There are humans that eat insects. I don't think there's something about eating insects we automatically find unappealing. I believe we've been taught that. Another idea is we don't like seeing the face of what we're eating. Most meat is processed to the point where we can't see where it comes from.
For fun my wife made some cookies including cricket powder. We told people and did not hide that fact from them. Most wanted to try it for the novelty of it and didn't find the idea disgusting.
Primate brain has special parts specifically wired to visually process snakes [1]. It is also thought that it has specific parts that process the shape of spider, and maybe other insects [2]. This is one explanation why primates have such a strangely large brain. Processing image requires a lot of computational power, being arboreal, primates need to distinguish snakes and spiders to safely crawl in the forest.
This is not to say, primates wouldn't eat snakes or spiders. I don't know if other primates eat them (they might be?) but humans do eat both [3] [4].
This is very condescending. There are a lot of cultures that eat insects. It may be revolting for you -- it is revolting for me -- but calling it "inherently revolting" is not appropriate. Please read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entomophagy. From the article:
> The total number of ethnic groups recorded to practice entomophagy is around 3,000.[2]
What makes our culture closer to "inherent" human nature than those 3000 cultures?
I am Danish and I eat leverpostej daily. It is minced pork liver, minced pork fat and a few other things, mixed baked in the oven.
I am sure others would say it is revolting, but I love the taste.
I also had squid. Tasted kinda rubbery, but people might say it was revolting.
I have had (and enjoyed) pig heart, it is super time consuming to make, but so, so delicious.
I have had pig cheeks as well. Also tasty.
My point with this isn't to gross anybody out, but that what we find gross is a cultural thing, not an objective thing, so there is no a priory reason we should find insects especially gross.
And yes, I have had meal-worms. Tasted like paper, but the nutritional ratios are a dream: 53% protein, 20ish percent fat, almost no carbs.
I think pork is a very good example. In Europe, you can see millions of Jewish people or Muslims that consider pork "unclean" and don't eat them; just like we consider rats "unclean" and don't eat them but eat pork. It really doesn't make sense to think that there is single "inherent" way how people think about food.
To be honest, this is the real reason, and I guess the article is trying to push back against the cultural aversion to insect meat in the US specifically.
It really isn't that hard to explain. It's the same reason we don't eat rats. They are considered "unclean".
Muslims and Jewish people don't eat pork. If you ask a religious Muslim or Jew they'll tell you "they don't eat it because God forbid them to". But if you go to more secular cultures (Europen/American Jewish communities, Turkey, Azerbaijan etc...) they'll rationalize it by saying "pig is not a clean animal, that's why we don't eat it".
Human culture comes in all sorts of shapes and beliefs. The moment you try to put it into cups, you'll realize it's not as flexible as you thought. There are thousands of cultures that eat insect, or pig; and as many cultures that consider them unclean.
No, you feel inherently revolted. It's just not a big deal to other people. Understanding this won't undermine your preferences in any meaningful way but it will make the rest of the world much easier to deal with.
Because we don't want to. We don't we eat less meat? (not a vegan, just don't particular care for the "tons of meat every day" lifestyle that takes tons of resources).
1- the European ice age eliminated almost all of the edible insects in the continent, meaning it's never been a good idea there
2- they live in and on rot and decay, and are otherwise unsanitary
We like meat from animals because it can be butchered without too much contamination. We dislike non-meaty textures- heck, I won't eat chicken feet not only because of the texture, but because what do you think chickens walk around all day in?
Sure, there's limited exceptions- pork cracklins and tripe, though most westerners also refuse to eat those as well.
The comparison to crustaceans is unfair, since most people don't eat the shells of lobsters or crabs, only the fleshy bits. Ultimately, barring some seafood and small game, we're conditioned to not eat the entire animal at once, only the parts that appeal to us. Meat on its own, guts and other soft bits in sausage, bones for broth. Eating insects invariably means that what you eat looks like what it is- an animal.
The article goes on to sing the praises of eating insects- good protein, environmentally friendly, cheap, so on and so forth. That sounds nice, but it doesn't change the appeal of eating an animal whole, or thinking about that same animal living its entire life among a pile of rotten food and poop.
It isn't just preference. There are biological reasons why we avoid insects and small invertebrates generally. There are many parasites that use such things as hosts for part of their life cycle. Not eating insects shields us from these diseases.
