View Full Version : Ants and Worms-Protein?
OK, this might sound stupid, but in the 70's and 80's I was super poor and destitute on the trail. Basicly a bum trying to live off the land. I wasn't trying to pound down miles. Averaged maybe 12 miles per day. Food source was mostly some kind of pasta, rice, instant mashed and oatmeal. Greens were eays to find. Fruit could be found for free behind roadside stands. Protein was the problem. My protein was ants and worms. Easy to gather and find. Dryed the worms. No flavor. Just added them to the pasta. oatmeal, etc. Ants I didn't dry. Just crushed them and put them in the pot. So, was I wasting my time? How much protein is in a few teaspoons of ants or worms? I managed to some how grub up a cheesburger at least every week or ten days. No way of knowing if the ants and worms did me any good.
Appalachian Tater
07-09-2010, 07:11
Regardless of the protein content, you would have to eat a LOT of ants or earthworms to get a decent quantity of protein because they are tiny and are mostly moisture.
My grandfather kept an old reach-in Coca-Cola chest refrigerator about 7 feet long (like you used to find in convenience stores, barber shops, etc. in the South) out behind the garage as a worm farm for fishing bait. He fed them a mash of expired milk and bread that he got from a grocery store. They are interesting little creatures but they are basically little digestive systems with reproductive capabilities and eating them never appealed to me. They look like little miniature living intestines. They use grit to digest their food so they are full of both grit and sh**. I don't want to eat that.
As far as ants, let them go about their business unmolested. They don't do much besides clean up after all the other creatures during their short lives.
You could find higher quality and more appetizing sources of protein for not a lot of money--I have even seen eggs for $0.99 a dozen lately--and they are a good source of nutrition with a nice little protective wrapper provided by the hen.
The worms were dried on rocks. Nothing more than a powdery substance. During that time you could probably get a dozen eggs for 25 cents. .99 would get you a six pack of Utica. The ants looked like little pieces of pepper. No taste.
I ate a lot of rattle snake too. Sold the skins. Feel kind of bad about that now. It was a long time ago. Things were different.
OK, this might sound stupid, but in the 70's and 80's I was super poor and destitute on the trail. Basicly a bum trying to live off the land. I wasn't trying to pound down miles. Averaged maybe 12 miles per day. Food source was mostly some kind of pasta, rice, instant mashed and oatmeal. Greens were eays to find. Fruit could be found for free behind roadside stands. Protein was the problem. My protein was ants and worms. Easy to gather and find. Dryed the worms. No flavor. Just added them to the pasta. oatmeal, etc. Ants I didn't dry. Just crushed them and put them in the pot. So, was I wasting my time? How much protein is in a few teaspoons of ants or worms? I managed to some how grub up a cheesburger at least every week or ten days. No way of knowing if the ants and worms did me any good.Oatmeal is very cheap, and is very close to being a complete protien. A few ants wouldn't hurt, but a high oatmeal diet will not be deficient in protien. You would still need other foods to fill out the balance of certain vitamins and minerals, but protien is not an issue with oatmeal. Ants would provide some of these vitamins and minerals, and probably make up for the amino acid 'lysine' also, which oatmeal has, but is somewhat defiecient in. Simply eating more oatmeal would work also, except for the vitamins and minerals that are missing.
Lemni Skate
07-09-2010, 08:54
Insects are very dense in nutrients. The ants probably did you a lot of good. I don't know about worms. I can't stand the way they smell so I would have to be very, very desperate before I would ever eat one.
garlic08
07-09-2010, 08:57
One of the great myths put forth (so successfully) by US agri-business is that humans must eat animal products, especially meat, to ingest a certain amount of protein.
If you get enough carbohydrates from a decent variety of unprocessed plant and vegetable sources, you'll get enough protein from those sources, too. Like Jak said, oats and other unprocessed grains are good, and cheap. Legumes are good, and cheap. If you try to subsist on simple carbs like sugar and alcohol, you will soon be protein deficient.
seriously, ants, worms? just ask someone for a buck and get a mcdonalds cheeseburger
Pedaling Fool
07-09-2010, 09:46
Insects are a great food source, their availability and nutritional value is underrated...but for now I just consider them my back-up plan. I'm sure I'll start eating them when the super-volcano blows in yellowstone and I can no logner grow a garden.
