Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. In
Speaker 1: this podcast, we're gonna we're gonna start off by asking
Speaker 1: you to take a journey with us, and I want
Speaker 1: you to imagine yourself lost amid an apocalyptic waste land,
Speaker 1: scorched her pyramids of bone, hauled out cities, silhouetting the
Speaker 1: horizon against the dim red sun. You're starving, you're weak,
Speaker 1: You're stumbling through the remnants of civilization, and then you
Speaker 1: trip over something. If you fall, maybe you skin your knee,
Speaker 1: you hardly notice because you're so hungry. And when you
Speaker 1: get up on your your your feet again, you start
Speaker 1: looking around. You start sifting through the ashes, and you
Speaker 1: find a hatch and you open it and you crawl
Speaker 1: down through the dark, and at the bottom of this
Speaker 1: twisting tunnel you find this massive storeroom. It's filled with
Speaker 1: shells and shelves of these strange jars, and you you
Speaker 1: can pluckily. You have a light on you, one of
Speaker 1: these windy d of course, yeah, yeah, because other you
Speaker 1: can't find batteries unless you had your preparedness kit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you had, you had some some supplies in store. So
Speaker 1: you crank up your little flashlight and you you notice
Speaker 1: that the labels have all worn away, so you can't
Speaker 1: read what's in them, but you can see through the
Speaker 1: glass that they all contain dark shapes and murky liquids.
Speaker 1: You've you've found pickled and fur minuted food items, all right.
Speaker 1: That this makes your stomach turn a little, right, makes it?
Speaker 1: It makes your stomach turn. And yet that anvil in
Speaker 1: your stomach that keeps beating away, you know this hunger pangs.
Speaker 1: He's gotta eat, gotta eat, says, could it be sour krout? Yeah?
Speaker 1: But then you notice movements in the corner of the storeroom,
Speaker 1: on the shelves across the ceiling, and you realize the
Speaker 1: place is crawling with insects, delicious nutritious insects, Yes, big
Speaker 1: lovely fattened concroaches. Specifically, what do you do? Yeah, which
Speaker 1: which are you going to feast on? You have a
Speaker 1: choice here. You can start cracking open some jars and
Speaker 1: uh and and even in your state, you probably realize
Speaker 1: that this is maybe all the pickled items left in
Speaker 1: the world, So you can't just start opening until you
Speaker 1: find something. Right, if you open a jar, you're probably
Speaker 1: gonna need to go ahead and eat what's in that jar.
Speaker 1: That's right. You have to be smart about that. Be
Speaker 1: smart about it. Likewise, h you've got all these bugs,
Speaker 1: you're just gonna have to I mean, but which ones
Speaker 1: can you eat? Which one should you eat? Which ones
Speaker 1: are gonna taste good? Do you have time or or
Speaker 1: the energy to be choosy about it? And this is
Speaker 1: what we're gonna do today. We're gonna walk you through
Speaker 1: this wasteland and help you to make this choice. Should
Speaker 1: you ever have to face some sort of apocalypse and
Speaker 1: be faced with just fermented items fermented by bacteria, right
Speaker 1: like sara kraut or a lovely juicy caterpillar or I
Speaker 1: don't know, sa kata y. Yeah, and all the benefits
Speaker 1: of this, by the way, I mean, actually we we
Speaker 1: kind of turn our noses up about that here in
Speaker 1: the Western world, but this is not so unusual in
Speaker 1: other parts of the world. These these food items right,
Speaker 1: these in in the same way that we're talking about
Speaker 1: them in a sort of postmodern society of food choice situation.
Speaker 1: They are also a huge part of our culinary past.
Speaker 1: I think we touched a little on this in our
Speaker 1: previous food episodes Ancient Foods that believe it was the
Speaker 1: title of it. At some point we were hungry and
Speaker 1: we looked around and we found bugs. At some point
Speaker 1: we were we were hungry and realized we needed to
Speaker 1: stick um away some food for the hard times. And
Speaker 1: we discovered what pickling, what fermentation was all about. Yea,
Speaker 1: and oftentimes by accident, right, I mean, if you put
Speaker 1: honeywater out is eventually going to ferment into mead a
Speaker 1: good tasty um craft of meat, right yeah, also beneficial
Speaker 1: for apocalyptic survival, why not? Um? So, basically we're talking
Speaker 1: about is remaking your food with microbes. And this is
Speaker 1: already done to some extent, we just don't think about it. Chocolates, wine, cheese,
Speaker 1: those are all products of fermentation. But of late there
Speaker 1: have been fermentation activists in a wider food underground movement
Speaker 1: extolling the joys of bacteria. Now, when it comes to pickles,
Speaker 1: let me just touch base. They're real quick about the
Speaker 1: two basic types of pickling. They're essentially two categories. The
Speaker 1: first involves items preserved in vinegar, which is a strong
Speaker 1: acid in which few bacteria can survive. UM, So you
Speaker 1: think of things like bottled kosher cucumber pickles at the supermarket,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. And then you have this other
Speaker 1: category where things are soaked in a salt brine that
Speaker 1: encourages fermentation and the growth of this good bacteria that
Speaker 1: we're talking about. It makes the food less vulnerable to
Speaker 1: bad spoilage causing bacteria, so UM more common examples this
Speaker 1: would be like kimch uh and cucumber dill pickles, Sauer
Speaker 1: krauts a big one, right, And this this is really
Speaker 1: important to you to think about this type of fermentation
Speaker 1: because although it does allow bacteria to thrive, it's anaerobic conditions,
Speaker 1: so it's it's thrive. Actually, I should say that pathogens
Speaker 1: that could be really um horrible for us if we
Speaker 1: ate them are stopped in their tracks because it is
Speaker 1: an anaerobic environment. So there's no oxygen for those sort
Speaker 1: of pathogens to like listeria for instance, um to actually
Speaker 1: cultivate onto this food source. So what you get are
Speaker 1: the good bacteria growing on to say like sauer kraut um,
Speaker 1: and you've got the bad bacteria dying away. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: placed in an artificial environment, because we're in the authentic environment.
