Spiders

lowkeyelv

Now it is said (truthful or otherwise) that the average person swallows 8 spiders per year while sleeping.

I've been looking on MFP and in the interest of completeness of calorie counting, have not been able to find the calorie counts for daddy longlegs and his brethren.

If anyone can offer some guidance, i am sure we'd all appreciate it. Thanks.

:P

pinuplove

As someone who had a very, very nasty reaction to a brown recluse bite, I'm going to pretend I never saw this post.

OceansForever

Darn! Does that mean I am no longer eating vegan?

LauraMacNCheese

Spiders are 8 legs of pure creepy nastiness :frown:

DopeItUp

Depends on the size of the spider, you'd need to measure it with a food scale before consuming. Depends if it's a momma wolf spider carrying a bunch of babies on its back too. Tough call.

I hear venomous spiders are rich in antioxidants though.

76tech

0 calories, since you have to burn calories to digest the chitinous exoskeleton.

durhamity

:noway: Can someone tell me how I can un-read this???

lowkeyelv

hehe, that was kind of the point. you can't.

:noway: Can someone tell me how I can un-read this???

jkestens63

Spiders are 8 legs of pure creepy nastiness :frown:

Not at all, I have a spider tattoo on the top of my right foot. Her name is Matilda. My boyfriend at the time got a wolf on the top of his left foot so when we lay in bed together our tattoos would be next to each other. What can I say, we were young and stupid. Although not so stupid that I would get his name tattoo'd on me, which is what he wanted.

JustLindaLou

GAH!!! I am gonna be taping my mouth shut now while sleeping - we have tarantulas here in the desert....
Maybe that is why I am FAT, must be all the hairy juicy tarantulas I have eaten in my sleep.

mikey1976

i found this story hope it helps



A Cambodian boy displays two live tarantulas, a national delicacy: For 2.5 billion people, especially those in tropical regions, insects have always been a standard element in the local diet.



http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,756599,00.html

Westerners might get a bit queasy when they think about eating locusts, spiders or ants, but they make up delicacies and key sources of protein in much of the world. A new movement is trying to bring them onto Western plates in an effort to save the environment.



"Mister Ambassador, could you please pass the salted worms?" asks Sir David King, a distinguished British gentleman and renowned scientist.


"Please, try these delicious ants as well!" replies His Excellency Mauricio Rodríguez Múnera, Colombia's ambassador to the United Kingdom. The two men toast, raising glasses filled with golden mezcal con gusano, a Mexican agave liquor with one exquisite additional ingredient -- a butterfly larva of the Megathymus genus.

As the meal is served, 10 fearless gourmet diners turn their attention to the creations of celebrity English chef Thomasina "Tommi" Miers. It's a sunny Sunday in spring at a long table on the front lawn of the Museum of Natural History at the venerable University of Oxford.

Artist Angela Palmer sent out the invitations to this "Grand Banquet of Rainforest Insects" to garner support for rainforest protection by offering a meal with courses made up of insect dishes. Yes, eating ants, dragonflies and locusts is apparently good for the environment.

By 2030, the global population is expected to balloon to 8 billion people, and meat consumption is increasing drastically. What's more, using valuable agricultural resources to feed cattle and hogs contaminates drinking water, generates greenhouse gases and accelerates rainforest deforestation.

"Insect protein is not only nutritious," Palmer says, "it's also particularly environmental." Raising insects doesn't require grazing land, concentrated feed or septic tanks, she adds, yet they taste just as good as pork or beef. But, of course, that might take some convincing.

Boys Eating Bugs

About 150 interested onlookers crowd around the tables, their expressions a mixture of curiosity and disgust. "I feel like I'm on the show 'I'm a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!'" says Martha Kearney, a broadcaster at the BBC chosen to attend the meal. "It's awful to imagine the insects might still be crawling around when you swallow them."

As Kearney sees it, the more processed the insects are, the better they taste. She helps herself to an appetizer of dried, salted mealworms that look like miniature pretzel sticks -- and taste about the same. "Very good," she says.

Film producer Peter Bennett-Jones, whose hits have included the "Mr. Bean" movies, is not quite as thrilled. "I think the most important spice here is the mescal," he says while pouring himself another shot, making sure not to let the plump larva at the bottom of the bottle slip into his glass.

"But you must admit, the leafcutter ants taste terrific!" says the Colombian ambassador standing next to him, as he takes another helping from the bowl full of little dark-brown balls that are actually the plump abdomens of Atta laevigata ants. "We call them 'hormigas culonas,'" the ambassador adds, meaning "fat-bottomed ants."