Take angiostrongylus cantonensis, a tiny worm. It causes eosinophilic meningitis, which is lethal. It is a very rare parasite in the west. Interestingly, when an infection does occur, it is always a male child. Never girls. Never men or woman. Always male kids and the rare teenager. Why? Who else eats slugs?
Since we eat animals that we're more biologically similar to than insects, and assuming that parasites prefer to live in roughly similar things, I'm not sure how the parasite risk would be worse by eating insects. If they were raised in captivity, we would have just as much opportunity to pump them full of antibiotics as we do other food animals.
The other thing is that sufficiently heating food will kill any parasite present, along with many other things that would do us harm.
Dont assume. It is very normal for a parasite to go through many very different hosts, each covering a different part of a complex lifecycle. Bacteria and viruses are different.
Just to add, being a parasite’s intermediate host is often a raw deal, because the little critter didn’t evolve to give a shit about how quickly and brutally it kills you.
I don't think eating cooked insects is any more dangerous than eating things like cooked pork. It's only cultural reasons why insects aren't widely eaten here in the US.
I don't remember who made me noticing some time ago that fried shrimps don't look very different than fried locusts, but I don't think I would ever be capable to taste the latter...
I'm sure they would end transforming insects in a "flour"...
Perhaps people in cities in the US don't eat animals whole but plenty of Asian cultures eat fish whole for the most part. On my island, the brains and eyeballs of a fish are considered a choice part, reserved for the eldest member of the family.
Even in cities in Asia, animals are served in supermarkets whole. It's only in America really that there is this sort of alienation between where meat comes from and what looks like. And by "America", I mean North American cities, because most farmers I know have few qualms about eating meat knowing where it came from.
There are a couple examples in ethno-American cusines. Here in the States, most authentic Mexican food connoisseurs have probably had beef tongue (Lengua) or beef head (Cabeza) tacos. If you have ever celebrated Pascha (Easter) with a Greek friend, you probably had Magiritsa which is a soup made with lamb entrails (if you have hung out with Greeks period, they tend to eat the whole lamb...all of it) And if you have had some traditional South American soups or dishes, a lot of them are made with livers (beef, pork, or chicken). Something else that is becoming a trend lately in some hipster restaurants is sweetbreads.
It's associated with an older style of "white tablecloth" dining that has faded away since the midcentury. If you go to the right kind of small-town diner you'll see liver and onions on the menu.
Don't forget tripitas (intestines that have been cleaned, boiled and fried), and just for clarification, people don't eat them only because they don't want to waste or because they're cheap (actually tripitas are expensive compared to other kind of tacos at least in my city), but we eat them because we really like them.
It's largely a generational thing. My grandparents made head cheese (not actually cheese) and blood sausage. Pig's feet and all sorts of other body parts make up a lot of old traditional cuisine, but it's largely disappeared from our diet.
Part of that has to do with the fact that it was largely seen as "poor people" food, and partly because you can get a whole lot more meat than you can feet or other body parts from any given animal.
I've a number of friends who moved to my area from Taiwan and Korea, and am well aware of what authentic foods from those countries can be like (including the love of chicken feet).
Glad to hear that there's a sanitary way to cook the feet, but the texture was what really killed it for me. I'm a long way from any ocean, so I've never been a big seafood kindof person; texture and flavor of things like beef tongue, squid, octopus and catfish all throw me off as well. Jellyfish wasn't too bad, but I don't think I'd eat it again.
Edit: I guess my point was that I'll try anything once, so I'm far less picky than the average American, but some things I can't bring myself to try a second time.
> it doesn't change the appeal of eating an animal living its entire life among a pile of rotten food and poop.
I recommend researching how meat is raised. It's probably much more unappealing than how food insects are raised. You can eat insects without knowing that you're eating insects.
Here are some insect food products that you can buy in the US.[1] They are good.
I haven't read the article, but one reason may be the unappetizing portrail. The photographs in this article are bleak and chaotic, in sharp contrast to the colorful and organized way food is depicted nowadays.
Unrelated, I've encountered energy bars with an insect: Standard energy bars, but extra expensive and with minuscule amounts of insect. Selling cheap eco-friendly insects as an expensive "cool" gimmick is a cruel sort of irony.