Speaker 1: It would quickly be consumed, it would it would ride
Speaker 1: it with decay. But if you took some sauer kraut,
Speaker 1: you salted it, put a jar on the top, on
Speaker 1: the jar and let it sit there for you know,
Speaker 1: seventeen eighteen days. All of a sudden you have this
Speaker 1: really good, nutritious food that is preserved for many, many months,
Speaker 1: sometimes years. Right, And and the important thing here is
Speaker 1: that this all emerges from a time when there was
Speaker 1: no uh refrigerator to stick things, and there was preservatives
Speaker 1: in your food. Uh, it was just not happening. Is
Speaker 1: the precursor to cold storage. Yeah, yeah, And so we
Speaker 1: end up with I mean, this is where you get
Speaker 1: like Chutt and he's in India, Miso pickles in Japan's
Speaker 1: um even uh well, pickled herring and Scandinavia, corned beef
Speaker 1: in in Ireland, various sauces in Mexico, pickled pigs feet
Speaker 1: in the United States. Um. One that I always find
Speaker 1: interesting the the century egg or p done of China,
Speaker 1: often hundred year old egg that's pickled and all um.
Speaker 1: When when my family lived in Roddington, Newfoundland, Canada when
Speaker 1: my dad worked for he worked for Grinful Health. But
Speaker 1: there was a dentist, there was the various health personnel there.
Speaker 1: They were kind of from all over the world, so
Speaker 1: like like we were from the US. UH. There was
Speaker 1: you know, was a doctor from India. There were doctors
Speaker 1: from uh from various places in Canada. There's a guy
Speaker 1: from Scotland. And then there was Dr Lowe M. And
Speaker 1: Dr Lowe was was a Chinese extract and he had
Speaker 1: he had one of these eggs and he would always try,
Speaker 1: he would, he would it was. It was really big
Speaker 1: on trying to convince my father to eat this egg.
Speaker 1: He was like, you should come over and have the
Speaker 1: egg sometime, and uh and and and my dad was like,
Speaker 1: all right, maybe I'll try an easight, but you you can.
Speaker 1: You have to eat it while I'm here. You have
Speaker 1: to eat it while I'm present, Like he didn't want
Speaker 1: a doctor needs to be present while you eat this egg.
Speaker 1: With his argument but really, yeah, I don't know, but
Speaker 1: you may have been getting around. But that's about to say,
Speaker 1: and this is this really a hundred year old egg?
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was really a hundred years old,
Speaker 1: because I don't know how he would have. I've obtained
Speaker 1: it there like he would have, I guess how to
Speaker 1: have brought it with him, because rodic to Newfoundland didn't
Speaker 1: have like a huge Chinese grocery by any stretch of regination.
Speaker 1: It had a crab plant and well in generations of
Speaker 1: people and his family would have preserved it and passed
Speaker 1: it down, right, I guess, or he was or it
Speaker 1: was just an egg that he boiled and it was
Speaker 1: all a joke. I think so. But my point is
Speaker 1: that you see pickling traditions in all these different cultures
Speaker 1: and it becomes at least it a part of their
Speaker 1: culinary tradition to varying degrees, depending the culinaria is right right.
Speaker 1: And again fermentation, um, you know, largely accidental in the beginning,
Speaker 1: but the alcohol and acids can preserve fruit and grains
Speaker 1: for months, like I said, and it also changes the flavor,
Speaker 1: it changes and it can change some of the properties.
