PSA: Don't eat cicadas if you're allergic to shellfish... or at all

ickplant@lemmy.world to Lemmy Shitpost@lemmy.world – 291 points –
51

As someone with a shrimp allergy, I have to be careful with my coffee too. Certain regions, such as Colombia, are notorious for high cockroach content in their coffee.

And now I'm even more glad that I buy whole bean rather than ground coffee.

I buy whole bean then toss in a roach or two so I get the full experience, fresh right in my kitchen.

This is really cool, so you use only local roaches? That’s my issue with packaged coffee - the roaches are usually from Argentina or something and i try to buy American as much as possible.

Oh god, I like Colombian coffee. Excuse me while I retch.

I’ll have you know roachfee is a sustainable alternative to pure coffee. /s

More seriously it looks like this is primarily based on anecdotes and was directed at ground coffee vs whole beans.

At the time of his 2009 interview, Emlen also said that U.S. standards allowed for coffee beans to contain up to 10% “insect filth and insects” — a fact that has been somewhat misrepresented. According to guidance issued by the FDA, an average of 10% or more of green coffee beans were found to be insect-infested, which included beans damaged by insects or mold.

That isn't super encouraging that the standard is less than 10% any matter that isn't coffee, including insect parts.

You’re not going to be encouraged by everything else they allow.

Though I think (anyone feel free to jump in if I’ve got it wrong) that the coffee limits are not 10% non-coffee matter by weight but rather 10% of beans demonstrating insect damage/infestation/mold. This is not exactly reassuring, but it’s almost certainly far less insects than 10% of your coffee bag’s weight being ground up buggies. You can read about the FDA’s coffee analysis process which is interesting, if somewhat opaque.

I'm going to tell myself that this is an American thing that the EU protects me from. Then I will not look into it any further, so that I can continue to exist. Thank you

I’m pretty sure all insect fragments, rodent droppings, and the like all vanish as soon as they cross the EU border in accordance with food safety regulations. /s

I did start reading into said EU regulations a bit, but I won’t ruin your day.

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Can I just put them in my mouth but not eat them if I want to scare children by opening my mouth so that they make that noise so children will think that the noise is coming out of my mouth and then fly out at them for the coup de grace?

Obligatory.

Yes, was about to link this, this legit sounds cool.
Not as good as beetle helicopter noises, but close.

Also you can scream back at it from real close.

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

Obligatory.

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

You know what, I'm here for it. Anytime I hear about the cicadas coming back it's always over the top dread. People freak out, and there's so much acting like seeing a cicada is going to grind life to a halt. Everyone seems to lean into the bit.

The fact that the growing answer to the cicadas this year is a wildly different "fuck it, we'll eat them and then they can't get us" could not be more beautiful to me.

Really, it's the most believably apex predator behavior I've seen in humans.

Where are you seeing dread? Most of the cicada news I've seen falls between "this is a cool curiosity" and "this happens regularly and is perfectly fine". Also plenty of articles about eating them.

The sound of an awoken brood looking to fuck is maddening and inescapable. I absolutely dread experiencing that again.

I also don't enjoy being dive bombed walking through the parking lot of the grocery store, and finding a couple stuck to my shirt when I get home

That this occurred to someone is just more proof that groceries cost too much.

Nah, this has been a thing for a WHILE. My great grandma had cookbooks from the 1930s with recipes for cicadas.

Can we see, if only a page, of those books? Please?

That is the kind of unusual things from other times every person should get in touch with.

I mean honestly source? Free lean protein which I can acquire while circumventing price gouging and greedflation doesn't seem like that bad of an idea. Maybe toast them bitches in the air fryer and put em on a sammich. Make a CLT.

If you really want to read the shitty article. TL;DR don't eat them raw.

Certainly, if I were to eat a cicada, I would choose to eat them when they’re in what we call the teneral state or when they’ve just molted, and they’re still soft," Benson said. "They don’t have the wings fully developed, and I wouldn’t eat a cicada raw; I would cook it.”

Yeah, but the experts were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should

It’s interesting that even on lemmy people aren’t so open-minded to give eating insects a chance.

I'm all for it being an available food source, but I'd rather it not be my available food source. If my choices are to eat bugs or die, fuck it, cook me up some bugs. But in any other situation I would find it difficult to handle my instinctual revulsion if I knew what I was eating.

Huh would you look at that, I'm allergic to shellfish now.

Til: insects and shellfish are basically the same thing.

For a long time; crab, lobster, crayfish were seen by the upper class as bugs of the sea and were very inexpensive. It's only relatively recently did they become hella expensive. My 8th birthday party, I remember getting a pound of snow crab legs (including sides) for $6.99 at a nice seafood restaurant. I was born in the 90s, so it wasn't that long ago!