Monday, January 30, 2006

Eating Bugs

I found this on a website:

If Americans could tolerate more insects (bugs) in what they eat, farmers could significantly reduce the amount of pesticides applied each year. It is better to eat more insects and less pesticide residue. If the U.S. Food and Drug Administration would relax the limit for insects and their parts (double the allowance) in food crops, U.S. farmers could significantly apply less pesticide each year. Fifty years ago, it was common for an apple to have worms inside, bean pods with beetle bites and cabbage with worm eaten leaves. Most Americans don't realize that they are probably already eating a pound or two of insects each year. One cannot see them, since they have been ground up into tiny pieces in such items as strawberry jams, peanut butter, spaghetti sauce, applesauce, frozen chopped broccoli, etc. Actually, these insect parts make some food products more nutritious. An issue of the Food Insects Newsletter reports that 80 percent of the world's population eats insects intentionally and 100 percent eat them unintentionally.

So I'd like to hear from you. Vote with your comments. So here's my question for you. Would you be willing to eat food that had more defects and possibly bugs in return for the knowledge that less pesticides were used?

2 comments:

pita-woman said...

Bugs, BLECH!!
Give me the pesticides!

Anonymous said...

Oh good grief! A few bugs really won't hurt you. When I was a kid we raised a garden. No matter how well you cleaned the broccoli, a little green worm sometimes ended up on someone's plate. But after it's been blanched, frozen for several months, then boiled, it really is harmless. You learn to either not look at what you eat, or if you find a worm, push it to the edge of your plate and go on.

Americans are such wimps! We've been over-sanitized, so now our food has no flavor. And it's killing us. We're afraid of bugs in our veggies. We won't eat any meat if it isn't beef, pork, chicken, or turkey. And then we only eat the boring parts. What we do eat has no flavor because the animals are bred for tenderness, not flavor, and are artificially fattened in feed lots. No wonder we over-eat. We're searching for flavor that isn't there.

I say eat the bugs!

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