Speaker 1: So you know, in general it's pretty safe. Again, you know,
Speaker 1: talking about how the anaerobic conditions, we will stop pathogens
Speaker 1: in their tracks. So botuli is um, no big deal, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, souer kute really is something that you could
Speaker 1: make and it's it's going to be completely fine to eat,
Speaker 1: you know, ten months later. Um. And you know it's
Speaker 1: not just sara kute. We're talking about yogurt, not necessarily
Speaker 1: yogurt ten months down the road. Um, but sour dough, bread, mead, sausages,
Speaker 1: can and cheese. As you mentioned, some Scandinavian fish actually
Speaker 1: prepared this way. There's the hack roll, for instance, the
Speaker 1: poisonous ice shark, yeah, which if you eat it too fresh,
Speaker 1: it's poisonous. But if you let it putrefy for six
Speaker 1: weeks fermenting, and then it becomes something altogether different, which
Speaker 1: sometimes it's called the p shark because it has a
Speaker 1: slight um ammonia or urine smell, which just I mean again,
Speaker 1: come on, guys, you've got it in jar. It's the
Speaker 1: post apocalyptic scenario. You can't get a tow upity about it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I actually know a guy who a friend of mine
Speaker 1: who works for a gaming company. They had some people
Speaker 1: bring in a bunch of these survival foods. I think
Speaker 1: I mentioned this before, but that he actually tried the
Speaker 1: P shark and he said it wouldn't He actually wasn't
Speaker 1: that bad. Um And neither was the pickled whale blubber.
Speaker 1: He said that was actually pretty good too, um, but
Speaker 1: but it was it was other things that were a
Speaker 1: little grim, but the pickled sea life not so bad. Well,
Speaker 1: this is a delicacy, right, and you have to understand
Speaker 1: if you're in this culture, you're probably going to have
Speaker 1: more of an affinity for it. And only that when
Speaker 1: we talked about I can't remember if it was we
Speaker 1: were talking about the sea urchins, but we found out
Speaker 1: that there was a bacteria particular to Japanese people who
Speaker 1: can break down seaweed um that that we lack here,
Speaker 1: say in the United States. Right of it comes down
Speaker 1: to the whole argument that we are cities of bacteria,
Speaker 1: but we are there, we are creatures of bacteria and uh,
Speaker 1: and the the whole idea of of eliminating bacteria from
Speaker 1: our bodies can can be harmful at times where there's
Speaker 1: so there's a careful balance. Now we've talked about the
Speaker 1: gut flora before, um and and that's actually it actually
Speaker 1: plays a big role in people who advocate not pickled
Speaker 1: only diets, not sauerkraut only gets, but diets that include
Speaker 1: these these traditional ferment items yeah. Yeah, and just to
Speaker 1: bring up the stud again, we are made up of
Speaker 1: one trillion cells and host ten trillion bacterial cells, so
Speaker 1: the great majority of DNA and this is actually bacterial
Speaker 1: and not human. Um. Now, consider that it takes four
Speaker 1: years for your gut flora to recover after a round
Speaker 1: of antibiotics, and you can see why we're storing good bacteria.
Speaker 1: Body is so important to your immune system. And you
Speaker 1: think about fermented vegetables and they actually contain natural populations
Speaker 1: of lactic acid bacteria. And this is the kind of
Speaker 1: bacteria that we see in pro prebiotics that help maintain
Speaker 1: our health and our guts. Um. And again, as you say,
Speaker 1: it regulates our overall health and in some cases it
Speaker 1: actually can help your mental state. We know that your
Speaker 1: gut produces chemicals that trigger sleep and um and certainly
Speaker 1: we know that the sarantonin is released by your gut. Right. Uh,
Speaker 1: so this isn't interesting. This is from the article Nature
Speaker 1: Spoils by Brookhart Builder. Yeah, this is great. This is
Speaker 1: a New Yorker And uh, if you look it up
Speaker 1: on the line, I think you have to have like
Speaker 1: a membership to get the full version. Yes, behind a paywall,
Speaker 1: but it's probably worth it if this is a topic
Speaker 1: that's really intriguing. And they also have an audio file available,
Speaker 1: so when you're not listening to this podcast, check it out,
Speaker 1: switch on over to New Yorker for a moment. But
Speaker 1: one of the people that build your interview says, there's
Speaker 1: no such thing as an individual and this is coming
Speaker 1: from a Lynn Marculist, and she's a professor of biology
Speaker 1: at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and she says,
Speaker 1: what we see as animals are partly just integrated sets
Speaker 1: of bacteria. I mean, we're just we're backter bots, We're
Speaker 1: like corporations. Really, yeah, if we're just we're just hosting.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's it's very interesting when when you start
Speaker 1: to break it down that way to see the ways
Speaker 1: in which we um move through the world. I mean,
Speaker 1: how much of that is directed by bacteria? How many
Speaker 1: of the choices that we make are directed by bacteria?
Speaker 1: About the stuff that's going on in our guts. You know,
Speaker 1: when we feel an emotion or we feel a drive
Speaker 1: to do something, a lot of that is predicated on
Speaker 1: on the wellness factor of our guts. And in fact,
Speaker 1: this is such an interesting uh field that there is
Speaker 1: a second human genome project going on and they're trying
Speaker 1: to map all the thousands of bacteria in our bodies.
Speaker 1: So instead of focusing on pathogens um as they've done
Speaker 1: in the past, they're really trying to focus on the
Speaker 1: symbiotic relationship that we have with bacteria. Yeah, we've discussed this,
Speaker 1: uh in various levels in the past. The idea that
Speaker 1: these things in our lives, these bacteria on up to
Speaker 1: uh parasitic organisms. Uh, these are things we have coevolved with,
Speaker 1: so we we have evolved over time to exist with them,
Speaker 1: some in varying levels of symbiosis. I mean, that's another thing,
Speaker 1: just that the realization that the idea of parasite and
Speaker 1: non parasite is not so cut and dry. In some cases,
Speaker 1: there's all there's all this gray area of symbiosis where
Speaker 1: in some cases it's a little more one sided than others.
