Wincing, not quite Convincing: Gross, Gag Me with a Spoon!

For Your Consumption: A slight change of pace, an opportunity to cleanse your pandemic and political palate, I bring you a topic that may initially sound pleasing to your ears, like an Italian opera: Tenebria Molitor🎝Okay, maybe more like a Gregorian chant𝇑 (haven't you ever seen a Gregorian clef?). Oh, all right, before you go to google and spoil all my fun, this is the technical term for a growing food source, that is both sustainable and touted as a good source of protein, which has gotten the green light to start getting incorporated into European menus (just when you thought it was getting safe to go out to eat again) -- MEALWORMS! Which are the larval form of the mealworm beetle, a species of darkling beetle - Yum!...YUK!

Caveat Emptor: While we can anticipate that these little buggers will initially show up in the same places that tofu and the like first made their maiden voyage as a delicacy, imagine how the other hoity-toity establishments will try to dress these critters up both visually and by description on the menu. The article describing the nutritional and environmental value does include some 'fine print', cautioning those with allergies to dust mites and crustaceans might experience a reaction  to the new food (perhaps it will come with a brochure explaining all the types of side effects you might experience, like the one I got with my first COVID vaccine which I read, of course, after).

"Fear Factor" Meets "Inside Out" The series "Fear Factor" commenced in 2001 and ran for seven seasons, and primarily confronted contestants with what the producers discovered were some of their primal fears which, of course, included creepy crawlers for many (which they had them feel, get covered with, and even consume on a few occasions). And the Pixar film "Inside Out", which came out in 2005, included Disgust as a core emotion (as a veteran psychologist this at first caught me by surprise, kind of 'bugged' me,  but the writers' brilliance in including this feeling was revealed early on). The intersection or convergence or fear and disgust (or otherwise being revolted, finding things repugnant) is actually quite dynamic, if you just pause and think about your recent individual and our collective consciousness over the past several months and the past week in particular -- what we find off-putting in any of our senses, i.e., 'sensory defensive', also tends to raise our anxiety or fear level. 

A No Thank You Helping: With repeated exposure, we may eventually become less hypersensitive, even grow to at least semi-enjoy some of the previously avoided objects of avoidance, including foods -- I grew up in a household where, even if you found the smell or sight of a meal item unfavorable, we were still expected to at least try a few bites. Many of you, like me wonder how people can stand smelling, let alone ingesting something that has come to smell like skunk when lit ("the more the skunk, the better the junk" has become a refrain and commentary on quality pot these days). Contrast this with situations with which we should never become accustomed, have our senses dull, even with the constant 'in-your-face' type of news depicting such scenes. 

All I Needed to Learn: About mealworms I learned in fourth grade. In retrospect, prompted in part by hearing this news this morning, I now realize it was not only my formal exposure to mealworms and the scientific method, but also operant conditioning/behavior modification. When our teacher somehow came into a hectare size sample of mealworms, we were to design and implement an experiment -- I recall that my 'lab partner' and I designed an experiment to see whether we could get these buggers to go in a certain direction. And, while I don't recall the results (neither did they make it into a professional journal) I do fully remember we did not design a taste test! Some other group who apparently got the remainder of our mealworms as well as a bevy of bovines (and who apparently had way too much time on their hands) demonstrated that these darling darklings are 20 times more efficient to produce and in turn emit 80 times less methane than cows -- a related experiment demonstrated that cows actually emit significantly more of this gas by belching than via flatulence...sure glad I was not on either end of that research!

If You don't like it the first time..."I'll try anything once, twice if I like it, three times to make sure" - Mae West...including MEALWORMS MAE?!😟

Bon appetit!