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Comment by rwmj | Hacker News Reader

If you're ever in Tokyo, the Meguro Parasitological Museum is genuinely worth a visit although maybe don't go straight out for sushi afterwards as we did.

Pictures of parasites: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/meguro-parasitological-m...

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Now you’ve got me curious… are parasites part of any culture’s diet? I’m assuming human parasites are a hard no since it’d be like mainlining the eggs, but are there any parasitic species that we eat? There’s probably more plant ones like huitlacoche but I can’t think of any edible animal parasite.

I know there’s Ophiocordyceps sinensis which attacks caterpillars but that’s more traditional medicine than food.

Here are some examples of parasites that are purposely eaten by humans:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/five-parasitic-spe...

Bécasse paté with tapeworms in France ??? I m french and never Heard of this. And I can't find anything in french about this on internet. I'm sceptical...

I asked a French friend who comes from a long line of hunters. He'd never heard of it either. There are quite a few French woodcock preparations that include eating the guts, but I've never heard anything about tapeworms. I've also cleaned quite a few American woodcock, and I have never seen a tapeworm in the innards.

I think you mean parasites that we purposefully eat, but there are parasites everywhere. If you eat raw, or cooked fish, there's a reasonable chance you've eaten (hopefully dead) parasites. But not all parasites are harmful to humans, so you tend to hear less about those.

There's an excellent answer already, but I would like to add mushrooms, since some of them are parasitic (eg ones that grow on trees). So I think: shiitake mushrooms.

The mushroom that grows in ants are parasitic and scary.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophiocordyceps_unilateralis

Which itself gets parasitized by other fungi

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