It's far more difficult to narrow down Bizzaro News to three articles than to just find three. But we're pretty sure that these will suffice. Snake orgies and seriously germaphobic airline passengers, just to name a couple. And just another week in Crazyville.
1. Insect fat waffles
As if we don't have enough repulsive food products to choose from (e.g. kale) here's another that might send you to the Twinkies aisle. Some bugged-out researchers from Ghent University in Belgium decided that larvae of the black soldier fly might be a good source of a different type of fat.
Black soldier fly larvae. I think I'll pass. Photo: CNN
What's the purpose of the research?
“The ecological footprint of an insect is much smaller compared to animal-based food sources”
Daylan Tzompa-Sosa, Ghent University
The actual footprint of the insect is probably even smaller.
It's not as bad as it seems. The group made waffles with varying amounts of bug fat and butter. The waffles in which one-quarter and one-half of the butter were replaced by the bug fat had the same flavor and texture as the 100% butter waffles. Sort of makes you wonder who did the testing.
Original photo: Wikipedia
Perhaps just to bug me, they threw in a ridiculous health claim:
"Insect fat is a different type of fat than butter...Insect fat contains lauric acid, which provides positive nutritional attributes since it is more digestible than butter. Moreover, lauric acid has an antibacterial, antimicrobial and antimycotic effect. This means that it is able, for example, to eliminate harmless various viruses, bacteria or even fungi in the body, allowing it to have a positive effect on health.”
This is a bunch of nonsense. Wanna know what also has an "antibacterial, antimicrobial and antimycotic effect?" Bleach. It also kills cancer cells. And all the rest of the cells. The chance of this stuff having any real medicinal value is probably zero. Maybe less.
2. Slutty Snakes
Should Lake Hollingsworth in Central Florida be on your bucket list you might want to put that one on hold. There's a snake orgy going on in the lake and it makes the days of Studio 54 look like a Buddist retreat.
A snake "mating ball." Image: YouTube
Since we at ACSH are in ceaseless pursuit of public health we wondered whether proper precautions were being taken to prevent the spread of STDs. It would seem so.
Safe Snake Sex. Say that five times fast. Original photo: Flickr
3. Shrink-wrapped (and insane) airline passengers
Yes, the Whuan coronavirus is pretty scary, but not as scary as a couple of lunatics who were flying to Hamilton Island in Australia.
Photo: New York Post. Note the mask under the plastic suit.
This raises a few questions...
- How do they breathe?
- Isn't the pink suit perpetuating the stereotype of the neurotic woman?
- Is traveling like this more or less comfortable than on American Airlines?
See you next week.