Hikes in Rain
07-09-2010, 10:00
Somewhere in my library is an article on the four tools that would feed you forever. One was a bug net. (The other three were a casting net, a good folding shovel, and a good air rifle) Grasshoppers would probably have done you more good than ants, but most bugs are good sources of fats and proteins, according to the article.
I'd have gotten a lot of rice, whole grains and beans, personally.
cowboy nichols
07-09-2010, 10:36
I think I read somewhere that grubs are good don't know the protien level Bears like them ate some roasted once when I was young and would do most anything on a dare, they were rather tasty and crunchy in a pinch I would rather eat them than a worm.
Insects are a great food source, their availability and nutritional value is underrated...but for now I just consider them my back-up plan. I'm sure I'll start eating them when the super-volcano blows in yellowstone and I can no logner grow a garden.If the super volcano in yellowstone blows gardening and writing will be the least of your problems.
Pedaling Fool
07-09-2010, 11:50
If the super volcano in yellowstone blows gardening and writing will be the least of your problems.
Yes, to say the least. It will be a complete "reset" in human civilization around the world. I wonder how the seeds in the Global Seed Vault will be distributed.
The other practical consideration of oatmeal is you can only eat so much of it. So for hiking you have to add stuff like skim milk powder, dried fruit, nuts and seeds, which is a good thing to do anyway to balance your diet with vitamins and minerals. Honey and oil boosts the calories very nicely for hiking, but not the vitamins and minerals. Milk is very complimentary, having most of the vitamins and mineralas that oats and other grains lack. Oats is very complete protien-wise though, similar to quinoa, but I am not so keen on quinoa. Oats is so much easier to mix with the stuff I like. I suppose it depends alot on what you grow up on.
My hiking diet happens to be very cheap, and easy to purchase in trip sized measures.
Oats: 1.35kg bag of large flake oats
Skim Milk Powder: 500g bag
Currants, or Raisins, or sometimes Dates: 500g bag
Almonds, or Sunflower Seeds, sometimes Peanuts: 2-3 100g bags
some tea, coffee, spices, maybe 500g of honey
Those are the main staples for me.
Also some jerky to chew on once a day. When hiking from home I dry this in the oven, and have been drying blueberries in the oven also, instead of or in addition to the currants. Admittedly, it takes some practice to pound back 1.35kg of oats in 5 days, especially if I sneak in some extra snacks from my daughters lunch supplies, like granola bars or fruit-to-go bars or whatever. Sometimes I grab a can of corned-beef.
mister krabs
07-09-2010, 15:58
. I wonder how the seeds in the Global Seed Vault will be distributed.
Alex Jones knows. :-?
Appalachian Tater
07-09-2010, 19:29
You don't have to eat animal protein and there are hundreds of millions of people who eat it rarely or never. Even B12 is found in non-animal sources due to production by mircroorganisms.
One of the great myths put forth (so successfully) by US agri-business is that humans must eat animal products, especially meat, to ingest a certain amount of protein.
If you get enough carbohydrates from a decent variety of unprocessed plant and vegetable sources, you'll get enough protein from those sources, too. Like Jak said, oats and other unprocessed grains are good, and cheap. Legumes are good, and cheap. If you try to subsist on simple carbs like sugar and alcohol, you will soon be protein deficient.
Yes, thats true. They say most people eat too much protein.
Beans: the breakfast of hobo champions.
Don't worms carry parasites?
Alex Jones knows. :-?
What does Alex Jones say? I used to follow that guy but he seems like hes getting a little too paranoid.
Interestingly, earthworms were introduced to the Americas by the settlers of Jamestown.
turtle fast
07-09-2010, 21:44
True JAX, I read that before the advent of imported earthworms that the forest duff would pile up into little mounds to be broken down by insects, fire and rot. There are still areas free of worm migration in the west and parts of the midwest. A disaster or not?
