enough to leave scars. And in January it's flooded, twenty per person, the air is flooded, nuts. So they're hated. But there's revenge.
So first you capture one. For instance with a racket, that works great. First off rip its head off. Now it's chilling, great. Why couldn't they all be born headless? Well now we get to the revenge, you take a stick, and carve it's backside out--I guess you'd need to see it done to understand the stickwork necessary--and then you GET TO THE GLAND! There's a gland, it comes out whole, it's nectar they collected before they could fly, in like an instar larva nymphal whatever nonbiting November stage. Nonbiting November stage. They like get nectar from flowers, high sugars. So this totally black insect has this honey gland, and it's like 100 milligrams, but you take it, eat it, tastes good. It's cool.
Love it. The predator gets predated.
We do call them sea bugs, sure. Show me an insect per se with an edible white tissue the size of my palm and we'll talk about it.
Create an oxygen-rich atmosphere and you can engineer big-enough land insects.
See the carboniferous for more details.
Also note that if you’re allergic to shrimp or lobster, chances are pretty high that you’ll get a reaction from eating insects.
It was an advisory from last year’s cicadae boom in the US.
They taste so, so good, but if I'm presented with them unshelled/unprepared, I have to try hard to silence my revulsion as I pull off insect-like legs while it stares at me with its insect-like beady eyes :(
I'm not sure whether there is any evolutionary pressure to develop that general 'disgust' into preference to avoid eating it though. Might be a side effect as well.
I don't think this is true.
> Entomophagy is scientifically described as widespread among non-human primates and common among many human communities.[3] The scientific term describing the practice of eating insects by humans is anthropo-entomophagy.[7] The eggs, larvae, pupae, and adults of certain insects have been eaten by humans from prehistoric times to the present day.[8] Around 3,000 ethnic groups practice entomophagy.[9] Human insect-eating (anthropo-entomophagy) is common to cultures in most parts of the world, including Central and South America, Africa, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. Eighty percent of the world's nations eat insects of 1,000 to 2,000 species…
> In some societies, primarily western nations, entomophagy is uncommon or taboo.[13][14][15][16][17][18] Today, insect eating is uncommon in North America and Europe, but insects remain a popular food elsewhere,
Also assuming this would be an industrial farming practice given eating insects is optimizing for the efficiency/productivity part of the spectrum, any insects would most likely be grown under sterile / clean-room like conditions.
Most every animal we eat for meat is host to many fearsome parasites, and most of the worst pandemics in history resulted from human/animal contact during domestication.
That is the baseline!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casu_martzu
For some reason, foreigners really love finding fringe activities in Japan, a country of more than 100 million people, and declaring these activities are “Japanese.” There is something fetishist and exploitative and weird about the relationship between foreign bloggers/YouTubers/journalists/etc and Japan that I find very disturbing.
There's definitely an overlap with the 'weird Japan' clickbait, but the first sentence of the article says to me that this seems to be an attempt to normalize the eating of insects to westerners who are highly culturally opposed to it.
Skimming the article, the wasp eating seems to be done for a festival in one particular village. In my experience, even people from cultures who had insect delicacies bragged to me about eating insects like some kind of rite of passage. I have yet to meet a foreigner who brings a bag of insects in their lunchbox.
I personally won't eat insects ever. The oceans can turn to acid, black clouds of smoke can envelop the earth, and I will still not eat bugs. I could imagine that most of the people in Japan feel the same way, or I could be wrong.
I implore any angry readers to do some Googling before flaming or instinctively downvoting: I don't plan on spending my weekend fighting some culture war, and I promise that there are reasonable sources for both claims just one Google search away.
In India’s Northeast, a Rich Tradition of Insect Foods - https://science.thewire.in/environment/assam-entomophagy-sil...
I've been living in Japan for over 5 years. Never heard of this. I've even tried to casually mention while chatting with some of Japanese people I know about eating insects and they were all disgusted by it.
It wasn't too long that people saw eating lobsters as if they were eating cockroaches. Likely tastes similar too
Then again, I used to go to a small yunan restaurant in Shanghai that served fried bees which was a great appetizer with beer.
The one insect-based food in Japan that is moderately common is tsukudani (a type of soy-based pickle) made from crickets (enago), but even this is kinda niche and you're unlikely to run into it unless you look for it.
I'm from a culture where historically it's normal to do so.
Yet you may understand your argument wasn't very convincing.
..which is perfectly normal for many people? When I lived in China I visited Nanning frequently and they have a night market that is famous and popular for serving deep fried insects. Most of it is pretty good. You find insect based street-food in plenty of places across LatAm, Africa or Asia.
It's almost as if some people are trying to push the false narrative that eating bugs is perfectly normal for people in the corner of Florida where I grew up.
When stated like that, it doesn't make that much sense. No one would think it was normal in a place where it's not normal to do so, so probably no one is pushing that.