A strong imagination does it for me. I used to love eating lamb, but in my teens my father took me to a friends house where I partook in slaughtering a lamb and later eating it. Now I find eating lamb utterly disgusting. If I even smell lamb it reminds me of how the animal wailed around as it was dying and the smell of its intestines and skin as we butchered it.
Same idea with insects - when I picture someone eating insects, I get reminded of the smells, the sounds, and worst of all where they've been. Bees?! Ever seen a portable toilet in the summer when the doors are left cracked open and insects get into? Bees on human feces. No thanks.
Props to you for experiencing how your food is made. Some people turn away from meat after that (like you did), some people are fine with it. Regardless of where you land, we shouldn't psychologically shield ourselves from the processes involved in getting food to the table.
It's the one thing that sticks with me from the PETA and PETA-like movements: you should know how your food is created. If it makes you more empathetic, fine, and if it doesn't, also fine. We are omnivores after all.
Typically because it helps you make decisions you morally disagree with by pretending the bad parts don’t exist. You can’t decide whether you are morally ok with how a product is produced without seeing how it’s produced: this applies to more than just food, e.g. sweatshops
It's not easy to answer this macabre question. To many people, it's more important not to slaughter animals like that, than that people feel ok about the ugly reality. To people who think human lives aren't the only ones that have some value, this question is grotesque. To me, at least - 'Why is feeling bad about needlessly slaughtering lambs a good idea?'..
I guess there's a utilitarian argument for taking a pill so we'd never feel bad about anything, if we could, though I'm not sure if we'd still be recognizably human. Well, maybe psychopaths are like that.
Lots of flies obviously, but there are bees. Come to the Pacific Northwest anytime in mid-July through mid-August and go camping in the mountains. You will see bees on feces, guarantee it. There is a camping spot near the Kalama Horse Campground, the bees - wasps especially - LOVE landing on the horse poop on the trails.
I guess if you want to get Dwight Schrute on it, that's technically correct. In casual conversation, most people refer to hornets, yellow jackets, and wasps as "bees".
It's bears, beets, Battlestar Galactica, not bears, bees!
Anyway, I guess you and I know different people. To me, calling a wasp a bee is like calling a bee a fly. They look different, fly in different ways, bees don't hang around horse poop, aren't irritatingly aggressive, etc.
go to an animal sanctuary and see how beautiful the animals are in person. I promise you, if you transition to veganism you'll learn to love it.
what a lot of people don't know is that your taste buds and perspective on food/sustenance completely changes as you remove more and more animal products from your diet.
I have slaughtered lambs a few times. I came away with a profound respect for the source of my food ever since. Eating meat does indeed has an effect on our ecosystem, and I think every meat eater should at least slaughter an animal once in their life. Vegans might overvalue animal life, but most meat eaters definitely undervalue animal life because they don't conceptualize where the food in the supermarket comes from.
For me insects are a symbol of foul and infestation. Those plates look like they were taken over by what is on them. Can this strong repulsion be a cultural thing, like so many prejudices are?
Probably because you would need to harvest immense amounts for them to work as a staple food source, and their pretty bland flavor, at least of the various sorts I've tried, is not really something likely to make them a luxury food source, though I'd have said the same thing about caviar.
With modern farming technology the mass cultivation may be possible, but for times past compare this to something like a single decent sized whitetail deer that can provide upwards of 100 pounds of edible meat. One deer = months of food. One insect = minutes/seconds of food.
Mainly because insects are expensive. Sure, they need less food than conventional livestock but they are very labour-intensive.
You typically need thousands of insects to get the same amount of protein as a chicken. You can raise several chickens per square meter but you can't raise the equivalent number of insects in that space which means you either need more real estate (expensive) or typically more labour with insects in many shelves or boxes stacked up. And each of these shelves or boxes requires cleaning, feeding, watering, temperature control...
Without a huge revolution in technology to automate all of these tasks you have to employ a small army of human workers which is only really viable in lower wage countries.
You simply can't produce insects suitable for human consumption at less than $20/kg whereas chickens can sell for just a few dollars per kg. And when the consumer is given the choice between delicious, cheap, tried and tested vs unknown, expensive they will always choose chicken.
> And when the consumer is given the choice between delicious, cheap, tried and tested vs unknown, expensive they will always choose chicken.
Unless they're hipsters. How else does one explain the existence, and outrageous price, of cold brew coffee as compared to its unfailingly disappointing flavour?
Has it genuinely not occurred to you that I was being a little tongue in cheek? And the point stands: there will always be people who pay a premium for things that others find unappealing.