Last weekend I met a SOBO in the Bald Mt area that claimed he had ate insects along the trail for 3 days to supplement his diet, thru the 100 wilderness.
Uncle Cranky
07-10-2010, 08:31
When I was a poor scholar, back in the late '70s, my room mates and I mainly ate vegi meals 5 days a week.
To keep the food budget to $20/person we avoided red meat and only had one fish and one fowl dish per week.
Most Americans eat way to much meat, especially red meat.
You only need 1/4 lb/day for your daily intake of meat.
For protein via vegetables you only need to combine whole grains with legumes to get the same nutritional protein found in meats.
It is also interesting to note, that a combination of whole milk and potatoes will also provide a balanced diet...the Irish were on to something.
A good meat substitute is TVP used with a whole grain.
Now the disclaimer: I'm a professional carpenter not a nutritionist!
Pedaling Fool
07-10-2010, 09:24
Interestingly, earthworms were introduced to the Americas by the settlers of Jamestown.
If you google a list of invasive species you'll find there are countless species of plants, animals and microorganisms. Personally I think all the rumblings about invasive species are complete BS. That's not to say some non-native things need eradication, but there's also a lot of "The sky is falling" warnings about this natural fact of life. The enviros always invoke the term, "Pristine" when trying to convince us to wipe our boots before going into the wilderness:rolleyes:
I think invasions are a natural fact, but the enviros will have us believe that natural areas are near-static slowly changing pristine totally sequestered bios. But the fact is nature does cause dramatic change.
It's funny how no one talks about the impacts of the honey bee on native pollinators in North America:-? I wonder why that is...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollinator_decline
All things equal, if the honey bee did not produce usable honey for us we would be hearing about the destruction to native pollinators in our pristine bios. Not to mention how many people are killed each year by the Euro's. A good example of this is the Africanized honey bee, it's pretty much equal to the Euro, except its robust defensive strategy and that is why it's considered "Invasive":rolleyes:
Freakin' Enviros :datz
Wise Old Owl
07-10-2010, 12:24
seriously, ants, worms? just ask someone for a buck and get a McDonald's cheeseburger
Or Jerky, hard boiled egg, peanuts, chick peas (Hummus) , or a can of beans.
Ants & Worms? Easier to hit a squirrel or rabbit with a rock and stun it. - sorry to offend any animal lovers here.
Oh Shoprite has NY Strip Steak for BBQ at $5 a pound. this weekend. Thats 4 large steaks for $16.
seriously, ants, worms? just ask someone for a buck and get a mcdonalds cheeseburger
No thanks. Given the choice of taking care of myself or panhandling, I'll just go ahead and take care of myself. Anyhow, I didn't see the McDonalds on the trail.
Pedaling Fool
07-11-2010, 17:16
I just turned one of my compost piles that I haven't tended to in a while. There was a line of ants going in-and-out of the pile and tons of worms (among other critters) were exposed as I turned the pile.
I thought of this thread...I chickened out
I would have sucked at that Fear Factor show:D
I just turned one of my compost piles that I haven't tended to in a while. There was a line of ants going in-and-out of the pile and tons of worms (among other critters) were exposed as I turned the pile.
I thought of this thread...I chickened out
I would have sucked at that Fear Factor show:D
I wouldn't want to eat ants and worms in that state either. The worms I ate wre completely dried in the sun. They were not slimey. When eaten like little pretzels they had little flavor. When crushed into powder or little tiny pieces and added to pasta or oatmeal I didn't even notice them. A few dozen ants added to anything also went unoticed. I never went hunting for ants and worms. They kind of just show up on their own.
charlie2008
07-14-2010, 03:53
You have got to be ****ting me. Boot me off.
Lemni Skate
07-19-2010, 12:09
Humans are omnivores. Our teeth prove it and the fact that it's so much work to get some nutrients (like B12) naturally prove it. I would be that insects and the like have been a natural part of our diet since before we started walking upright. The distaste for them is learned.
Interestingly, earthworms were introduced to the Americas by the settlers of Jamestown.
apparently, north american earth worms were all killed off during the last ice age.