And then the ambassador really gets going. "When we were children, there was always a big celebration when the queen ants started their nuptial flight," he says. "We caught them with our hands, bags and hats." The ants were then coated in salt, grilled and eaten like peanuts. "Whenever I eat fat-bottomed ants, I feel like a little boy again," the ambassador says.

The ants also happen to be the undisputed favorite at the table -- crisp when bitten into, with a smoky flavor and a nutty finish.

The Eco Alternative

Sir David is famous for shaping the discipline of surface science at Cambridge University together with Germany's Gerhard Ertl, a Nobel Prize laureate in chemistry. But now the slender gentleman is also reminiscing while munching on insects. As a schoolboy in South Africa, he says he used to eat live termites to impress the girls in his class. Now he praises insects as a delicacy that, unlike cattle, release very little greenhouse gas into the atmosphere.

"What's the difference between a prawn and a locust?" asks Miers, the chef. "Only the fact that one lives in water and the other on land." Miers runs four Mexican restaurants in London called "Wahaca." She has also written several cookbooks and hosted a number of cooking shows.

Christopher Gray, food critic for The Oxford Times, fearlessly bites off the head of a sautéed cricket. "I don't know," he says. "It tastes too earthy to me, almost a little barnyardy."

'Try Them, Ye Epicures!'


Oxford has a history of hosting odd meals featuring exotic dishes. Around 150 years ago, the well-known zoologist Francis Trevelyan Buckland caused a stir with his culinary flights of fancy. For example, he determined that earwigs taste "horribly bitter" and nearly as bad as moles and bluebottle flies.

This was an era that saw a great deal of fear over the so-called "population trap" outlined by Thomas Robert Malthus. The British economist predicted that agriculture would not be able to keep pace with population growth, leading to famine and human suffering. In 1860, Buckland founded the Acclimatization Society, which aimed to introduce organisms like silkworms, beavers and parrots into the British diet.

Though few followed Buckland's example, the idea survived. "Wood louse sauce is equal, if not superior, to shrimp," British entomologist Vincent Holt wrote in his 1885 book "Why Not Eat Insects?" He also wrote of the joy of "a fat month nicely baked," urging his readers: "Try them, ye epicures! What possible argument can there be against eating a creature beautiful without and sweet within; a creature nourished on nectar, the fabled food of the gods?"

jarrettd

TMI. Just sayin'.

kittenmitton

That whole thing about eating spiders in your sleep isn't true. I mean, what kind of spider would be stupid enough that it would crawl down someone's esophagus? No spider, that's for certain. They're just not that suicidal.

On another note, if you do like eating spiders or other insects, I've heard they're actually quite good for you (no fat, no cholesterol, high in protein). If you're going to start eating bugs, I'd get a small collection of my own so you can control what you're feeding them. Insects are clearly usually small (except wetas *shudder*), and most generally taste like what they've eaten. So I wouldn't eat fruit flies because they've been eating all sorts of nasty pooey things.

I've heard cockroaches and crickets are tasty. A little bit crunchy, but if you feed them oranges, they taste all citrusy.

godricshollow

Oh dear god... I HATE spiders! My worst experience was when one had it's babies in my air vent so my roof was covered in baby spiders and they were dropping down everywhere. The horror.

Captain_Tightpants

Good protein... I'd log about 50 extra cals a month for swallowing our arachnoid friends.

I kinda spiders really. They still give me an "AGHH" reaction if they get on me, but otherwise they are really cool. If I find one in the house that's not a monster I usually leave it there - gets rid of much worse bugs. Have you ever played with a jumping spider with a twig... they are amazing, they'll look you straight in the eye and attack the twig full on. Be careful not to hurt the little fellers though.

paulamarsden

spiders are just vile.

anything with 8 eyes is not to be trusted.

in the UK, we now have an invasion of false widow spiders, they have killed.

UK PEOPLE PLEASE GOOGLE AND BE AWARE OF WHAT THEY LOOK LIKE FOR WHEN GARDENING THIS YEAR.

mznisaelaine

I seriously started to cry when I read the OP..

srp2011

Good protein... I'd log about 50 extra cals a month for swallowing our arachnoid friends.

I kinda spiders really. They still give me an "AGHH" reaction if they get on me, but otherwise they are really cool. If I find one in the house that's not a monster I usually leave it there - gets rid of much worse bugs. Have you ever played with a jumping spider with a twig... they are amazing, they'll look you straight in the eye and attack the twig full on. Be careful not to hurt the little fellers though.

As far as I'm concerned, the only good spider is a dead, squashed, spider, flat as a pancake. I've made it my mission in life to kill as many as possible. The only game I'm playing with a stick and a spider is "Smash the Spider" - lots of fun :laugh:

xMsAlly

Yuck!