Kanye West tweeted a photo of fried crickets after his dad beat cancer, saying they were celebrating and to “overcome fear”.
If you’re familiar with Kanye, you know he’s been on a tear for about a year, talking about mental health, opening the mind, and living with love.
So it’s interesting that he’d choose this dish of fried crickets to publicly highlight as a celebratory one, and that his message is so on point.
Yeezy, as always, is from the future.
Why are people in western countries scared of crickets? Is it the product of centuries of misunderstanding, or the use of bugs in movies to creep the audience out, or because they’re actually scary insects?
It’s definitely not because they’re scary – that idea is laughable, with the majority of insects actually! Crickets aren’t going to attack your face and eat your flesh. They might annoy you with their chirping from under your refrigerator, but that’s about the extent of the danger they pose to you.
And when it comes to food, do you eat shrimp, lobster, crab…? Because not only are they all part of pancrustacea, along with crickets, they look even scarier and those pincers really could do your fingers some damage!
But you eat them, no problem. Grab that shrimp by the crunchy chitinous tail – similar to the exoskeleton of a cricket – and you dip it in your favorite sauce and you eat it. Even if it’s got the legs while on your plate, you cut them off, and you eat the good part.
Cricket legs are actually really delicious, but cuts of meat aside, you’ve gotta understand your fear of eating bugs is completely unfounded! There is nothing logical about it, nothing real behind the phobias, it’s all in your head.
If you want to avoid eating spiders for now, we’ll let that slide – that’s a topic for a different day.
But crickets? You’re not going to be genuinely afraid of eating crickets, which have a delicious, slightly nutty flavor with great crunchy mouth feel when they’re fried up with a little garlic and oil and lemon and chili…or simply eaten toasted and dried with their own natural flavor.
Kanye got it right. “overcome fear”.
Will Smith got it right too: “Danger is very real. But fear – fear is a choice.”
Choose the path to a better world by examining your fear rationally, and realizing, there’s truly nothing to be afraid of, but there’s a delicious, healthy, more sustainable world to gain.
Now, if you’re truly “entomophobic” and have a real, deep-seeded psychological fear of insects, that’s a different challenge than what I’m referring to above.
Check out this article on How to Overcome the Fear of Bugs and Entomophobia, at ChoosingTherapy.com and learn how to spot the symptoms, various treatments, and how to cope.
For the rest of us, it’s simply a choice to eat a new delicious superfood, and set those deeply ingrained biases against eating bugs aside!
Love your planet.
Love your body.
Love your food.
#EatBugs
Model: Yury
Insect: Changrit Dong (Khmer), coconut cricket
Photographer: Josh Galt
Location: Cambodia
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