Speaker 1: You know. Well, we've talked about parasite therapies before too.
Speaker 1: Of course, this is not a d I why project
Speaker 1: for anybody at home, but there is some evidence coming
Speaker 1: out of medical community that parasites can help in some instances. UM.
Speaker 1: But like I just wanted to go back real quick
Speaker 1: to again something like sauerkraut and the fact that it
Speaker 1: does have that lactic acid bacteria, but only that, Um,
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of other nutritious elements to enzymes, bacteria
Speaker 1: that are being created because of the fermenting process. So
Speaker 1: you could get things that are really rich in vitamin C,
Speaker 1: you know, according to this process. Um. The problem, though,
Speaker 1: of course, comes when you take a really great idea
Speaker 1: like this and you extend it to you know, it's
Speaker 1: the degree, right, So you take this idea of symbiosis
Speaker 1: and you say it can be beneficial for humans, and
Speaker 1: then you try to apply it to say something like
Speaker 1: raw meat. Okay, yes, you're talking about high meat, of course,
Speaker 1: high meat, and not high as in cannabis, but high
Speaker 1: as termed by eskimos who um have used caribou and
Speaker 1: seal raw seal not just as something that's nutrition for them,
Speaker 1: but also as a cultural artifact. Yeah. And in fact,
Speaker 1: apparently this is according to the article, um I think
Speaker 1: we're talking about, and the New Yorker said, so that
Speaker 1: I believe that a regular serving of decayed, harder liver
Speaker 1: can have a quote tremendous viagra effect on the elderly.
Speaker 1: So yeah, now this is also this fact here is
Speaker 1: coming to the author of that from a man by
Speaker 1: the name of a Jonas voter Plu, who is his
Speaker 1: whole big idea was the primal diet. Yeah, and uh,
Speaker 1: and I think we've discussed in the past. Hole, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of concerns with with with any well
Speaker 1: with any crazy diet that comes along the path, because
Speaker 1: they tend to be um. They tend to be someone
Speaker 1: on the extreme edge of something like, for instance, sauer
Speaker 1: kraut diet. I said, you wouldn't want to die of
Speaker 1: just sauer kraut, But doing a search for sauerkraut diet
Speaker 1: just out of curiosity did turn up some results. Like
Speaker 1: you know, somebody's gonna advocate it. So this guy in
Speaker 1: particularly who was like high meat. Uh, it's it's good
Speaker 1: for you. It's part of our evolutionary past. We're going around,
Speaker 1: were occasionally eating the rotten carcass here and there, so
Speaker 1: and and and our body needs that. It's like a
Speaker 1: nice kick in the face from the bacterium world. That's right.
Speaker 1: That the the idea that we evolved with bacteria and parasites,
Speaker 1: so therefore it must be good for us to eat
Speaker 1: some rotten meat with parasites every once a while. That's
Speaker 1: actually probably not such a great idea, it turns out,
Speaker 1: and that's what's been extrapolated from this whole symbiosis, right. Um.
Speaker 1: I just can't and I can't get this image of
Speaker 1: like what those commercials would be for for like this
Speaker 1: viagra of of rotten meat, you know, like you always
Speaker 1: see the guy golfing and the commercials with viagra. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to imagine how they're going to roll
Speaker 1: that out with with seal meat or a rotten caribou.
Speaker 1: You know, well, you know, we we've we've touched on
Speaker 1: examples in the past, like we mentioned in the Ancient Foods,
Speaker 1: we mentioned Kivak, the green landing tradition of of of
Speaker 1: catching all the little birds, tiny birds, and then you
Speaker 1: you put them in a seal skin and you just
Speaker 1: hold just like like after you catch them, snapped a little.
Speaker 1: Next take them home in a sack, stuff them in
Speaker 1: the seal skin, get all the air out, and then
Speaker 1: bury it under rocks and let it let them ferment
Speaker 1: in there. That you know, that's there's that, but you
Speaker 1: have the fermenting process, fermenting process there. Even though essentially
Speaker 1: you have just birds in a sack of skins under
Speaker 1: some rocks. Um, you know, the surface it looks very
Speaker 1: similar to hey, I found some dead birds, let's chow down.
Speaker 1: But but there, but there is a chemical process going on.
Speaker 1: It turns out you do need to convert some of
Speaker 1: the foods that you eat to make them palatable, um
Speaker 1: and digestible. So yeah, I mean this this is all
Speaker 1: part and parcel of these underground food movements that are
Speaker 1: taking hold right now. But this was from the article
Speaker 1: that that that actually there are scent molecules that have
Speaker 1: been identified with decaying meat. And these are the sort
Speaker 1: of scent molecules that usually send warning signs who are
Speaker 1: brain right, like don't eat this. Um. They've been identified
Speaker 1: as cadaverine and putrescing. Of course that's after putrid and putrescence.
