Hacker News Reader

I found the National Geographic piece interesting. But you've made a lot of unnecessarily condescending and incorrect assumptions about me: I was not raised in the West. I enjoy many of the foods on your list, and am also very familiar with induced disgust originating in religious taboo.

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.

> a quick Google finds

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

from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entomophagy_in_humans

Sorry, but this is a discussion board, and I have no obligation to provide citations for every last sentence I write. Particularly given the low confidence I tagged these items with. Nor do you have any right to demand this standard of others. My comment contains more than enough keywords to retrace my Googling, there are lots of relevant papers, and I am not an expert. Please do your own supplementary research.

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?

> to back up every last claim

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.

Thank you! This is awesome!! :P :) xx ;p

Man you're totally being ignorant. It doesn't matter that you got a bit of science behind it, you can find science to do anything--especially to back up some "norm" specific the culture the science comes from. Science is a discourse, not a settled matter.

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...

1. I did not use the word "normal" or "advanced" once in any comment, nor did I ever imply it. You are, in fact, continuing to make assumptions about me.

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.

There's a huge difference between something being made edible, often out of dire circumstance or extreme poverty, and something being desirable, let alone "the best thing ever." Surströmming is such a perfect example. It came from a different time and a different place, where you're eating your unpleasant fermented fish while trying to make it as tolerable as possible, or you're going hungry.

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.

Hmm, but what people want is strongly influenced by culture...

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...)

1: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23039342/

Not at all true. Your tastes aren’t progress either

Climates also play roles. Nordic winter could be cold and dry enough that Surströmming might naturally become sterilized as it is processed, whereas pork in Israeli desert or intestine processed in Midwest America could not have been safe, possibly as late as early 20th century.

I agree with this. I live in a country where blood pudding is “cultural” but many ppl find it disgusting.

But most fermented foods eaten in the west would also fit this definition … and you’re not calling out gherkins as disgusting.

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.

damn i love me some gherkins. Are those fermented? I had no idea how they were made.

They are pickled, not fermented (at least the kinds I can buy in the USA – perhaps there are other varieties?)

Yes, you wash them with hot water and salt two or three times then leave them to ferment for a week or two in the last batch if salt water with horseraddish, parsley root and maybe a pepper if you like them a bit spicy (not kimchi spicy). This is the proper way to do it, as opposed to using vinegar.

We eat shrimp and crabs. They're basically water insects. I would totally eat insects approved as food, just not processed insect flour, which I think will be used as a filler in other products in the future, just like soybean protein is used today.

It’s a comic but I think it captures the idea that just by making something edible it eventually becomes a preference.

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/craproot

Stop being such an arrogant person from the self-annointed "civilized" world. This is such bullshit. We're "better", "economic and tech development", "move beyond", "they don't even want to eat it" , "progress". Framing those "savages" as desparate for any scrap, it's ridiculous. It's so biased, and totally incorrect. Just coming from such a one-sided point of view. Just see outside of that, that's the point, don't think you're better than them. It's BS, man. How can you see it's just: you think you're way is the best. But you're wrong. It's just the only way you know. You don't have to be so blind as to pretend only your way is the right way. That wrong attitude is the foundation of abuse.

Dude as a Chileanized American (who sought to Americanize from overseas, normally spent all my allowance on American cultural exports) I would totally eat that hamster meat. Yeah rodent but there were rodents the Irkutski (originally Native Americans come from Irkutsk) ate, 1 ton rodents. That's meat. Plus these Peruvian Beef Hamsters are meaty (I forget what the Kechwa name for them is EDIT: Cuy is the name), like bred for that, and there's hygienic practices they follow these aren't rats. And they IIRC weigh a kilogram or so. Dude the shellfish in Chile are much more exotic than that, dude Piure, I want to eat, tastes like money, supernaturally high in vanadium metal, and that's not even the most exotic. And when I was little I would put insects in my mouth, with intellect to know why were clean which weren't.

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.

Most of those will make you sick without special preparation, so pointing at variation in taste across cultures that have (sometimes by necessity) found ways to safely eat those things isn't contradicting the idea that our sense of disgust is an evolved trait to keep us away from things that are likely to lead to disease.

That is true, I’d be more curious about the food source evolution. Even in this article the writer pointed out that it was a tradition and that sourcing the wasps was getting harder each year due to pesticides. Does this mean culturally they have moved past eating wasps and moved on to more “normal” food sources? I’ve never thought of eating insects as a primary source of food for a culture unless they were poor and couldn’t afford better foods.

When I look at the history of the Netherlands there's always been a ton of good farming land available (no mountains!) and the North sea is teeming with fish. Starvation was a rare occasion but in times of war or flooding people ate anything that moved.

You can't really say it's "more normal" to not eat insects. That's cultural relativism bias. "unless poor or couldn't afford better" again cultural relatvisim bias. Stop that, it's jarring.

You hit the nail perfectly right on the head! Cultural blindness!

- Many Indian vegetarians would find eating _any type of meat_ (chicken, beef, pork, fish, even eggs) repulsive.

Guinea Pig, right? Instead of Hamster

Generally, we Americans balk at any eating of rodent. Missing out! Americans need to get on a Nutria diet stat.

Yes. Cuy, cuyes. Different names. Named "conejito de Indias" in Spanish, bunny of the Indies, stedda Guinea Pig. It's not from Guinea. It's not African. It couldn't use the n word without getting fired even if it did talk. They would get a genealogical (Guinea-logical) chart and say, uh, not African, fired.

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.