But I think you're right that there is some form of "food source environmental activism" related to bug-eating, but this article isn't about that, and doesn't have to be. I mean, take from it what you will, and I understand the triggered reactions to the connotations of "let's replace our menu with insect meat because environment", but I think that's an unnecessary fear-connotation in this case and is not warranted by the source material.
So you are suggesting these are the work of PR firms. I mean, maybe... like a corporate PR strategy to slowly normalize the eating of insects? Like I get the "insect meat enviro activism" angle, but I think it's possible to see this article as something that exists without that, independently of that.
I mean, it is kind of a culture-blind doubling-down to be so blind to the fact that other people (real people, not stock images in advertising campaigns) eat insects around the world...that you see any emanation of stories about these as part of a concerted PR strategy. Because maybe that fits your cultural-bias that "this stuff doesn't really happen so if we see it it has to be a corporate profit motive", right?
I mean, why can't it just be a story about another culture and what they do? Why need to get all judgey and like "from only your perspective thou shalt speak the truth" about it?
Personally I don't get the strong "immune" reactions I see here. Is it a sublimated expression of the visceral (but probably culturally relative) revulsion? Or like where is this coming from for you?
Like why can't it just be a story, why does it have to be propaganda for something? I'm curious. Please relate what's there for you, if you want! :P ;) xx ;p
Hey, but that's just my take! :P ;) xx ;p
I also didn't know the "insects for food" lobby was such a powerhouse as the view you invoked seems to suggest? Care to elaborate? I'm all ears, literally want to learn about this.
I saw Bill Gates in a video[1] just yesterday talking about how the rich nations should be eating synthetic meat, and of course the World Economic Forum are planning (apparently) to move everyone over to insects, while they dress like cartoon villains.
Do a quick search for "eat insects" on the BBC site, for example (the biggest news site in the UK) and you'll see they do regular stories with positive headlines like Eating insects: Should we be eating more? Why are they so good? (June this year), or the more insidious Why you may have been eating insects your whole life (April 2018). Seriously, do a search on some major media sites and it comes up again and again and again, especially left leaning media. In right leaning, it's obviously anti that.
As I say, I've not got a dog in this fight (if anything, I'm pro synthetic meat) but if you roll the "insects for food" lobby into the "climate change" lobby, and possibly the "oligarchy keeping the rest of us paupers" lobby and perhaps you'll think it has some power or perhaps it will cement for you that it's a silly conspiracy theory. Or it could simply be an overreaction to these stories, lots of people get emotional about food, it's part of identity, preference, and health, so a threat to it will provoke a reaction.
[1] https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/02/14/1018296/bill-gat... Not the video, that was an Instagram story so it's gone but this is an interview with Gates about it
When they are eaten they tend to be cooked in a way to try to remove all flavor (such as heavy frying) and then served with copious amounts of a flavored side (and often alcohol as well). In the less impoverished areas, what bugs are sold are often ironically targeted at foreigners thinking they're engaging in an exotic cultural experience, even though few locals would care to share that 'culture' themselves!
From what I've learned when talking to friends in Thailand, it's the same with insects, it's a rural food (but not from hill tribe people or minorities just from less urbanised parts of Thailand), that's fallen out of favour with the upper middle class. That doesn't mean that only foreigners eat it, there are plenty of locals who eat it, it's just less common than it once was and is becoming less and less common.
In the case of grasshopper and cricket, you're right it's fried and food that goes well with alcohol but that doesn't mean that there's not taste or that it doesn't taste good. Crickets definitely have a very distinctive flavour and one that fits well with drinks in the same way that chips can be nice with apéritifs.
It seems insects are commonly eaten in many places, and I think it's possible your misinterpretation of "insect food only in poverty" is a hangup from this sort of "imperialist cultural supremacy" that seems to be invoked by this topic...
To riff a bit, not about you, but: sad really, maybe that real colonialism and imperialism has almost vanished in many places, the "descendents of the former subjects of the old colonial powers" and those who seek to ape their status, cling to these sort of last vestiges where they can lord their wrong ideas of cultural supremacy over "lesser peoples". Insect eating probably provides plenty of opportunities for those of such an imperial mind to turn plump with prideful glee that they have something really meaty to snack into about "how their own culture has made so much progress compared to these awfully-backward places".
Back to what you said: I think consciousness of judgement by non-locals may play a role in masking that behavior in front of you?
It sort of sounds like you're embarrassed by the idea that people might think that Japanese are somehow bad (maybe "backward and poor"?) for eating insects, but I think that's an unnecessary accommodation of Western-folks' possible biased misinterpretations... I mean I understand wanting to be conscious of that, but I don't think it's "good" to be like, "Oh, it's a bad thing, let not anyone think that we all eating insects or nothing".
It could even be a sort-of inter-East-Asian-racism like, "Don't let people lump us in together and think we are like those Chinese who eat insects way more than us".
