Sandhoppers - those little jumpy crustaceans that can be found in abundance by turning over rocks and debris on the sea shore - I can’t find any data regarding their suitability or otherwise as a food for humans.
Assuming I can contrive to catch them in worthwhile quantities, from an unpolluted area, is there any reason I should be wary of eating them?
(Assuming also that I’d be washing, then boiling them up to make soup - presumably thus reducing the risk of harm from any bacteria or other bugs they might be carrying).
There are plenty of insects that contain toxic compounds, and some millipedes secrete cyanide. If you ate a large amount, they could affect you. However, I am not aware that any sandhoppers are toxic.
[slight hijack]Aren’t you the guy who starred in a video on how to prep a mango? For the life of me, I can’t find that thread or link, and now I need to forward it to someone.[/slight hijack]
Not to answer your question or anything, but on a recent quest to rid them from my basement, I came across several recipes for woodlouse sauce. So I can’t imagine actual sea insects being any worse.
I did some undergraduate and graduate work on a lot of these little guys (imagine my shock at actually seeing a question about them on the boards! It’s like actually getting the Red Ryder BB Gun for Christmas) - including the Orchestia you’ll find on many Pacific beaches. I have actually heard of people eating them in small amounts, although I’ve never tried it myself. They don’t seem terribly popular, but what the hey.
As others have mentioned, amphipods do bioaccumulate toxins, if you’re not planning on eating a lot of them and you’re not in a particularly polluted area you’re probably OK. Chesapeake Bay or San Francisco Bay - maybe not, but Carmel or Cape Cod I might try. Also avoid areas with lots of agricultural runoff - pesticides can be nasty.
Thanks for the info. I’m actually in the UK, but I guess there’s probably not a lot of difference between our sandhoppers and anyone else’s. I’ll be careful to collect them from a beach where other bioaccumulating organisms - such as clams and other shellfish - are considered safe to eat - of course there may not be absolute correlation between the safety of the one and the other, but it seems like it should be a fairly reliable indicator.
If I try them, I’ll be sure to report back. If I survive
