I don't get it and I'm from a fishing family

117 comments

If you've got cleaned, cooked seafood that smells like fish shit, you're at a shitty restaurant. My only takeaway from this is that we should really see if we can make terrestrial insects taste as delicious as we make aquatic insects taste.
- oh there's some tasty bugs out there already. people are just too squeamish about it.
  
  For me its mostly the legs/heads. I dont fuck with heads on anything and legs need to be way bigger for me to be interested. I'd try one of those fly/mosquito burgers tho.
  
  I believe you, but I'm gonna need some examples...
- Or you could, y'know, just eat beans instead.
  
  You ever had shrimp n bacon bbq beans with ancho and chipotle bbq sauce? Probably not because it's kinda my proprietary recipe but it's dead simple and amazing. couple cups of beans, cup of a good bbq sauce heavily seasoned with ancho, chipotle, smoked paprika, white pepper, into a fry pot with a 4 strips of bacon previously fried in and chopped coarse, simmer until thick and then add your peeled shrimp right at the end to cook,

crustaceans and insects are two different things, not real complicated. The crustaceans have actual meat, not a fluid filled exoskeleton.
- I dunno... Have you ever opened a crab up before cooking it? It's pretty much all goo inside an exoskeleton.
  
  I mean I eat them raw and it is some yummy goo, definitely not bug like
- While it is inaccurate to characterize crustaceans as bugs, they are arthropods and share an enormous amount of anatomical and psychological features with insects. Both have open circulatory systems and use hemolymph to hydraulically operate their limbs. That "meat" that you're talking about is only really visible after cooking, and consists mostly of denatured and congealed hemolymph.
  
  Well I.kmow that's wrong cause look at an uncooked shrimp
- Large bugs definitely have some meat on them. Chomp on a large beetle and you will see

Well the latter have more "meat" on them, whereas bugs are mostly just "shells" once they die. You aren't eating the shells of crustaceans, you're eating the innards
- You got a point, but the kind of bugs eaten in some parts of the world are usually the fatty kind .
  
  See, at a glance, that thing looks disgusting. I have an instinctive revulsion to the thought of eating it.
  I guess some people would say the same for whole live shrimp though, and I grew up fishing them out of the sea and boiling them up in a pot.

The bottom ones have delectable white meat inside. The top ones are all brown guts and crispy, musty shell. Nobody is shelling crickets for a worthwhile piece of meat inside like you do a shrimp or a lobster.
They look similar to bugs, sure. But let's not pretend it's the same thing.
- Sounds to me that the common preparation is to just blend them into a powder at which point they're just a non descript protein rich powder
  
  Still no tasty meat.
  
  I mean, at that point just use soy beans.

TL;DR: disgust is learned.
How Do Toddlers Learn About Disgust
Is moral disgust socially learned?
Disgust as an adaptive system for disease avoidance behavior
Bottom line is that while there are things that we're hard-wired to reject, the rest is more about what social groups teach us at a young age. Also, we can overcome the hard-wired aspects to an extent, again through social reinforcement.

Oh I can explain it easily! One of them tastes good and the other one tastes bad. That's pretty much it... Not sure how it's so confusing though
- Have you ever tried insects? Those who have have said that they taste good. They said it tastes like shrimp.
  
  Those who have have had a different day of taste buds. With insects you're supposed to eat the exo skeleton, which is crunchy, but not nice. Then the meat is a bit nutty, is ok but the texture is off putting imho. Maybe eating your shrimp unpeeled would be a good equivalent.
  
  Yes. Do not recommend. It is okay to say no to drunk dares, ugh so gross.
- I dunno I feel like most bugs would be pretty decent fried in Gaelic butter with salt.
  
  That could be said for just about anything.
  
  I've tried crickets and ants before and they were decent with a ton of seasoning but it sure as hell wasn't as good as lobster.

I live in a fishing town, and I used to love crab, until I was adult and it was my turn to prep them. The first time I turned a crab over and saw the bottom, where all its freaky little legs connect, I had a real "oh god this is either a bug or a space alien" moment. I can't stand crab anymore, just the thought of it makes me feel nauseated. Lobster too. Somehow shrimps are okay, though.
- Bro... Shrimp are bait. How can you be grossed out by crab and then pinch a shrimp in half XD? I myself like all the water bugs... But land bugs are still gross.
  
  Land bugs mostly have pretty blend or bad taste, regardless of their looks anyway. In Asia they often add spices to make them taste something.
  It's a bit like snails too, it's not that tasty itself, the only reason it's good is because it tastes like the butter and garlic we put in.
  And for both it's mostly the texture that's off putting. Some people can grow used to the texture though.
  
  I can see it, I grew up fishing for both too and shrimp are so easy and casual to twist and shuck off the shell and chow down, while crabs are all armored up and feel a lot more like eating an alien being.
  A tasty alien being, though.
  No land bugs for me either, they're just full of goo inside. I like my animals full of meat, personally.
- It's gross sure but i never understood how that would make someone stop eating it. For me no matter how gross something is the taste is the only thing that matters.
  Other examples, rabbit's brain, black pudding, or in general how we kill most animals to make steak... It's always creepy, gross or a bit disturbing, but it never changed my taste for it.

Shrimps is bugs
- Show the tattoo

If all the meat on earth disappeared tomorrow, I would become a vegetarian before ever knowingly consuming a bug.
- What if they were raised in a hermetically sealed environment, dried out, ground into a fine powder, then added to batter to make pancakes?
  
  I don't think I could eat whole bugs, but bug flour? Easy.
  
  so just regular flour?
  
