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.}}
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=9Z
https://piped.video/watch?v=9Z_UndhO2ME
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
I don’t get what you’re trying to tell me.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/Zgz8L9D89aI
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
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.
Interesting. So, what bugs have you eaten?
If there were 2lb spiders that taste like lobster roaming around on land I would sure as fuck be out in the woods with a net every weekend.
Surely you mean a flamethrower.
I have it on pretty good authority of the film Snowpiercer that bug bars are delicious.
I tried a mealworm chocolate bar once. Can NOT confirm.
Nah, taste is fine. It's the texture that's weird
agreed. ive had crickets at a local restaurant and once when i went to ecuador i had these giant roasted termites. both were well prepared and tasted good, but they also both (the termites in particular) had a bad texture and had pieces that just didn’t want to get swallowed. like if popcorn had 200% more kernel.
well obviously wet bugs are cleaner since they're surrounded by water all the time
And presalted lol.
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
You’ve eaten interesting crickets. Those that I know have no bones.
Snail is a "bug" and it's 100% meat.
And you have escargot for just that. Guess I'm missing your point.
Snails are more in the same category as squids and octopuses, and I know people who won't eat those because they're 'gross'
Agreed. I've had chocolate covered crickets and candy bugs and stuff because I travel (military; not rich) and like eating new and interesting things. The best you can do is cover up the taste and texture. Neither are palatable.
Even before I went vegan I never understood seafood. Who wants to tear a crab leg apart for a tiny bit of meat?
I absolutely love both the flavor of the meat and the feeling of ripping it apart with my hands.
Having had lobster exactly once, I really don't understand. The meat tastes like nothing, exactly like 99% of all meat. The only exception is a good beef cut, and that still has to be prepared correctly. Everything else is just about the butter, salt, spices.
The manual part I can kind of understand, honestly. There's something rewarding about working for your food. Though I did feel like I'm using more energy to get the food than I end up consuming. It's like a lick-mat for dogs.
The meat is that good.
Me!
Agree. That's why I go king crab!
I feel the same about lobster and crayfish. A lot of work for a lot of money and very little gain.
It's part of the experience. Same thing can be said for something like chicken wings or un-shelled nuts
So fucking gross, I'll literally never be able to wrap my head around it. Also what's worh seafood lover's obsessions with eating things alive yo that's psychopath shit
Fuck yes, people freak out about eating crickets or shit but then proceed to eat a huge spiderlike creature that's mushy inside (crabs)
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.
That vein is their digestive tract : )
It's not a vein.
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.
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.
You can buy them online if you just wanna try them. This seller has a YouTube channel too.
They are decently popular in Mexico. From what I have heard it tastes like the fry batter and seasoning so basically delicious.
Grilled crickets taste like chicken with walnut imo
Meanwhile I don't like crustaceans, but if you made a hamburger out of crickets I would be fine with it.
Almost like they have actual meat on them?
Trying to gaslight into "eat the bugs" isn't going to work
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.
Wet bugs are very distantly related to earth bugs.
Won't you eat chicken just because pidgeons are disgusting? (yet also eaten sometimes)
Pigeons are delicious though
yeah look up the passenger pigeon. Used to be delicious
Pigeons literally exist in the us because they were imported for food iirc
Crustaceans are the closest relatives of insects.
For a foreigner: shouldn't it be "distantly related" instead?
Yeah that or distant relatives
Oh, I'm no native speaker either
No problem with pigeon if it's been raised for food, or had a life in nature. I'm just not eating the ones in urban centres that have been eating trash all their lives.
I should've come up with a better analogy...
Depends on the pigeon, some are absolute Chads
Well, wet bug meat are actually tasty, those land bugs are mostly chitin shells and not much protein, also the taste is not good.
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.
They eat giant silk worms in China. Apparently they're pretty good.
People eat bugs all over the planet.
2 billion insects eaters over 7 billion humans worldwide to be exact
Fun fact... lobster and crayfish were so disdained once that it was literally only used to feed prisoners.
*Preserved crawfish and lobster, which tastes like shit because it's been transported in a barrel for many days.
Most of what we eat today is either fresh or frozen, not mushy decomposing meat.
We don't eat the crunchy bits of our wet bugs. And their flesh is delicious.
Soft shell lobster, though, right? Granted, I'd think it's less crunchy, but still...
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.
Would proper labelling ameliorate this worry for you?
vegetarians
Aka [Eating bugs without knowing you're eating bugs]
Top right image just needs more Old Bay
wontfix
I’ve wondered about this before, just from the perspective of North Americans. Bugs that live in the water? Delicious and fine to eat. Actually look at a shrimp, though. If it lived on the surface people would never consider eating that. I also noticed a lot of people don’t really realize that at some point shrimp have heads. What gets me is how people have strong feelings but don’t seem to have thought it through.
if that lived on the surface you'd never consider eating it
If it lived on the surface and tasted like shrimp I'd have to be convinced once and only once.
Aren't shrimps are basically cockroaches of the sea? They're delicious though lol.
I believe shrimp are closer to isopods (roly polies and such), though I may be mistaken
I think it's the lobster that's the ocean cockroach. Maybe shrimps too, I dunno.
I've had strong feelings ever since I realized the little nubbins were where its legs used to be. Now I just eat them anyway and consciously don't think about it
I kind of miss when Hot Topic used to sell crickets and snacks, they were pretty good no cap
I never had lobster/king crab.
Anime says it's tasty. Is it?
It's worth trying. Lobster has a mild flavor and a smooth chewy texture. It tastes great with butter and lemon, though there are probably better ways to enjoy it. Crab is similar. One thing that takes some training and patience is removing the exoskeleton. But, that's pretty fun, too. My kiddo likes to play with the claws afterward. When no one's looking, I do too.
Lobster is a bit overrated IMO but crab is the best food there is.
IMO lobster kind of sucks. People douse it in butter because it does not have a ton of flavor.
Never had king crab. I do love occasionally having dungeness crab out of the Sound though.
overrated, but good enough to give it a try.
😱
Jerma made this meme
Do people eat centipedes?
Regularly, no, but parts of south east asia may dabble.
As long as they are all well fried 👌 🍤 🍤 🍤
Cladistically, insects are a type of crustacean.
Also, none of the animals portrayed are bugs in the strict sense, which are a specific suborder of insects.yeah i've been vegetarian my whole life and lobster / crab always seemed particularly disgusting. the bodies are segmented!! they have exoskeletons!! vile!!
Funny this could be used to describe a peanut
The whole boiling alive thing always put me off. Torturing a creature to death for a morsel of food never seemed quite right to me.
