• bleistift2@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    XKCD 1268 by Randall Munroe (CC BY-NC 2.5).

    Transcription:

    Imagine you were transported to an alternate universe just like your own, except people occasionally ate spiders. You can’t convince anyone this is weird. [[Two figures stand. A woman is holding a big spider. The other figure looks shocked. There is another spider on the floor.]] Woman: Mmm… Figure: No! What are you doing!? This is how I feel about lobster.

    {{Title text: As best as I can tell, I was transported here from Earth Prime sometime in the late 1990s. Your universe is identical in every way, except for the lobster thing and the thing where some of you occasionally change your clocks for some reason.}}

  • Crow@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    It wouldn’t be weird to land bugs if they had that tasty meat crustaceans do. I’m big for alternative sources of protein like bugs, but the fact is they taste like shit.

  • ColdWater@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    Sea bugs are delicious and have more meat than land bugs, I’ve eat crickets before and it’s 80% bones/ definitely not meat and 20% actual meat

        • kofe@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          When I think too much about it, eating any meat really does gross me out. I still do but occasionally get tempted to try going vegetarian or something. I’m just too damn lazy

          • MrBakedBeansOnToast@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            You don’t have to do it religiously. You can eat meat in one occasion, and avoid it in another. Especially these days the meat-supplements are getting pretty good. I would opt for them more often if they weren’t more expensive than real meat.

            • ElephantInTheRoom@lemmy.ml
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              1 year ago

              I myself find all those industrial meat alternatives pretty disgusting, especially considering what stuff they put in it to make it taste and feel like the real thing.

              I’d rather mix my faux-meat myself, even while I’m not completely vegetarian, just almost.

          • clothes@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I can relate to this so I’ll just add that aligning my diet with my values was the best decision I’ve ever made. Being able to eat without feeling guilty/confused/complicated was life-changing. I didn’t do it all at once, or torture myself.

            And we live at this amazing time when you can be lazy AND get amazing not-morally-horrible food! Typing this as I munch on an entire package of addictive store bought animal-free chocolate chip cookies :P

  • ox0r@jlai.lu
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    1 year ago

    Fuck yes, people freak out about eating crickets or shit but then proceed to eat a huge spiderlike creature that’s mushy inside (crabs)

    • Dr_pepper_spray@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      To be fair, I had ice cream with crickets all over them, and honestly it had a kind of woody / pukey aftertaste that I couldn’t get through. I wondered if part of the problem is you can’t de-vein the little things. Aren’t you basically eating their shit?

      I can de-vein a shrimp, and I only care for lobster tail.

    • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.net
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      1 year ago

      I actually wanna try those crickets I heard they sell at a baseball stadium somewhere in the Eastern side the states. Apparently, they are the most popular concession there and they come in a variety of flavors like sour cream & onion.

      • SlutbunWalla@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Crickets actually aren’t bad on their own. We did a “Fear Factor” themed fundraiser for Katrina relief back in high school. We made cricket sugar cookies, cricket-covered chocolate strawberries, flavored mealworms, things like that. Things weren’t selling as well as we would have wanted, so, being the weird kid with an extra bag of crickets, I stated that I would eat a live cricket for every $20 that was pledged. That ended up raising an old extra $140, and I ate 7 crickets in front of my classmates. They were relatively tasteless, and, since I found that it didn’t gross me out, years later, when I was an educator at our local aquarium, I would use, “Wanna see me eat a live bug?” strategically to bribe my summer camp kids into staying calm. If they were well behaved for an hour after lunch, I would pop one of the feeder crickets into my mouth. It brought much joy and disgust to the 10 year olds.

      • Dudewitbow@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Crickets when fried are basically like chips, but with more texture (crunchier)

        Definately a level 1 level of trying insects.

      • SeaJ@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        They are decently popular in Mexico. From what I have heard it tastes like the fry batter and seasoning so basically delicious.

      • ox0r@jlai.lu
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        1 year ago

        Grilled crickets taste like chicken with walnut imo

    • Shiki@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Almost like they have actual meat on them?

      Trying to gaslight into “eat the bugs” isn’t going to work

      • ox0r@jlai.lu
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        1 year ago

        They’re pretty much all meat? Bugs aren’t empty. Chill out man

        I’m not trying to convince anyone, I do think the double standards are pretty stupid. I never ate a tarantula but I’m sure its pretty meaty.

        Also everyone uses gas lighting in different contexts so I think the word should be banned. I don’t have a clue anymore what it is supposed to mean.

        • moody@lemmings.world
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          1 year ago

          When I was in Cambodia, I saw street vendors frying up tarantulas, with lots of locals gathering around for snacks.

          I’m not sure I’m ready to eat that, but they seemed to like it.

          • WorldWideLem@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Well how are you defining meat? Terrestrial insect meat and crab or lobster meat is structurally pretty much the same. It’s all muscle fibers.

            The big difference is that you can’t really extract the insect meat like you would with a crab, so you’re stuck eating the whole thing, meat and everything else, which is probably where a lot of the apprehension comes from. And to be fair I think that’s a pretty big difference. A lot of cultures try to avoid eating “everything else” up and down the food chain.

  • XEAL@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Wet bugs are very distant related to earth bugs.

    Won’t you eat chicken just because pidgeons are disgusting? (yet also eaten sometimes)

  • partizan@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Well, wet bug meat are actually tasty, those land bugs are mostly chitin shells and not much protein, also the taste is not good.

    • DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
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      1 year ago

      Chocolate covered crickets, at least, are a regional delicacy. I’m sure some culture has figured out how to prepare large beetles and centipedes as well.

  • masquenox@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Fun fact… lobster and crayfish were so disdained once that it was literally only used to feed prisoners.

  • Lockely@pawb.social
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    1 year ago

    I do sincerely worry about insects being added as filler materials as time goes on. I have a shellfish allergy, and the same allergens that exist in the shells of shellfish also exist in most insects.

      • ggppjj@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Proper labelling would seem to be a requirement anyways if they aggravate shellfish allergies, I think the concern is more “if this starts getting used in more foods my choices for food will shrink and I may no longer be able to eat the foods I like now”.

        • Lockely@pawb.social
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          1 year ago

          It’s definitely both. A lot of folks don’t understand that insects and shellfish are similar, and I’ve yet to see “product may contain insect meal / aggravate shellfish allergies” on things that have crickets or are processed in facilities that handle insect meal. So, the FDA likely needs to catch up. But, it’s also a cheap filler protein that’s easily grown, and companies are cheap bastards, so it’s going to slowly find its way in and push out more expensive protein options.