While the rest of the world freaks out over eating crickets, let’s not forget what God said to the Hebrew people as He was setting out food guidelines in the book of Leviticus:
Leviticus 11:21-22Â Yet these may ye eat of every flying creeping thing that goeth upon all four, which have legs above their feet, to leap withal upon the earth; Â 22Â Even these of them ye may eat; the locust after his kind, and the bald locust after his kind, and the beetle after his kind, and the grasshopper after his kind.
Mark 1:6Â And John was clothed with camel’s hair, and with a girdle of a skin about his loins; and he did eat locusts and wild honey;
The threat of parasites as many are pointing out, is only a threat if you are NOT eating your anti-parasitic foods as well. The people throwing this fear point around forget that we have to deal with other parasites from food in our average diet as well. God gave us foods that help us deal with those parasites! During the pandemic, a medicine made from bacteria found in the soil was banned by many governments for use against covid-19, BUT, it was very solidly ant-parasitic and was used as such in various developing nations for decades prior to 2020! Some won’t touch it because, ew! It came from a worm in the soil! Oil of Oregano killed pinworm in my daughter when she was a child, a parasite that can sometimes be found in unsprayed soft fruits.
Foods that are anti-parasitic include:
- black pepper,
- chamomile,
- cloves,
- garlic,
- grapefruit,
- papaya,
- pineapple,
- pumpkin seeds,
- tarragon,
- and walnuts.
This is a sampling of a longer list.
Others are pointing out how chitin could cause neuroblastomas in the brain. Again, no mention was made of the foods God has given us that are both anti-cancer as well as neuroprotective!
- cherries,
- cocoa,
- garlic,
- eucalyptus,
- grapefruit,
- kale,
- yogurt,
- mushrooms,
- olives,
- onions,
- oranges,
- papaya,
- parsley,
- potatoes,
- spinach,
- tarragon,
- turmeric,
- yams
- and yarrow.
Neuroprotective foods, and foods that benefit the central nervous system include:
- peaches,
- pine needles,
- plums,
- walnuts,
- apples,
- black pepper,
- cabbage,
- cherries,
- dandelion,
- ginger,
- lavender,
- butter,
- parsley,
- pumpkin seeds,
- quinoa,
- rhubarb,
- spinach,
- turmeric,
- walnuts,
- and yarrow.
Now, let’s look for a moment at the nutritional/medicinal profile of honey. . . unpasteurized honey! Honey is anti-bacterial/viral/septic, is a general tonic, lung tonic, benefits the spleen and stomach, contains high levels of salicylate, contains interferon Gamma, helps tame allergies and asthma, useful against migraines and skin conditions, etc.
We already eat various, much larger bugs in restaurants and buy from grocery stores. We call them crabs, lobsters, shrimp, and prawns.
We really need cooler heads to prevail on this issue! People are needlessly freaking out over the dangers of eating crickets. It appears to be a severe lack of knowing how to round out one’s diet to include the foods that otherwise address issues that are caused not merely by the locust, but by other foods in common use around the globe.
From where I sit, the string pullers have managed to pit their enemies against each other with this whole bug issue. Are they wise to force everyone to eat bugs? When you consider what might happen if a cricket plant’s security gets lax and a million crickets get loose, NO! The crop devastation would be massive! Are the string pullers wise thinking that farming bugs is better than farming cattle? NO! Bugs are a necessary part of the ecology, but so are cattle. The cost of the plants being built to farm crickets would ease many ranchers’ woes right now, so this is a clear case of attempted control over the people. Are they misrepresenting the amount of protein a bug contains? YES! Yes they are! When my kids were little long before the pandemic showed up, if one of us accidentally swallowed a flying insect, we’d all joke that they’d just had a little bit more protein in their diet that day, and by little, I mean infinitesimal! Yes they have protein due to their muscular structure under their carapace. But it isn’t a lot because their muscles are so tiny.
My guess is, that the people freaking out over eating crickets, never heard of stir-frying large maggots over a camp fire either. This has been going on by various hikers, travellers, etc across Africa for longer than I’ve been alive and the dish is a survival food that according to one person I heard from, fit the joke that it “tasted like chicken”.
Should we be fighting back against the string pullers for trying to forcibly change farming practices and food choices??? YES we should! But NOT because of the nutritional content or supposed health threat that God already provided mitigation for. We need to fight against the principle of food control, not the food itself.
There are foods, such as cocoa, that should be eaten with other foods to mitigate potential issues. Who doesn’t love cocoa and chocolate?! The trick for safe eating is in the adding of dairy. The addition of the dairy makes the cocoa safe to eat so that the same compound that kills dogs and cats won’t make us severely ill or kill us too (not that you should ever be eating enough in one sitting to cause that). Eating pineapple with meat dishes will help people who are low on protein enzymes in processing the meat they eat. Eating black pepper with other spices enhances the nutritional/medicinal qualities of those spices. So just apply this rule of thumb to eating crickets. Be sure to pair it with foods that are anti-parasitic, anti-cancer and neuroprotective.
God said we could eat crickets several millenia before Klaus Schwabb did! But because Klaus mentioned it, everyone is against it and dreaming up reasons to freak out over it!
CALM DOWN!!!