One thing occurs to me: if cattle or sheep en masse break loose from containment, it's a problem, but a solvable one. If chickens do the same, it's solvable, but much more difficult (try herding chickens - or better yet, get your kids to do it, it'll be hilarious).
But a mass of crickets breaks loose from containment?
This is a cultural/marketing issue, although at this point I'm not sure how separated those are. Also, when I call it an issue, I mean it seriously. The ecological impact of insect production is so much lower than other meats. Non-scientific responses of 'gross/revolting/disgusting' are perfect examples of negative cultural responses to insects as food, rather than scientific ones.
Didn't evolution across the land-bridges groom us to be different at the core in some areas given the amount of time passing? Why do I immediately find certain things super gross? It feels like its within me rather than a learned behavior. Possibly these feelings are from my ancestry passing them on? One of the reasons I say this is because I tried korean "mediche", don't know actual spelling but its very tiny dried fish with their eyes still on. It sounds gross but is very tasty and strangely I was never grossed out by this as they do look like tiny fish. The same goes for sardines. Why fish with eyes on doesn't gross me out but the sight of larvae makes me want to gag?
I'll go with "learned behavior", although my argument is 100% anecdotical, my dad grew up in a rural are in a tough period of time when food was not guaranteed, he learned to eat everything from an animal and he learned not to waste anything. Then he moved to the city (before I was born), where food is no longer a privilege, but still after several decades he still enjoys a lot of animal parts that I (a common city boy) wouldn't eat unless my life depended on it.
I think there are some things totally like that, but I did notice my young kids seeing a bug and being scared right away. Or funny thing, any cat will do this, put a cucumber next to them without them noticing, and they jump like 3 feet in the air when they see it but its so fast it seems they just react like when you touch a hot metal so its instant. I saw this on Youtube about the cats and tried it with 2 of mine. Its so funny to watch them fly. Anyway, meaning they have an inherent fear of snakes baked into their DNA seems like. We are all mammals and we most likely have some similar things like that.
One thing Elon Musk said that made me rethink some things. In his NeuralLink company, he said they came to the conclusion that our neural cortex is "hosted" by our limbic system in his quest to eventually have our neural cortex host AI itself. What that means is our limbic system is driving the motivation of our neocortex to do complicated things to appease it. So in other words, our underlying needs are still very rudimentary in that sense shared with other mammals and even reptiles despite our neocortex reasoning that we are more than that.
I wonder if an insect based food economy scales. A few years ago, several of my friends were getting into generating biodiesel - they were so excited to be able to go to restarauntd and try to buy up their grease. But it turns out that once a critical mass of consumers (nowhere near the local population) started doing this, it was no longer viable to “make your own” economically. If let’s Say a cricket contains 10kC, and you need 200 a day, how do you scale that to city size populations?
I suspect the answer will be mushrooms or yeast, ultimately.
At this point (with cricket powders, et al) I think a big reason is because it's so dang expensive.
If crickets are touted as this miracle protein that are easy to farm, low impact on the environment, and are still considered to be undesirable, then why are these companies charging $35/lb for their protein powder when you can get whey or pea powder for $6-8/lb?
Because people do not generally find them as appetizing as vegetables, mammal and poultry flesh, marrow, or offal.
The consumption of insects tends to involve dealing with exoskeletons, direct associations with spoilage (maggots), fiddly and tedious carving; most tend to have a dry texture, and very little appetizing saturated fat.
The idea that only in "the West" are insect not consumed is misleading. I've been living in "the East" for a decade now, and had to pull some connections to get crickets in Thailand, or water cockroaches in China. Those are consumed, but not staples (just like French people don't feed on a snails and frog diet).
> just like French people don't feed on a snails and frog diet
People might not eat them every day, certainly not at pork and bread levels, but frozen escargot and cuisses de grenouille are easily found in any grocery store in France that's large enough to have a freezer section.
Muse about why Europeans don't eat insects.
Claim that eating insects is a big thing in Asia, Africa, and various indigenous cultures.
Mention seafood.
Talk about some new insect farming and processing ventures.
Point out the supposed eco-friendly advantage.
Point out that they are rich in protein.
Point out that they're cheap to raise.