Maybe, I got you wrong there, but you know what I mean? :p ;) xx ;p
> but something practiced in a couple of villages in Gifu prefecture
It could say "the Gifu prefecture tradition..." and still "actually only a couple of villages do it" would be valid, and so on and so on...
On the other hand the way we write headlines lends itself to misinterpretation deliberately. It could say "A few people in Japan eat wasps" but nobody would click.
With a lot of these expensive Chinese foods, there's an overlap with traditional Chinese medicine, as seen in bird's nest soup, black chicken meat, and such. And indeed, they convinced her to try one, saying that cicada are great for health and such. She felt guilty given that it was such an expensive dish, so she tried one. Reliving that memory made her feel nauseous.
I once had grasshoppers (inago) cured with some sort of soy sauce marinate. Was that the same thing? They were pretty yummy, similar to eating little shrimps with shells and all.
The other insect I have tried was the dried larvae of silk worms, which are apparently quite popular in Korea. I found the taste of that one vile and repulsive. Hard to describe. Maybe it's an acquired taste, or perhaps I did not eat it in the right way. It can't be that bad if it is popular.
FWIW, I've also tried beondegi in Korea, and I agree with you. It was easily the least pleasant of the insects I've tried (locust, cricket, peanut worm, silkworm).
We should study them, admire them, but not kill or eat them.
Yeah for the record I'm vegan.
We know everything about Roombas yet are from from knowing everything about insects, despite having known about and having studied the latter for as long as we’ve been a species. Insects (and life in general) is way more interesting and complex than you seem to be giving it credit for.
I recommend The Zoologist's Guide to the Galaxy³.
¹ Physical comparisons notwithstanding, as those would apply to your Roomba example too.
² https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/i-asked-leading-entomo...
³ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Zoologist%27s_Guide_to_the...
There is a finite amount of knowledge on Roombas, and we have all of it. We don’t know if there’s a finite amount of knowledge on insects¹ but what we do know is already sufficient to eclipse the knowledge on Roombas, especially as it intertwines with the rest of biology and life.
I ask again:
> What separates humans from insects? And by extension, what separates us from a self-reproducing Roomba?
Your answer to that question is paramount to understanding the basis of your initial argument and have a continued productive discussion.
¹ Especially with evolution and the environment constantly mixing things up.
¹ https://www.scinapse.io/papers/2180773430
² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_consciousness#Mirror_te...
Such tests show that some arthropods rank high on the scale of consciousness!
Jumping spiders are the most popular example of exceptionnally smart arthropods, but bees, ants, or crabs have also well developped minds.
Would you have a moral qualm with turning off a self-replicating roomba any more or less than killing an insect?
I see intelligence/consciousness as orthogonal to lifespan. Sure it's cruel that such a smart species would die after mating (by the way if they don't mate they live several decades), but that does not remove their capacity of planning, self-reflection, empathy, etc etc.
But if you really want an other example that would escape your argument, take the crow. (no cortex, but a wurst)
You're misconstruing your source, if you have one.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20563906/
There are also articles about how they use tools, estimate intent, etc.
Here is one about how they use deception: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3440998/
This entails that they have a mental model of what others think of them, which ranks very high on the evaluation of animal consciousness.
Insufficient.
> This entails that they have a mental model of what others think of them
No, not necessarily true. Tons of insects use deception tactics and you would not suggest they're as "intelligent as a cat", let alone have a mental model. Hell, there are deceptive plants. See this about European lady's slipper orchids - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00114-009-0611-0
It's tempting to explain away all behavior with consciousness, but it's not necessarily accurate.
No, read better:
"[...] in a specific social context amenable to cheating 39 per cent of the time, while it was never employed in other social contexts"
It's completely different from what simple insects do, here it entails that they understand the specific social context.
Now you could reply to me that eusocial insects do that a lot, basing their behavior on cues like pheromones etc. To which I'd say: yes exactly, and that's why eusocial insects have the largest brains among insects.
Cephalopod can solve amazingly difficult puzzles (unlike social insects) AND also have social skills. Which gives a big boost to how they score on intelligence evaluation.
Moreover, one can argue that using pheromones is much easier than deducing the social context solely upon visual cues, because in insects pheromones already encode very specific meanings and are linked to hard-coded behaviors.
Octupuses' social skills also a reason to how well they bond and interact with their human caregivers.
It should be clearly inferred if I'm invoking deception tactics that I'm not talking about "simple insects". But that is still a large number, out of 925,000 species.
> To which I'd say: yes exactly, and that's why eusocial insects have the largest brains among insects.
The connection you're supposed to make here is they still don't exhibit the level of consciousness and intelligence you had been purporting. I don't see why octopi should be any different.
But they do, on social tasks, only the insects use much simpler cues, whereas octopuses, humans, etc, use social cues that they have to painstakingly extract from raw data, like visual or auditory data.