My friend said she would eat a bug before voting for Biden. I said “Just don’t eat these! They’re really high Lead!”

ByTamara Posted: Updated:
2 Comments

For those new to this website:

Tamara Rubin is a multiple-federal-award-winning independent advocate for childhood Lead poisoning prevention and consumer goods safety, and a documentary filmmaker. She is also a mother of Lead-poisoned children (two of her sons were acutely Lead-poisoned in 2005). Since 2009, Tamara has been using XRF technology (a scientific method used by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission) to test consumer goods for toxicants (specifically heavy metals — including Lead, Cadmium, Mercury, Antimony, and Arsenic). Tamara’s work was featured in Consumer Reports Magazine in February of 2023 (March 2023 print edition).

A true story! 
… Of something that happened to me earlier today:
Friday, October 30, 2020

Several months ago, a friend of mine had shared with her friends (on Facebook and perhaps elsewhere) that she would “eat a bug” before voting for Joe Biden (I believe she was a Bernie fan and didn’t like the way things were going at the time).

She is now preparing to vote (in Oregon) by dropping her ballot off in person early next week.

Today (Friday,10/30/2020) she posted to her friends on Facebook that she had bought some bugs to eat (from Amazon) because she had to make good on her promise! The exact words of her promise were, “I said I’d stand on my head and eat a BUG before voting for Biden.” With tonight’s post, she also shared a picture of the bugs she bought. This picture is below:

Continue reading below the picture.

Don’t eat THOSE bugs!

Of course, I saw these Mexican crickets and my first response was “Don’t eat THOSE — they have high levels of Lead!” Her first response was that she was just planning on eating one, and wasn’t too worried. Then (trying to be helpful and get her a better alternative – quickly!), I proceeded to collect a bunch of links to alternatives for those particular bugs (crickets) that seemed to be along the same lines, but made by U.S.-based companies (when possible) and therefore less likely to have Lead. I also got her some background information about the problem with eating those bugs! 

Here’s a paragraph from an article from several years ago:

Recent analysis of chapulines from Oaxaca, Mexico, showed that they may contain as much as 2,300 micrograms of lead per gram of product. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has recommended that children under age 6 should consume on average no more than 6.0 micrograms of lead each day from all food sources. A young child eating one of these highly contaminated chapulines could ingest nearly 60 times his or her tolerable daily intake for lead. While some of the chapulines analyzed contained no detectable lead, consumers have no practical way of determining if the product is contaminated with lead. The source of lead in the chapulines from Oaxaca is under investigation. (Source article link.)
 
Even I had not remembered exactly how toxic those bugs were, so was INCREDIBLY ALARMED to learn that just ONE BUG could have as much as 360 micrograms of LEAD! Yikes!
 

These are the alternate bugs I found for her to check out…

My friend needed to find a bug that could get shipped to her by Monday — so she could vote by Tuesday (because she had expressly said she would eat a bug before she voted for Joe Biden, and she needed to make sure she got the bug in time to do exactly that!). Here’s what I found on Amazon:

  1. Cricket Flour: https://amzn.to/3jIHmJO
  2. Cricket Bites (from Portland!): https://amzn.to/3kNq1ku
  3. Cricket Bars: https://amzn.to/2Jf2ESK
  4. Bacon Flavored Whole Crickets: https://amzn.to/35TVScM
  5. And … Cricket Chips! https://amzn.to/2TGjNXu

My friend decided to get some of these other bugs. Thank G-d!

The end result of this fairly silly exchange — late at night ... on the Friday before Halloween during a once-in-a-hundred-year pandemic, before the election of the century — is that my friend not only purchased some alternate (hopefully Lead-free) bugs to eat, instead of the possibly-highly-toxic ones from Mexico, but also she may have found a new potential source of protein for her disabled kiddo (and from a local Portland company no less)!!! Cricket flour! They have Cricket Brownie Mix, too!
 
File this under: “Random conversations I have about Lead on the Internet“
 
Stay safe out there — especially in choosing which bugs to eat! And please, don’t ever eat chapulines from Mexico! Happy Halloween! Happy Election Day … Let’s all settle in for the next few days with a few bottles of wine, gallons of ice cream (and if you’re in Portland, maybe a nice bowl of Ice Cream Cake), a pint of vodka — or whatever will get you through the next four days! #Solidarity
 
Tamara Rubin
#LeadSafeMama
Amazon links are affiliate links. If you purchase something after clicking on one of our links, Lead Safe Mama, LLC may receive a small percentage of what you spend at no extra cost to you.
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2 Comments

  1. Hello Tamara,
    First thank you for all you do.
    I have a question about the chapulines al adobo from oaxaca. How did the chapulines got infested with lead?

    Reply

  2. Yes, I’m also wondering how/why these bugs would get so contaminated with lead? Seems they would be minimally processed…

    Reply

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