Panzer
Pedaling Fool
07-19-2010, 14:46
Humans are omnivores. Our teeth prove it and the fact that it's so much work to get some nutrients (like B12) naturally prove it. I would be that insects and the like have been a natural part of our diet since before we started walking upright. The distaste for them is learned.
I often wonder who the first human was that decided that we humans were too good to eat the bugs that crawled on us. And I wonder how they broke the habit of the rest of us. Some might say that was the beginning of our downfall.
:D
Pedaling Fool
07-19-2010, 14:56
apparently, north american earth worms were all killed off during the last ice age.
Panzer
The term "earthworm" is actually very generic, there are many types and some of these survived in the lower portions around Florida and elswhere.
As for the European/Asian species they say the horticultural trade is largely to blame. http://partners.nytimes.com/library/national/science/082900sci-animal-worm.html
Anglers, take note: The night crawler on that hook is an invader.
According to recent research by an earthworm ecologist, diggers could tear up approximately the upper half of the North American continent and almost never find an earthworm of true North American descent.
"Basically, anything you can buy in a bait store in most of the country is European," said the ecologist, Dr. Sam James, a professor of life sciences at Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa.
Biologists have a term for many species that wander into nonnative territory and prosper: weeds. The area in question, which includes Canada, New England, some mid-Atlantic states and much of the upper Midwest, is entirely populated by weed earthworms, Dr. James says. The rest of the continent contains a mixture of weeds and native earthworm species.
While the ancestry of one's local earthworm might not seem like a big deal, scientists say otherwise. The encroachment of the nonnative species, for example, is having a profound effect on soil structure and can throw ecosystems off balance.
Dr. James, who earned his doctorate in ecology at the University of Michigan, has been fascinated with earthworms for years.
Based on numerous soil samples and other data, he has concluded that the species dividing line begins in New Jersey, at about 40 degrees latitude, then snakes its way westward, dipping a few degrees south in the Midwest, then rising to just below 50 degrees latitude as it makes its way to the Pacific in Washington.
The most probable reason for the divide, he says, is geological.
"Look along that line," Dr. James said. "That's where the last glaciation stopped, the furthest advance of the ice in the last glacial period, which was 15,000 to 20,000 years ago. To the north of it, you generally don't find native earthworm species. To the south, you can find them."
During that last period of glaciation, when areas that are now temperate were covered with vast sheets of ice, earthworms were among many of the creatures that were wiped out, he explained. For some distance below that line, permafrost set in and pushed the earthworms even farther south. In the 150 to 200 centuries that followed, they simply have not made their way back again.
"Earthworms have been very slowly diffusing over the north," Dr. James said. "They aren't like an organism that can look over the rise of the next hill. They can't disperse like trees. They are way, way behind."
Dr. James found support for his earthworm findings, which have not been published, in a Dutch study that measured the speed at which earthworm populations enlarge their territory. The Dutch researchers placed earthworm colonies in a field that was free of worms. After one year, the colonies had radiated outward by about 10 meters -- 32 feet -- in each direction. The worms were a European variety, and especially good colonizers.
"If you take 10 meters per year as a high-speed earthworm infiltration, and multiply that by 20,000 years, it's not very much," Dr. James said. "It's 200 kilometers, or about 120 miles."
That means it has taken the native earthworms of North America more than the duration of human history to expand their territory by the length of a small state.
Yet there are earthworms north of the line, and Dr. James has identified them as European and Asian immigrants. These were brought inadvertently by humans.
"It was the horticultural trade," said Dr. James. "People moved trees, probably in the colonial period, by bringing tubs of trees with them. Plants were moved in their soil: apples, rosebushes, any woody plant."
And along with the soil came earthworms.
While scientists have long known that invader species of earthworms exist in North America, Dr. James appears to be the first to find that native worms were absent north of the line of glaciation.
Dr. Diane Debinski, an associate professor of animal ecology at Iowa State University who specializes in biodiversity studies of vertebrates and invertebrates, said: "This is news because there are so few people who study invertebrates that are not pest species. There are a lot of taxonomic groups that are not studied because they are not perceived as being of value to humans. So I'm not surprised that we didn't know this before."