Speaker 1: So I mean, just that alone makes you think, perhaps,
Speaker 1: I you know, if those are that the molecules those
Speaker 1: are emitting, and that's what we're calling them, perhaps I
Speaker 1: should not eat any high meat. Yeah. Well I don't know.
Speaker 1: I certainly have not, to my knowledge, had any high meat. UM.
Speaker 1: I may have had a questionable sandwich in the past,
Speaker 1: but it was by accident, by accident, but it's not
Speaker 1: advertised as high meat. But but certainly I would love
Speaker 1: to hear from anybody who has so. Yeah. So now,
Speaker 1: if you go in a cafe and you see high meat,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's not It doesn't mean
Speaker 1: it's just borre's head or something, or some sort of
Speaker 1: artisan cut or you know, cannabis laden. Well, let's move
Speaker 1: away from all these strange murky jars and their fermented secrets.
Speaker 1: Uh and uh, and start looking at the insects calling
Speaker 1: around this place as well. Let's that's the sound of
Speaker 1: the roaches crawling all over the table right now, excellent, Well,
Speaker 1: which one's of these guys should we eat? Let's let's
Speaker 1: discuss mmm. Okay, so we're talking about into mafagy, right,
Speaker 1: the practice of eating insects, including arachnids and maria pods,
Speaker 1: which are centipedes or little friends centipedes um. And And
Speaker 1: here's you know, a newsplush if you don't know about
Speaker 1: this already, If you're eating processed foods, you are eating bugs. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's just a fact. The FDA has an acceptable level
Speaker 1: of insect fragments and all canned and boxed goods. Oh yes,
Speaker 1: I like, for instance, uh, take figs, whether you're talking
Speaker 1: about fresh figs or or a lovely fig bass. The
Speaker 1: cookie cake item, um, fig newtons, Well they're various, big
Speaker 1: based that's one of them. But you can, I mean
Speaker 1: you can also just get a baked like fig cake
Speaker 1: fig wafer thing at the most bakeries. Oh yeah, wink wink,
Speaker 1: nudge nudge. Yeah. Yeah, but there you're gonna those are
Speaker 1: likely to contain fig wasps just because they're the fig
Speaker 1: itself depends on these tiny little wasps that have to
Speaker 1: go in and take care of the pollination. So I
Speaker 1: mean you have that, you have just bugs showing up
Speaker 1: in in any kind of agricultural crop. Um, it's just
Speaker 1: gonna happen. You're gonna eat some bugs. Yeah. And then
Speaker 1: just during the process too, uh that sometimes the canning,
Speaker 1: in the in the like the eating process, like you're
Speaker 1: gonna get yeah, you know, sometimes I just start buzzing
Speaker 1: around and I start munching. But no, I mean in
Speaker 1: the process themselves. I mean that there's there's a food item,
Speaker 1: there are you know, little microscopic bugs all over, plus
Speaker 1: the ones that we can see and they're gonna get
Speaker 1: in there and chow down as well, right and then
Speaker 1: U it is in terms of just the evolution of man.
Speaker 1: People have had to eat and if you're looking around
Speaker 1: for things to eat, bugs are everywhere. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: basically we're it's essentially an insect planet. When you start
Speaker 1: breaking down some of the numbers, um and and for
Speaker 1: the most part, we don't you know, especially here in
Speaker 1: the States, we don't think about about eating the bugs.
Speaker 1: But the next time you're on a summer day and
Speaker 1: just look around you and and just take in the bugs,
Speaker 1: especially on a nice cicada afternoon. Just listen to the
Speaker 1: because we we mentioned on that podcast I believe about
Speaker 1: the cicadas. These are tasty guys. Um Or, or the
Speaker 1: next time you're out doing a little work in the
Speaker 1: yard and you're digging in the dirt and you come
Speaker 1: across some grubs, just I mean, look at we grubs
Speaker 1: are such amazing um like nuggets of nutrition, because because
Speaker 1: these are anytime you have like a a larva pupa situation,
Speaker 1: this is this is an animal loaded down with the
Speaker 1: goods to get it through this stage of its life.
Speaker 1: So it's just it's just a very nutritious morsel. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then think back to the past. I mean this
Speaker 1: is this was eaten good than neighborhood, right, And mean,
Speaker 1: if you had some locusts and honey, you are living
Speaker 1: life pretty large. So it makes sense that this would
Speaker 1: be a really good source of protein forests, and in fact,
Speaker 1: in a lot of Southeast Asian countries, this is not
Speaker 1: just a delicacy, but it's something that you would eat
Speaker 1: all the time. Right. It's a street food in some places, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like various food shows have wound up on the streets
Speaker 1: of Bangkok with somebody going to a food cart and
Speaker 1: eating insects out of a cart, and they're generally it's
Speaker 1: generally done for kind of like a gross out factor,
Speaker 1: unless it's like Anthony Bourdain, who tends to really get
Speaker 1: on a high horse about traditional quote unquote peasant food. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he has actually eaten seal meat with asking moments before. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so watch out for Bourdaine after he said the seal meat.
