Food of the Future (and the present)

[minoanmiss]

CONTENT ADVISORY: this is a video about preparing and consuming unusual-in-my-foodways-at-least arthropods. (insects, and some arachnids).

Watch on YouTube

This is really interesting from a culinary/sustainability/future foodways viewpoint. ANd yet it made me shudder a lot. What, practically, is the difference between a plate of shrimp and a plate of scorpions? Yet I'm happy to eat one and really not sure I could stomach the other. I'll have to think some more about what my reaction can tell me about how food is defined by culture, and how that may apply to my worldbuilding.

The ants sound interesting though.

Comments

[ex_flameandsong751]

A Mexican-American friend got me to try chapulines and they were good. I mean, my ancestors ate lutefisk and rotten shark, so this isn't worse to my way of thinking 🤣🤣🤣

IDK if I could get enthusiastic about scorpions, BUT if given the opportunity I probably would try them at least once just to say I did. It would depend on how they were being prepared/served.

It's an interesting worldbuilding thought exercise, that's for sure.

[sabotabby]

I think it's ethically better to eat insects than most other kinds of animals but also NOPE NOPE NOPE not watching that.

[claudia603]

So have you heard of this town in Cambodia (Skuon, I think?) where they are so inundated by tarantulas (just writing that made me shudder) that during the awful Khmer Rouge time, they started eating them to survive and now....well, now, they make them as delicacies (tarantulas).

I suppose I'd eat anything if I were starving but if not....no.

[minoanmiss]

Not that specific town, but I have heard of people eating tarantulas. If the nice chef in the video is right that they taste like softshell crab...

[amaebi]

According to an entomologist friend who Kindly invited me to an annual insect feast when we both taught at Albion College: All arthropods taste like shrimp. (Well, in that region, anyway, I footnote.) trying crisp-fried scorpions with garlic (and chili, if it's an option) is one of my top food ambitions. Unlike, say, eating fugu.

[dhampyresa]

If the nice chef in the video is right that they taste like softshell crab...

My dad says the same thing (he lived in Guyane for a while).

[minoanmiss]

Intriguing.

[ororo]

When I was in Mexico I had crickets on a guacamole taco. Crunchy. Mostly tasted of the salt and chile that was on them.

I'm not sure I could do a roach or a scorpion, but both of those were available at the market.

[cmcmck]

Fascinating but still too much like meat for me! :o)

[med_cat]

Hmm... ;)

You know, another lab in our department worked with tobacco hornworms...they are surprisingly nice to pet ;))

Also, two people told me insect-eating stories, can tell you if you wish ;)

[minoanmiss]

Please tell me more! What do tobacco hornworms feel like, and what are the insect eating stories? I am here to learn. :)

[med_cat]

Hehe they feel nice actually, cool and soft :)

Re: insect-eating stories, one of my mom's fellow teachers had been to Africa, one of those teacher exchange programs. During his stay there, he was asked to dinner by one of the local families, and one of the dishes they served was fried termites. He ate it, as it would've offended the hosts if he refused. He said they were all right, crunchy and a bit sour ;)

Colleagues from Africa, when I told them, said that yes, they eat fried termites, set out a dish of water, they fall in, then you collect them, pull their wings off and fry 'em