Posted on 02/12/2025 5:05:26 PM PST by nickcarraway
While the Singapore Food Agency (SFA) has approved 16 species of insects for consumption, some of us would still squirm when the thought of eating these creatures comes to mind.
Local actress-baker Jeanette Aw had a chance to taste these insect snacks in the latest episode of her new YouTube series JA Unscripted, released on Feb 10.
The 45-year-old was guided by local beekeeper Clarence Chua after visiting his bee farm in the first episode released last week and was told by a staff member to eat what she farmed.
She was presented with a plate of insects — baked and dried — together with fruits, condiments and mead in the taste test.
As Chua introduced the insects they would be trying, Jeanette could be seen with a worried expression.
At one point, a staff member told Chua that Jeanette thought the cicada which they would be trying was a cockroach.
He laughed in response: "If I make Jeanette Aw eat a cockroach, then my reputation would become terrible. Don't worry, everything here is approved for consumption because they are clean. You can't eat cockroaches."
He also picked two bee pupae from a square of the honeycomb they took from the beehive.
Noting that they are alive and taking shape already, she told Chua: "I'm killing it [by eating them]."
"Everything that humans eat has died. It's whether you do it in a humane way," he responded.
Jeanette bravely placed the pupa in her mouth and later agreed with Chua that there was a subtle peanut butter flavour.
While she shared that it actually tasted okay, she added: "It's just a mental thing that you are eating an insect. I feel like I cannot swallow it."
As they tried the Asian honey bee next, Jeanette said with a grimace: "I have the visual image of the legs and the wings."
After having the red dwarf honey bee, they moved on to bigger insects, trying the cicada which has a distinctive crunch.
Chua also encouraged her to eat another one dipped in kaya, which she obliged after moments of hesitation, adding in laughter: "Got a leg stuck in my teeth."
She then ate a grasshopper with jam with Chua comparing it to deep-fried squid from economic rice stalls and potato chips, which Jeanette disagreed.
"When you chew the grasshopper, it disintegrates and it becomes like [flaky bits]," she said.
They also ate coconut worm larva with honey and salt, superworm and silkworm.
When Clarence asked if she had eaten insects before, Jeanette shared that she saw them for sale in food carts in Cambodia and her friend had encouraged her to eat a 'huge" grasshopper.
After a small "tasteless" scorpion, they moved on to the final creature of the day, the jungle scorpion.
Jeanette was given a choice of eating the pincer or the stinger, and she chose the former.
Dipping the pincer entirely in honey, she threw it in her mouth and a crunch could be heard when she chewed it.
"It's very hard," she remarked.
When asked which insect she preferred the most, she chose the bees, because it didn't look as strange as the others and the taste was "not as funky".
She didn't like the worm for its "mouldy" flavour and the scorpions because it felt like she was "biting a shell".
"And I still got one of the legs stuck in my teeth," she laughed.
I would love to nibble on Jeanette Aw’s toes. Yum!
No bugs! 🐛🐜🐝🐞🦗🦟🦋
“When you chew the grasshopper, it disintegrates and it becomes like [flaky bits],” she said.
I’m not excited to try insects for food, but I’d be open to trying those that are Biblically kosher. Grasshoppers are Kosher.
I will eat chapulines, which are grasshoppers, but they have been around a long time, long before the current efforts to shape what we eat.
I have a hunch that the main pathway for insects into our diets will be in ground or powdered form, added to conventional foods as a supplement.
There are insects and insect parts in any plant food that comes out of the fields or that has been transported by truck or rail or that has been in storage.
The only way to avoid this would be to pick your tomatoes fresh off the vine in your home hydroponic system. I don’t know if hydroponics will get much traction on Earth, but they would be essential for long distance space travel or extraterrestial bases on non-terraformed worlds.
That said, unless I am recruited for the first Martian base, I think I’ll take a pass on bugs. Except for the trace contamination in grocery store products.
Humans are not geared for digesting large amounts of chitin.
Not even going to replace beef and animal meats.
The Asians eat tons of bugs , ever been to a markets in Bangkok there is multiple dozens of species for sale ,everywhere ranging from tiny ants to huge water bugs on skewers grilled up. They also eat shrimp shell and head on the whole thing as do most Asian cultures by the kilo, they eat crabs like sea otters yup shell on and so does Andrew Zimmern watch that man eat shrimp or a crab. It’s false humans cannot eat chictin we have for thousands of years in large amounts. Some people might have a sensitivity a true biological sensitivity but that’s less than 1% of any given population. We as a species can eat shrimp,crab,lobster, insects you name it all shell on. Out stomachs have some of the highest HCL levels of any mammals this is indicative of a past carrion eating phase as all carrion eaters have this high HCL trait. So yeah humans where scavengers at some point in our half million year history. We get it you don’t want to eatzeeee bugs that’s fine but humans are fully capable of it , we have in our past largely existed on insects ,carrion and anything else we could get in our mouths and our teeth, stomach structures and digestive tract all show the evidence for this. It is only in the last 9000 years humans mastered agriculture first then animal husbandry that the diet shifted to mammal proteins. It’s largely a myth paleo humans hunted as the primary kcal source there is vast evidence that it was a rare windfall for paleo humans to get big game at all. 9000 years is a blink in the 500,000+ year history of H.Sapians let alone H.Sapian,Sapiens.
Don’t eat anyone who eats bugs.
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