Speaker 1: But when I was in Bangkok several years back, my
Speaker 1: wife and I were actually looking around hoping to find
Speaker 1: the cart with the but I mean it's it's with
Speaker 1: it with the insects, but it's very confusing out there
Speaker 1: on the streets looking around at the different cards, and
Speaker 1: eventually you just really get kind of an overload decision
Speaker 1: fatigue kind of a thing. And yeah, and you can't
Speaker 1: sess out the crickets. Yeah, but I wish we'd found
Speaker 1: because I really wanted to try them. I'm not opposed
Speaker 1: to eating the insects, especially when it's part of some
Speaker 1: sort of a culinary tradition. Well, I mean, and again,
Speaker 1: it's not that weird. It seems odd to us, but
Speaker 1: what we're talking about here is some huge health benefits. Um,
Speaker 1: the average insect contains protein exactly ten percent omega, three
Speaker 1: five percent minerals, and five percent sugar and two percent fat. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so I mean this is this is a great source
Speaker 1: of energy right here. Uh. Different insects have different health benefits,
Speaker 1: with varying amounts of calories, fat, and carbohydrates. For instants,
Speaker 1: for instance, excuse me, one hundred grams of crickets contain
Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty one calories and their chock full
Speaker 1: of calcium and iron. While our little caterpillar friends, uh
Speaker 1: before they become lovely butterflies, we deprive them of that
Speaker 1: unfurling of their wings. They have twenty eight crams of
Speaker 1: protein per one grams, and they're also a good source
Speaker 1: of vitamins B one and three. Yeah, well, the I
Speaker 1: mean the butterflies has it's not going to be nutritious,
Speaker 1: is that catapulary you want? It's kind of like if
Speaker 1: you wanted to hijack a space shuttle for its fuel.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't want to get the space shuttle in orbit.
Speaker 1: You would want to get it to want it has
Speaker 1: all the external tanks on it before it drops plod. Yeah, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: it's the payload you want. You want to harvest that
Speaker 1: payload because the payload is energy that allows this organism
Speaker 1: to change from one state to another and as carnivore
Speaker 1: well as omnivorce. Rather, um, we are saying, hey, I
Speaker 1: want that payload, Let me have that energy, because I
Speaker 1: mean we've discussed before pretty much at every level. Um,
Speaker 1: to eat on this in this planet and to consume
Speaker 1: energy just to steal energy unless you happen to practice photosynthesis,
Speaker 1: and even the most devoked vegans and vegetarians I know
Speaker 1: do not practice photosynthesis themselves. Yeah, and blame Margine blame Margine,
Speaker 1: blame our brain for the energy drain. Actually right talked
Speaker 1: about that because it needs a lot of energy. So
Speaker 1: that's why we have to go after this um and
Speaker 1: that's why our forebearers had to do it. Uh, so
Speaker 1: let's talk about this. There are one thousand, four hundred
Speaker 1: seventeen species of edible insects and nearly three thousand ethnic
Speaker 1: groups that currently practice into mafagi. And most of these
Speaker 1: insects are eaten in the larval in the pupil stages um,
Speaker 1: though some are are pretty good from you know, all
Speaker 1: the way into adulthood. Right, nice little cricket and talking.
Speaker 1: The list of edibles is the beetle with three hundred
Speaker 1: and forty four varieties, ants, when wasps with three hundred
Speaker 1: fourteen varieties, and then butterflies. They do make the list, actually, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: even though even though they're the I think all flash
Speaker 1: no flesh, moths, grasshoppers, and crickets. Well, I can see
Speaker 1: months they're a little fatter, and I've seen the cat
Speaker 1: eat them, so that's funny. I'll call I actually call
Speaker 1: him my cat Renfro because he loves a good spiderway
Speaker 1: full of flies stuff. Um, I actually have a quick
Speaker 1: recipe here for anybody interested. I found this on a
Speaker 1: Nova article about bugs you can eat um, which has
Speaker 1: a number of different like from Australia, China, et cetera.
Speaker 1: But this one was for grass hopper tacos for Mexico.
Speaker 1: And this is all you need. A half pound of grasshoppers,
Speaker 1: two cloves of garlic minced, one lemon, little salt to ripe,
Speaker 1: avocados mashed, and then six tortillas h corner flour. So
Speaker 1: you didn't you just roast the medium sized grapp reshoppers
Speaker 1: for ten minutes and degree oven, and you tossed in
Speaker 1: the garlic, the lemon, salt to taste, spread the mashed
Speaker 1: to avocad on the tortilla, and then sprinkle on the grasshoppers.
Speaker 1: You know, there you go. And I was just thinking
Speaker 1: too that if you didn't have time to cook, another
Speaker 1: advantage you just get on your bike or your motorcycle
Speaker 1: and just open your mouth for a couple of months.