Make a quip about how we're already eating insects because tiny minuscule bits end up in processed foods.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 72.4 ms ] threadFor fun my wife made some cookies including cricket powder. We told people and did not hide that fact from them. Most wanted to try it for the novelty of it and didn't find the idea disgusting.
Ahh laws and sausages ;)
This is not to say, primates wouldn't eat snakes or spiders. I don't know if other primates eat them (they might be?) but humans do eat both [3] [4].
[1] http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2013/10/did-snakes-help-build...
[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096098221...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entomophagy
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake#Consumption
> The total number of ethnic groups recorded to practice entomophagy is around 3,000.[2]
What makes our culture closer to "inherent" human nature than those 3000 cultures?
I am Danish and I eat leverpostej daily. It is minced pork liver, minced pork fat and a few other things, mixed baked in the oven.
I am sure others would say it is revolting, but I love the taste.
I also had squid. Tasted kinda rubbery, but people might say it was revolting.
I have had (and enjoyed) pig heart, it is super time consuming to make, but so, so delicious.
I have had pig cheeks as well. Also tasty.
My point with this isn't to gross anybody out, but that what we find gross is a cultural thing, not an objective thing, so there is no a priory reason we should find insects especially gross.
And yes, I have had meal-worms. Tasted like paper, but the nutritional ratios are a dream: 53% protein, 20ish percent fat, almost no carbs.
It really isn't that hard to explain. It's the same reason we don't eat rats. They are considered "unclean".
Human culture comes in all sorts of shapes and beliefs. The moment you try to put it into cups, you'll realize it's not as flexible as you thought. There are thousands of cultures that eat insect, or pig; and as many cultures that consider them unclean.
Lobster (essentially a giant cockroach that lives in the water) was once considered revolting too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobster#As_food
It's because nobody had figured out how to prepare it yet.
1- the European ice age eliminated almost all of the edible insects in the continent, meaning it's never been a good idea there 2- they live in and on rot and decay, and are otherwise unsanitary
We like meat from animals because it can be butchered without too much contamination. We dislike non-meaty textures- heck, I won't eat chicken feet not only because of the texture, but because what do you think chickens walk around all day in?
Sure, there's limited exceptions- pork cracklins and tripe, though most westerners also refuse to eat those as well.
The comparison to crustaceans is unfair, since most people don't eat the shells of lobsters or crabs, only the fleshy bits. Ultimately, barring some seafood and small game, we're conditioned to not eat the entire animal at once, only the parts that appeal to us. Meat on its own, guts and other soft bits in sausage, bones for broth. Eating insects invariably means that what you eat looks like what it is- an animal.
The article goes on to sing the praises of eating insects- good protein, environmentally friendly, cheap, so on and so forth. That sounds nice, but it doesn't change the appeal of eating an animal whole, or thinking about that same animal living its entire life among a pile of rotten food and poop.
Take angiostrongylus cantonensis, a tiny worm. It causes eosinophilic meningitis, which is lethal. It is a very rare parasite in the west. Interestingly, when an infection does occur, it is always a male child. Never girls. Never men or woman. Always male kids and the rare teenager. Why? Who else eats slugs?
Clinical Aspects of Eosinophilic Meningitis and Meningoencephalitis caused by Angiostrongylus cantonensis, the Rat Lungworm
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3689484/
The other thing is that sufficiently heating food will kill any parasite present, along with many other things that would do us harm.
I'm sure they would end transforming insects in a "flour"...
Even in cities in Asia, animals are served in supermarkets whole. It's only in America really that there is this sort of alienation between where meat comes from and what looks like. And by "America", I mean North American cities, because most farmers I know have few qualms about eating meat knowing where it came from.
Part of that has to do with the fact that it was largely seen as "poor people" food, and partly because you can get a whole lot more meat than you can feet or other body parts from any given animal.
Asian here. We love eating chicken feet. FYI there is a layer of outer skin that get stripped before we marinate and cook chicken feet.
Also when the day mass producing insects as food comes, they won't be living in a pile of rotten food and poop.
Glad to hear that there's a sanitary way to cook the feet, but the texture was what really killed it for me. I'm a long way from any ocean, so I've never been a big seafood kindof person; texture and flavor of things like beef tongue, squid, octopus and catfish all throw me off as well. Jellyfish wasn't too bad, but I don't think I'd eat it again.
Edit: I guess my point was that I'll try anything once, so I'm far less picky than the average American, but some things I can't bring myself to try a second time.
