Donna Labrador was cooking a late-night, lite meal for herself and her daughter Wednesday when she found half of a grasshopper in a can of spinach.
The 28-year-old says she hasn’t eaten since.
“I just think it’s very gross,” Labrador said. “I will never eat another can of veggies again. Probably not spinach, anyway.”
Labrador said she opened a can of spinach at about 10 p.m. and was going to saute it in butter and garlic for herself and her 3-year-old daughter, Isabella, when she spotted what she thought was a stem.
“I pulled it out and set it aside and determined it was grasshopper,” she said.
She contacted the canned food company, through a 1-800 customer service telephone number, and talked with a representative about the buggy discovery.
Labrador said the company is mailing her a package with a plastic bag and return postage. The customer service rep told her to mail the bug to them and they’d do some tests on it, Labrador said.
The grasshopper, or what’s left of it, is wrapped in toilet paper and is sitting on the middle shelf in the back of Labrador’s refrigerator.
Labrador said she’d like her money back for the can of spinach and perhaps a refund on about ten other canned goods in her home since she now can’t envision cooking and eating them.
“I’m still wondering where is the other half of the grasshopper,?” she said. “My worry is, ‘Who is going to get that one?’ Are they going to notice it or are they going to eat it? That is really disturbing to me.”
The thought of eating insects is widely unappealing to most Americans, but some cultures have feasted on bugs since the dawn of humankind.
Chocolate-covered ants and crickets are appreciated as delicacies in France and elsewhere, and stir-fried worms and other creepy crawlers can be found on menus across Asia.
Labrador said Isabella is too young to know what’s going on, and the toddler has been eating just fine.
Getting hungrier by the minute, Labrador said she’d likely be able to eat something, anything but a grasshopper or another insect, by sometime tomorrow.
Bugs can provide essential vitamins and minerals, insect-eating proponents say.
But Labrador is not ready to take that step.
“For me, it grosses me out beyond belief.”
Kieran Nicholson: 303-954-1822 or knicholson@denverpost.com.