Speaker 1: Well it's what I think. The cooking is a little
Speaker 1: a little different. I was trying to dress it up here,
Speaker 1: and then you turn it back into riding around on
Speaker 1: a motorcycle eating live bugs. Well I'm just saying that
Speaker 1: if you're on the go, I mean, you don't need
Speaker 1: fast food, right, I mean the fast food is available
Speaker 1: to you just within mirror seconds. That's another thing that
Speaker 1: comes to mind, fast food. Like I see people eating
Speaker 1: fast food, and I hope I don't come off to
Speaker 1: judge you here, but you see some of the things
Speaker 1: that people are eating, and you're like, that is so fried,
Speaker 1: Like it's just been fried to death. Like they could
Speaker 1: have fried a chicken wing and then remove the chicken
Speaker 1: wing and just sent you and just served you the shell,
Speaker 1: Like it could be anything at the middle of that
Speaker 1: fried bundle of good that you just purchased in a
Speaker 1: styrofoam container. So why not bugs? Okay? So and and
Speaker 1: that's that's a good place to talk about. You know,
Speaker 1: why we don't go ahead and cultivate bugs on a
Speaker 1: large scale, right, um? You know, besides some of the
Speaker 1: cons here of you know, like don't pick any poisonous
Speaker 1: bugs or toxic bugs. Right, it's a pretty good idea
Speaker 1: to use bugs as as a sort of um many
Speaker 1: um or micro farming system for us, right, because you
Speaker 1: don't need the land you know that that we need
Speaker 1: with livestock. Um you don't need the equipment, like the
Speaker 1: huge factory equipment is is really pricey um and and
Speaker 1: this is really easy to Also you don't have the
Speaker 1: veterinary medicine um and and then all the antibiotics that
Speaker 1: go along with it. Yeah, you're and you're also don't
Speaker 1: have to worry about naming a cricket before you eat it,
Speaker 1: you know, well though I don't know. I don't though.
Speaker 1: If you have like a thousand millipedes, it's probably it's uh,
Speaker 1: probably not naming them. I have also read data before
Speaker 1: talking about the food costs of exploring other worlds with
Speaker 1: human space exploration, and those frequently come back around the
Speaker 1: idea of using insects for your protein. Yep, yep, just
Speaker 1: because it's less space. Like try and raise a cow
Speaker 1: on a spaceship versus raising some millipedes. It's going to
Speaker 1: favor the millipies, right. Or if we ever established ourselves
Speaker 1: on another planet, right, Um, you would probably not be
Speaker 1: able to harvest lettuce and cows and so on and
Speaker 1: so forth. But hey, just bring some you know, larva
Speaker 1: with you and probably have some success. Um. Actually, one
Speaker 1: hundred pounds of feed produces ten pounds of beef. The
Speaker 1: same amount of feed would produce more than four times
Speaker 1: that amount in crickets. And that's just the feet. So
Speaker 1: we're not talking again about the land which is getting
Speaker 1: pretty scarce for us, and so on and so forth. Um, So,
Speaker 1: I don't know, there's a there's an argument there, uh
Speaker 1: that perhaps this is going to be a sustainable food
Speaker 1: source for us in the future, just as fermented foods. Maybe. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I I I tend to imagine that we as a people,
Speaker 1: uh more or less talking about like the US, you know,
Speaker 1: audience audiences here, that we could I think we could
Speaker 1: get past the bug thing, get past the eating bug thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, because look at some of the stuff we
Speaker 1: already eat. I mean, we're already eating shrimp in many
Speaker 1: many of us are eating shrimps, yeah, right, so they're
Speaker 1: basically they already look basically the same. And we're eating
Speaker 1: higher spiders of the sea right right, And we're eating
Speaker 1: higher organisms, were eating cuter organisms, and we're eating plenty
Speaker 1: of animals that that look gross. So I mean, I
Speaker 1: think we could get over that, that that mental barrier
Speaker 1: to eating bugs rather quickly. Well, as we discussed in
Speaker 1: the Don't Eat the Panda episode, we have this this
Speaker 1: moral distancing that we use through semantic distance distancings. So
Speaker 1: we use certain words to kind of give us some
Speaker 1: space from what the actual item is, or to change
Speaker 1: that definition of what that thing is in our mind
Speaker 1: right exact. For example, the grasshopper tacos versus driving around
Speaker 1: with your mouth though, because the grasshopper that sounds good
Speaker 1: if you would, Well, you got me with the garlic there.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, and then advocat you put avocat as in
Speaker 1: anything it's gonna be good. Yeah, yeah, so yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I will say that I was like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I'm a vegetarian, but perhaps this is something that I
Speaker 1: could do, Uh, particularly if I'm in a post apocalyptic situation. Well,
Speaker 1: let's get back to the post apocalyptic situation. Then, which
Speaker 1: are you going to choose? If you have to choose
Speaker 1: between those those jars of pickled wonders or the creepy
Speaker 1: crawleys in the corners, which one are you going to
Speaker 1: chow down? Well, I will say that, um, the more
Speaker 1: nutritious option actually seems to be insects to me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you although it's just insects is one category, it
Speaker 1: seems like you have a huge variety in terms of
Speaker 1: some of them nutritive values that it possesses, whereas the
Speaker 1: comfort level is definitely with fermented foods. Although I am
Speaker 1: not a fan of the pickle, I found this weird
Speaker 1: that you you don't like the pickles, like anything pickled
Speaker 1: like uh sauer kraut. Huh. It's just you know, But
Speaker 1: I would probably get over that, and in fact, in
Speaker 1: a post apocalyptic scenario, I would probably go with both. Right, Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that your chance of survival, you know, eating
Speaker 1: some cockroaches and some some two years old sauer kraut
Speaker 1: is probably gonna Yeah, in reality, you would want to
Speaker 1: go unless maybe there's a genie here that is saying
Speaker 1: that you have to choose one or the other. I
Speaker 1: don't know. We didn't introduce that in the original questions.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to force it on everyone here and now,
Speaker 1: but I would I would tend to even knowing what
Speaker 1: we know now, I would I would still probably go
Speaker 1: with the pickled content. So would you, Yeah, I don't.
