Snails As Human Food
Land snails have been eaten for thousands of years, going back at least as far as the Pleistocene. Archaeological evidence of snail consumption is especially abundant in Capsian sites in North Africa, but is also found throughout the Mediterranean region in archaeological sites dating between 12,000 and 6,000 years ago. However, wild-caught land snails which are prepared for the table but are not thoroughly cooked, can harbor a parasite (Angiostrongylus cantonensis) that can cause a rare kind of meningitis.
Snail eggs, sold as snail caviar, are a specialty food that is growing in popularity in European cuisine.
Read more about this topic: Land Snail
Famous quotes containing the words snails, human and/or food:
“little snails at the back
of the knee building bon-
fires ...”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“Why was the human race created? Or at least why wasn’t something creditable created in place of it? God had His opportunity. He could have made a reputation. But no, He must commit this grotesque folly—a lark which must have cost Him a regret or two when He came to think it over and observe effects.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“To give money to a sufferer is only a come-off. It is only a postponement of the real payment, a bribe paid for silence, a credit system in which a paper promise to pay answers for the time instead of liquidation. We owe to man higher succors than food and fire. We owe to man.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)