Recent News Headline: Cicadas Coming to U.S. East Coast This Spring
From North Carolina on up. (see link below)
Every 17 years, millions of cicadas fill
the sky ... this will be that year.
This got me thinking about them, as well
as looking things up about them. Cicadas are so noisy and troublesome, yet some
cultures make use of this by eating them, and have for a long time.
Why not? Cicadas are known to be high
in protein, low in fat, and low in carbohydrates (based on scientific
studies). If anyone has ever tried them, please comment.
See! Good and bad sides again. :-)
However would I want to eat them? My dad
said, once when I was a teen, that I would eat a roach if I was hungry enough.
My reply was: I hope I never get that hungry.
Yet, I do see things on TV that make me
wonder why people eat the things they do ... and survive it. Maybe our genetic
system can handle more then we give it credit.
Or, maybe some cultures have built up a
tolerance to their environment as we have here in the USA; which means, we
still shouldn't drink the water elsewhere due to not having the possible
immunities they have and we don't.
Sound reasoning.
So ... what's all this about eating or not
eating bugs?
Maybe we developed so many other food
sources we don't need to, so we just leave the bugs to the birds, etc., to eat
them.
Below are a couple of quotes I found about
eating them; which I thought I'd share too.
"Despite the warning, there is no evidence to suggest that cicadas
are unsafe to eat. The only concern was with cicadas that emerge in areas
heavily treated with pesticides and herbicides, as the insects could have
absorbed the chemicals into their bodies.” (John Roach - National Geographics)
My thinking is: what else is new?! We have
been ingesting small amounts of chemicals, from many sources, for a very, very
long time. Knowing the chemicals and side effects would be just as important as
anything we eat. There are plants that are naturally harmful if eaten wrong or
eaten at all.
"Whether people are curious or doing it for the shock value, they
are eating cicadas. Asian peoples have eaten cicadas for centuries, and there
are records of Native Americans eating cicadas. Some who eat them say they
taste like asparagus, popcorn, minty shrimp, and piney shrimp. A man in
Bloomington Indiana had an allergic reaction to cicadas after eating 30. He was
also allergic to seafood -- both cicadas and shrimps are arthropods so this
makes sense." (Dan Mozgai - cicadamania.com)
Again, it's important to know what foods
we eat and what's in them, to the best of our ability. I even discovered that
FDA has a list of things that we eat that can have a certain level of bugs in
them. When I heard about it, my first reaction was ... GROSS!
However, after careful contemplation, I
realized that I had already possibly done it and - yes, I was still around. I
had survived over 65 years of ingesting what some may say I
shouldn't have ... even while living in or visiting foreign countries.
Maybe I have a strong genetic
constitution.
Maybe it's due to the programming that I
got as a kid, when my mom told me to live in my environment so I could build up
my immunities to it.
Maybe it was the Grace from God.
Whatever it was that got me this far, in
life, I am thankful.
This website, below, has more information
regarding Cicadas as a food source.
Now, after reading about "consciously" eating bugs, will I
try it?
Hmmm ... maybe ... but you can go first.
;-)