Speaker 1: I like plenty of pickled food, so I feel like
Speaker 1: there's there's a lot of diversity there in terms of
Speaker 1: the things that are pickled. So I mean, I could
Speaker 1: I could have some fish. I could have you know,
Speaker 1: I could have some cabbage. I can I can get
Speaker 1: my h my poisonous shark and spread the sower crout
Speaker 1: on it and put it on. Um. Well, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: be able to put it on a bun unless somebody's
Speaker 1: has pickled buns. You can squeeze out the innerts of
Speaker 1: the birds. Yeah, give you act. Yeah, so yeah I would.
Speaker 1: I would have to go with the pickles. But but
Speaker 1: but that's just me and I love German foods. So
Speaker 1: there you go. Uh see, I think it all builts
Speaker 1: down into comfort level. UM. We'd love to hear from
Speaker 1: you guys out there. What what would you pick if
Speaker 1: you had to bugs only or sarakraut essentially only? And
Speaker 1: and we would like to know your experiences with eating
Speaker 1: odd or very normal pickled items? But your what's your
Speaker 1: your approach to them? What's the weirdest pickled thing you've eaten? Um?
Speaker 1: Or the weirdest pickled or the most interesting pickled the
Speaker 1: food item in your own colinary history? Um? And then
Speaker 1: what's your what are your experiences with eating bucks? I?
Speaker 1: Like I said, I myself have not have the opportunity
Speaker 1: to eat that many insects. Um, I would Well, I
Speaker 1: guess I always have the opportunity to eat them. There
Speaker 1: right now, I see a little fly over there. Actually, yeah,
Speaker 1: well there's that. But in terms of actually an actual
Speaker 1: culinary exploration of the insect world, I have not really
Speaker 1: pursued it. So I would love to hear from people
Speaker 1: who have. And on that note, uh, let's ask the
Speaker 1: robot to bring us over some mail. Robot, funny, funny,
Speaker 1: he brought you pickled hearing now your mail is all
Speaker 1: wet with complaining. Um. Well, first, we had a couple
Speaker 1: of people to point out that we recently did a
Speaker 1: sword episode, The Way of the Sword. We talked about
Speaker 1: the the the history, the manufacturer and culture of of
Speaker 1: sword play and sword sword smiths and uh and like
Speaker 1: the day that it published, I believe Bob Anderson died
Speaker 1: at the age of eighty nine. The Sword Sword Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh that's right. He did Star Wars in Prince's Pride, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he was a pupil of Errol Flynn's. He also did
Speaker 1: like Lord of the Ring movies, and and he did Highlanding,
Speaker 1: so everyone's favorite. Yeah, well the Highlander. You know, if
Speaker 1: you've ever been like a thirteen year old boy. You
Speaker 1: gotta love highlanding, even if if most of it doesn't
Speaker 1: really hold up, you could probably be a thirteen year
Speaker 1: old girl. Yeah, I guess you know Christopher Lambert, he
Speaker 1: was pretty pretty dreamy. Or or Clancy Brown if you
Speaker 1: like the you know, gruffer type of guy. I guess
Speaker 1: you know Fancy Clancy. Yeah, yeah, SpongeBob voice now or
Speaker 1: her husband Phil asked to however long SpongeBob but not really. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Mr Crab is where the crab guy that owns the
Speaker 1: the Krusty Crab good place that SpongeBob works out. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's Clancy Brown, the Kurgain. Okay, we could probably do
Speaker 1: a whole episode on SpongeBob. I'm just discovering SpongeBob. I've
Speaker 1: never really watched it before. But there's no you know,
Speaker 1: daily show right now. We've been watching other things, and
Speaker 1: so we've been watching episodes of SpongeBob and it's amazingly
Speaker 1: education and you know, actually, well biologists created that show.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I got that about that. Um. Well,
Speaker 1: so there we have it. Uh, if you have anything
Speaker 1: you would like to share with us, um, things related
Speaker 1: to the podcasts that we've discussed in the past, or
Speaker 1: the or the more recent ones. Let us know. You
Speaker 1: can find us on Facebook as stuff to Blow the Mind,
Speaker 1: and we are handle on Twitter is Below the Mind,
Speaker 1: and you can always drop us a line at blow
Speaker 1: the Mind at how stuff works dot com. Be sure
Speaker 1: to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
Speaker 1: Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most
Speaker 1: promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.