Can centipedes be eaten raw? Is eating centipedes raw safe?

The centipede ranks first among the five poisonous creatures. Its first pair of legs is hook-shaped, and the tips of the hooks have sharp venom glands that can secrete toxic fluid. Pharmacological properties: salty, spicy, warm. Toxic, it restores the liver, spleen, and lung meridians. It can treat sepsis and fight cancer, but it usually needs to be skewered on a bamboo strip, washed, roasted over a low fire, and sliced. So can centipedes be eaten raw?

Generally speaking, centipedes cannot be eaten raw; they are too toxic, eating them raw is ineffective, and it harms the body. But for specific people, it may perhaps cure disease.

The dangers of eating centipedes raw

According to a July 31 report on the official website of Hong Kong, China's South China Morning Post, the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene published a research report on July 30, stating that this was the first time a foodborne parasite capable of posing a fatal danger to humans had been found inside a centipede.

Lu Lingli, a neurologist at Zhujiang Hospital and one of the leaders of the research project, said: “We had not heard of anyone eating centipedes raw, but apparently these two patients believed that eating centipedes raw was good for their health. However, doing so only made them sick.”

The report said that centipedes are commonly used in traditional Chinese medicine, but they are generally dried in the sun or ground into powder, so they do not carry this parasite.

This is the first time researchers have detected Angiostrongylus cantonensis —— a foodborne parasite also known as the rat lungworm, named because its adult worms like to parasitize the pulmonary arteries of rats —— in a centipede. This roundworm mainly appears in snails and other mollusks.

Examples of eating centipedes raw

I have also heard of someone eating centipedes raw to treat illness, but that person lived year-round in deep mountains and old forests, in the company of these insects, and that person ate centipedes while drinking baijiu, so relatively speaking, their physical condition was more complicated than ours, and they had already grown accustomed to the centipede's toxicity, which was why they did not become ill from eating them. But ordinary people cannot easily try this. There are reports that someone ate centipedes raw, and while they were still alive, actually cured their own rheumatism of many years, but experts believe this is only an isolated phenomenon and that caution is needed; the toxicity of raw centipedes remains to be studied.