Worms are such poor travelers that their presence or absence can be used to tell geological history. "They're indicators of plate tectonic movement," Dr. James said.
Some geologists use worms as markers to track the excruciatingly slow drift of land masses. They know, for example, that Puerto Rico was once in the Pacific and passed between North and South America en route to its present location in the Caribbean. Dr. James is confident that the island touched what is now Colombia along its way, because of the similarity of Puerto Rican earthworms to Colombian earthworms. "This group of earthworms on Puerto Rico must have arrived on ancient Puerto Rico by ancient Puerto Rico coming into contact with ancient Colombia," Dr. James said.
What difference does it make whether alien worms are on American soil? A lot, scientists say.
For one thing, the invasion is still in progress, with alien worms moving into areas that have long been worm-free.
In a wooded area with worms, the ground is covered by a thin layer of the previous year's fallen leaves. Below that is a potting-soil-like mixture left behind by worms that have eaten those leaves and passed finely broken down organic matter. But in worm-free zones, like those in Michigan or Minnesota, that layer of leaf litter is much deeper.
"It's probably a good four inches thick, and it gets progressively older as you get deeper," Dr. James said. "If you walk out to where the earthworms haven't penetrated and you kick aside leaves, you just find more leaves."
He added, "There are various organisms that live in this mat of leaves that are probably very important for decomposing them."
But once the worms move in, they devour that leaf litter and alter the landscape below the surface.
While that may sound like a minor environmental event, ecologists are always wary when human intervention, like the inadvertent transfer of earthworms, changes the balance of nature.
Hawaii, for example, was historically earthworm free, until it started drawing settlers from all parts of the globe. "It has now got a vast diversity of introduced tropical and European earthworms," Dr. James said.
The trouble is that humans also introduced another species to Hawaii: pigs, which now run wild.
The pigs preceded the worms. They made an easy living in the Hawaiian woods, finding enough food on the ground that they did little rooting below the surface. Once the worms arrived, though, the pigs developed a taste for them and are now tearing up the remaining natural forest in search of worms.
Working in Iowa has placed Dr. James in an especially good position to observe the North American invasion, since the line of glaciation passes through the state.
But in his travels, he has mapped worm distribution throughout the islands of the Caribbean, found European earthworms at 2,000 meters elevation in Costa Rica and spotted a South American species in the Los Angeles basin.
His next project is an earthworm survey of the Philippines, to be paid for by a National Science Foundation grant.
"There's an earthworm invasion going on in the scenic rice terraces in the mountains of the Philippines," Dr. James said. "They're making Swiss cheese of their mountains."
Well, TD55, it looks like the ants and worms didn't do you any harm.
I would probably go fishing before I would eat ants and worms. Use the worms to catch a nice fish. I'd probably try to eat snails or rats before ants and worms. Living by the ocean, I would definitely collect mollusks and sea weed before eating worms and ants. I just don't think I could stomach the worms and the ants seem like too much trouble.
Mind you, I have been hungry enough to consider eating the roommate's halloween decorations, but never hungry enough to eat earthworms.
Gray Blazer
07-19-2010, 15:55
I eat gummi worms.
TD55, what do you eat now?
I eat gummi worms.
TD55, what do you eat now?
I am no longer destitute and poor. I eat normal hiker stuff.
I no I disgusted a few of you with the worms and ants thing. But, what about snakes? Should I start a new thread?
I've ate plenty of rattle snake. I can tell ya how to catch it and dress it and cook it. Not sure if that is legal anymore on the AT. So, does anyone know about other species of snakes that are legal? Can you still kill and eat a snake in this country?
I see threads about living off the land and foraging for food on the AT. They are usually comical.
Darn, I mispellled the work "know".
Prettywoman0172
08-30-2010, 23:49
seriously, ants, worms? just ask someone for a buck and get a mcdonalds cheeseburger
Id rather eat the ants and worms.
Nearly Normal
08-31-2010, 11:43
Yall help yourself to my share.
I ain't a going hiking if'n I have to depend on worms and such.