I saw an episode of the show Airline which is a reality show that follows airline employees and their dealings with passengers.
In one episode a woman from Nigeria(I think) who was already in the USA and had already passed through customs was stopped from boarding a domestic flight because her luggage contained dried and salted fish from Nigeria she was bringing for a pregnant relative. I don’t remember what prompted them to stop her, but when they opened her luggage and opened the bag the fish was in dozens of cockroaches and maybe other insects swarmed out. The airline crew was of course freaking out but the woman seemed unbothered, as if it was normal.
I have a lot of experience cooking and eating salted and dried fish, and I have never in my life seen any with live bugs in it(or dead bugs). Whats the deal?
I have two colleagues who were doing fieldwork in Mali. After spending a few weeks in the bush, they spent the night in a small town. The town had a “restaurant”. They went in and sat down. Place was very dimly lit.
Someone came over and put a bowl of dried fish rings down on the table for them, they munched on them and talked.
A car drove by and the headlights flooded the place. Lit it up enough for my colleagues to see the HUNDREDS of maggots writhing in the fish rings.
One threw up. Both exited the establishment. The locals were unbothered.
There’s someone on this very board who has spent considerable time in Africa, in a country bordering Nigeria, no less; with any luck, she may see this thread and comment.
In China once my girlfriend got an omelet with a fly cooked into it. When she complained to the waitress, the waitress shrugged, got some chopsticks and plucked it out then walked away, presumably thinking “why couldn’t she have done that herself?”
Ok that’s not as bad as hundreds of roaches, but it’s part of a continuum of different levels of being freaked out by insects.
Hey, insects in foods have been part of human life until recently. In the movie “Master and Commander”, there is a scene where the cook is picking weevils out of the captain’s cheese.
I remember a story about why the old time Japanese didn’t get beri-beri (vitamin deficiency disease), because their rice was always full of bugs-when cooked, the insects supplied the necesary vitamin.
Or cheese-the taste that people like is supplied by bacteria-who are eating the milk proteins and making the delicious flavors with their excretions.
And, to the coffee afficianados who like “kopi luwak”-draw your own conclusions.:eek:
Yeah, and as soon as they stopped being a normal part of life, average life expectancy rates started to increase. I mean, it’s probably just a coincidence that the average life span in the U.S. is 78, while that of Nigeria is 46, right?
For context, dried fish is used ubiquitously for it’s flavor and protein content. For many, especially the poor, it’s the main source of protein in everyday meals. The fish (and it’s black, noxious, evil-smelling stuff) is cooked into long-simmered sauces consisting of various greens, peanut butter, or tomatoes. In essence, it is hearty homestyle old-fashioned comfort food, bringing up fond memories of dinner at your Grandparents.
I wouldn’t say infestations are normal, but it probably wouldn’t provoke the over-the-top reaction we’d have in the states. Cockroaches are just a part of everyday life. I’d see at least one or two a day, and I had a pretty good hunting cat and an indoor toilet, so it could have been a lot, lot worse. You always know they are in your kitchen, and for certain they are in the market stalls where you buy your food. So you just try not to think about it, cook your food really well, and move on. For example, it was completely normal to sift the bugs out of flour before baking anything. Removing bugs is just the first part of the cooking process.
I remember I had some rice that was half-black with bugs, so I chucked it out. My neighbors (for whom rice was a special treat- the sort of thing you might get once a year with your birthday dinner) marched it right back to me, shocked that I’d throw it out. We spent the next couple of hours picking out bugs, and then they cheerfully cooked the rice. A bit of a learning experience!
The fish would be picked through and probably rinsed before it was cooked, and it’d be cooked for at least three hours. I don’t think it really poses a disease risk. So while I don’t think all fish is infested, the attitude would be “well, clean it off” rather than “eeeeeeeeegggg bugs!!!”
Although humans can and do eat insects, you shouldn’t confuse the “ick” factor of insect-eating with that of disease-carrying, and cockroaches can carry some whoppers – dysentary, typhoid, and polio, among others. They also defecate in food, and (again, besides the heavy “ick” factor), many people are allergic to roach feces. Maggots are similar disease vectors. as David George Gordon says in his eat a Bug Cookbook, no one should be afraid of eating clean-living crickets, grasshoppers, and waterbugs, but insects that live in human garbage are something else entirely
While there are fewer bugs in US food than in some other countries, are food is not, in fact, “bug free”. Many foods have an allowable level of “insect parts” which is just what is sounds like.
Fact is, bugs are not the biggest disease vectors in food, especially not cooked food containing deceased bugs.
I recently tried my hand at making a Nigerian soup called “Miyan Kuka” and one of the ingredients is a large dried catfish. I was excited to find some being sold at an African market here in Canada. …That is until I took it home and started soaking the $8 dollar bastard in water. To my surprise, dead larvae, mites and beetles floated up to the surface as it soaked. It took TEN changes of water just to clean the damn thing. The salvaged meat was no more than a can of kippered herring. Seriously, if your delving into amateur African cooking, just go and buy yourself a can of smoked(kippered) fish.
