121–130 of 495 posts
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>my intuition here was way off. I expected insects to pose far fewer risks from parasites to humans. Weird, my intuition was the exact opposite. The thought of eating bugs triggers a disgust reaction, similar to the thought of eating crap. Humans developed those reactions over hundreds of generations for a reason.
A disgust of eating insects is not universal in all cultures.
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There will always be some cultures that are different from the norm. 100% uniformity in human culture is very rare. But look across the globe: I would posit that a large percentage of humans have a taboo against insect consumption. If there are any counter examples that you can state from the world one must analyze how numerically large that community is within that country and the world. In other words, don't count…
I don't think taboos are in anyway useful in determining health implications. For example, are dogs or horses in any way materially worse than cows or sheep for people to eat? Why are the French happy to eat frogs and snails? I'm reasonably certain the idea of certain food being taboo is almost completely due to cultural norms.
"Parasitic developmental forms were detected in 244 (81.33%) out of 300 (100%) examined insect farms. In 206 (68.67%) of the cases, the identified parasites were pathogenic for insects only; in 106 (35.33%) cases, parasites were potentially parasitic for animals; and in 91 (30.33%) cases, parasites were potentially pathogenic for humans. " Sounds horrific. How does this compare to other food sources?
Other food species, in their wild forms, don't rely quite as hard on a fast generation cycle to solve parasites. If individuals of your species can lay eggs and die before the exponential curve of some infection reaches the steep parts, that's good enough, problem solved. It's the same reason as why short-lived programs require neither free nor GC and why we prefer to not bother with types in one-shot scripts.
Also loved the computer program analogy.
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We have a somewhat similar reaction to eating brains for instance, yet that’s probably one of the safer part or the animals we eat. I think a lot of the reactions we built over hundreds of generations need to be revised in the world we are in today, and in light of what we know now. One of the interesting one is our reaction to body sizes, and how we still have an instinctive reaction to tall people, when it makes no…
Prion transmitted diseases similar to Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease seem to be not that rare in nature. You need to cook the brains extremely well and long to be on the safe side. Thankfully BSE (Mad Cow Disease) was not as transmissible as feared.
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"I’ll pick the salad over the steak any day, though." In terms of food safety and risk of pathogens, salad is far, far more dangerous than steak.
I mean it's raw but still in a steak you probably have way more substances and end of foodchain accumulations.
If I remember correctly it was far better to eat organic vegetables/fruit and “normal” meat, than the other way around, and only marginally worse than all organic. The explanation being mammals have kidneys and a liver that we no longer eat (most of us at least).
From this one could guess insects could be worse than steak.
Sorry I don’t have a reference right now, or know if this research was heavily skewed somehow by the meat industry. I would be happy to hear more from someone knowledgeable on the subject.
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My gut reaction to the smell of pork, bacon or any meat derived from pig is disgust. That doesn't mean this feeling is some kind of natural primal intuition, it just means I didn't grow up eating it.
Actually, pork meat can be really dangerous!! That's also another reason why some religions ban it's consumption. Nowadays, we learned enough to overcome the dangers of pork but that's a result of modern society.
We don't know why religions banned certain meat. Anthropologists etc give us post facto rationalisations, and, to my mind, even the holy books might be retrospective excuses.
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The probability of Covid type pandemic become closer to 1 the more bugs farm they’re. The lethality of of that type of outbreak become stronger the longer the we ignore that threat. It’s just pure Maths to be honest.
I don't know whether what you are saying is true. But for the sake of argument, let's assume that it is. Could you explain to me what is exponential about this process?
Larger animals can be inspected individually to find pathogens or diseases. Insects are so small that it's practically impossible to inspect each individual organism. You can do sampling of the batch, but the odds of missing bad ones are still high. Same with the fruits and vegetables, some are easy to inspect, others are almost impossible, or impossible to clean. There are kosher (insect-free) versions of lettuce an…
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We've been eating other foods for a very long time, and we've developed methods to handle, and prevent, the parasites. Cook meat, make sure fruits and vegetables are not blighted, ferment dairy, various preservation methods from pickling to canning to smoking. The list of methods is enormous. We haven't been eating insects except in times of famine. We have not yet developed methods of dealing with it.
I assume in the Western part of the world, you haven't been eating insects in normal times, but it's not the case in other regions. In my country for instance, people eat termites, crickets, caterpillars/larvae of rynchophorus, Augosoma centurus among others. They are a considerable source of nutriments such as proteins and lipids.