  Lol this is something I do from time to time. Cricket flour is available where I live and it makes great breakfast pancakes!
  
  No thanks

I've had crispy dried grasshoppers that were chill once, and some BANGIN cricket tacos in NYC.
They're actually pretty great for protein.

I don't have to eat the shells, offal, or shit of I eat the big sea ones though.
- This is my thing as well.
  If they had shrimp sized grasshoppers that came peeled and deveined, heads removed...with a nice sauce to go with it?
  I'd at least try it.
- Some of the offal is quite delicious IMO. Like the scallop's skirt (where the eyes are) surrounding the meat, and gonad (the orange or white sac) are great, and don't actually have any sort of fishy taste if that's not your thing.
  I watched a yt clip of a scallop boat in the US where the guy was cleaning the scallops by cutting out the meat and throwing the rest away and it just seemed so wasteful! A lot of countries don't throw the rest of it away.
  
  Some of the offal is quite delicious IMO.
  Japanese cuisine contends that offal, like fish liver, is sometimes the best part. Monkfish comes to mind. Also, some people really like crawfish and lobster liver.
  Hot take: Blue crab offal is where some of the aroma and flavor comes from when you steam them. Especially the "mustard" (although that's not recommended these days - see "bio-accumulation"). The innards, except the gills, are fantastic stacked on a saltine with some Old Bay seasoning and vinegar on top.

I'll eat as many bugs as a billionare eats.
- But aren't billionaires completely sick in the head? I'd be careful with a claim like that

In case your serious that you don’t get it. The bottom pic is all crustaceans that are more closely related to insects than fish.
- Op is saying they don't get why many ppl frown upon eating terrestrial insects but do eat aquatic ones.
  
  Of note, insects diverged from the arthropod line that would become crabs, lobsters, etc in the beginning of the Carboniferous or late Devonian, a solid 350-400 million years ago. This means crabs and grasshoppers are more distantly related to each other than humans and frogs.
- But you can eat a crustacean in a satisfying way without eating it's head, offal, or poop.
  
  80% of the countries find them tasty, I for one have not tried insect, at least not on purpose.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entomophagy
  https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/04/health/insect-rodent-filth-in-food-wellness/index.html
- ...That's the point they're making....
  They don't get how we like to eat water arthropods but not land ones...

Nah fam you can keep the sea bugs, too.
- More for the rest of us!

Stamets, do you want me to catch the 4 inch cockroach that I've been raising free-range in my apartment and send it to you to find out? It's on a non-GMO diet.

All you need is salt to make them taste like sea bugs.
- If that is actually the case, I wonder if Horseshoe Crabs taste different today, than when they evolved? The oceans were much more salty back then.
  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0031018206002483?via%3Dihub

Most people are definitely quite squeamish about eating unshelled shrimp. This feels like a strawman.

Sea roaches

I don't eat water bugs either. They're also gross.

they’re in the water so they’re clean obvs

I'd rather eat bugs than shellfish. Never had bugs but I know I don't like seafood so at least there's a chance the insects won't be bad.

Oh, you eat bugs. You just don't know it.

I don't get it either, but head says no no and yes yes.
- It's upbringing mostly. I grew up in a family that ate sea brass fillets or tuna steaks at most, and was 20+ when I tried my first shrimp. I hated the taste & texture.
  I now like tiger prawns, lobster and other large crustaceans with lot of meat and little actual seafood flavor, but the tiny ones are just like bugs to me. I can tolerate them readily peeled in a strongly flavoured dish, but can live without just fine.
  Really is an acquired taste.

It's all about presentation. I can prep crickets in a way that almost anyone will eat them. Feed them oatmeal for a few days, then slow roast, powder in a blender, combine with sesame oil, salt, and spices, stuff it into wonton wrappers and steam. If nobody knows what's in them they disappear. But if I do fried crickets like the ones the Korean street vendors sell, very few non-Asians would touch them.
A lot of insects can be prepared using familiar presentations and the unsuspecting will devour them. I found ant cookies delicious - like a molasses cookie. And ground rolly-pollies (sowbug/pillbug/armadillium) could be used to make shrimp shumai and nobody would be the wiser.
- So they're really popular if you pulverize them so they're totally unrecognizable and then trick people into eating them without respect for bodily autonomy‽
  
  It doesn't sound like a trick, it sounds like a simple offer that people take up without bothering to ask what's in them.
  
  Right?
  Like this person is saying all this and coming across as quite smug about getting people to eat something by deception that they wouldn't choose to eat...and acting like it's something to be proud of.
  I can't imagine it'd be getting a similar positive reaction if it were about sneaking animal products into a vegans meal.
  
  He's describing substituting them in for similar things. You wouldn't be able to tell the difference in shrimp shumai because those listed aren't insects, they're terrestrial crustaceans. (I better not find comments in favour of forced vaccination on your history) EDIT: Jeez...you know like the age of consent in every state dude. And all the "close in age" statute gaps by how many years.
- Chocolate covered giant ants are lovely! Sold in Selfridges (UK).
- I own a bar in south western Saskatchewan. The other night I pulled the jar out of jalapeno garlic fried crickets i got offn Amazon, roughly 3/4s of the patrons gave them a try.
- Real question: if you somehow fed those crickets seaweed, do you think they'd taste a little more... fishy or shimpy?
  And ground rolly-pollies (sowbug/pillbug/armadillium) could be used to make shrimp shumai and nobody would be the wiser.
  I'm honestly waiting for someone to breed these big enough to use whole, somehow. Terrestrial cultivation of shrimp-like food has got to be a better way to go than actual shrimp.