I recommend researching how meat is raised. It's probably much more unappealing than how food insects are raised. You can eat insects without knowing that you're eating insects.
Here are some insect food products that you can buy in the US.[1] They are good.
[1] https://chirpschips.com/
Unrelated, I've encountered energy bars with an insect: Standard energy bars, but extra expensive and with minuscule amounts of insect. Selling cheap eco-friendly insects as an expensive "cool" gimmick is a cruel sort of irony.
Same idea with insects - when I picture someone eating insects, I get reminded of the smells, the sounds, and worst of all where they've been. Bees?! Ever seen a portable toilet in the summer when the doors are left cracked open and insects get into? Bees on human feces. No thanks.
It's the one thing that sticks with me from the PETA and PETA-like movements: you should know how your food is created. If it makes you more empathetic, fine, and if it doesn't, also fine. We are omnivores after all.
I guess there's a utilitarian argument for taking a pill so we'd never feel bad about anything, if we could, though I'm not sure if we'd still be recognizably human. Well, maybe psychopaths are like that.
Still relevant to the article as they're also a part of the insect cuisine: http://www.bugsfeed.com/eating_wasps_and_hornets_in_japan
Anyway, I guess you and I know different people. To me, calling a wasp a bee is like calling a bee a fly. They look different, fly in different ways, bees don't hang around horse poop, aren't irritatingly aggressive, etc.
what a lot of people don't know is that your taste buds and perspective on food/sustenance completely changes as you remove more and more animal products from your diet.
Edit: Sorry entomophages didn’t mean to offend.
With modern farming technology the mass cultivation may be possible, but for times past compare this to something like a single decent sized whitetail deer that can provide upwards of 100 pounds of edible meat. One deer = months of food. One insect = minutes/seconds of food.
However, as I am someone who already does not eat meat, is there a compelling reason for me to start eating insects?
Would adding insects to my diet be, for example, more eco-friendly/sustainable than my plant-based diet?
I don't think I have a diversification need that is not currently satisfied, either nutritionally or for enjoyment of variety.
You typically need thousands of insects to get the same amount of protein as a chicken. You can raise several chickens per square meter but you can't raise the equivalent number of insects in that space which means you either need more real estate (expensive) or typically more labour with insects in many shelves or boxes stacked up. And each of these shelves or boxes requires cleaning, feeding, watering, temperature control...
Without a huge revolution in technology to automate all of these tasks you have to employ a small army of human workers which is only really viable in lower wage countries.
You simply can't produce insects suitable for human consumption at less than $20/kg whereas chickens can sell for just a few dollars per kg. And when the consumer is given the choice between delicious, cheap, tried and tested vs unknown, expensive they will always choose chicken.
Unless they're hipsters. How else does one explain the existence, and outrageous price, of cold brew coffee as compared to its unfailingly disappointing flavour?
But a mass of crickets breaks loose from containment?
Ohgod.
Of course it’s probably irrational, but that’s the way it is.
One thing Elon Musk said that made me rethink some things. In his NeuralLink company, he said they came to the conclusion that our neural cortex is "hosted" by our limbic system in his quest to eventually have our neural cortex host AI itself. What that means is our limbic system is driving the motivation of our neocortex to do complicated things to appease it. So in other words, our underlying needs are still very rudimentary in that sense shared with other mammals and even reptiles despite our neocortex reasoning that we are more than that.
I suspect the answer will be mushrooms or yeast, ultimately.
If crickets are touted as this miracle protein that are easy to farm, low impact on the environment, and are still considered to be undesirable, then why are these companies charging $35/lb for their protein powder when you can get whey or pea powder for $6-8/lb?
The consumption of insects tends to involve dealing with exoskeletons, direct associations with spoilage (maggots), fiddly and tedious carving; most tend to have a dry texture, and very little appetizing saturated fat.
People might not eat them every day, certainly not at pork and bread levels, but frozen escargot and cuisses de grenouille are easily found in any grocery store in France that's large enough to have a freezer section.
Muse about why Europeans don't eat insects. Claim that eating insects is a big thing in Asia, Africa, and various indigenous cultures. Mention seafood. Talk about some new insect farming and processing ventures. Point out the supposed eco-friendly advantage. Point out that they are rich in protein. Point out that they're cheap to raise. Make a quip about how we're already eating insects because tiny minuscule bits end up in processed foods.