When I was a child, I thought as a child. When I thought of scientists as a child, I thought that academics got paid to sit around all day figuring out ways to trick people into eating bugs. It turns out Child Me was actually kind of on the money, because a new study conducted by a team of Swiss researchers did exactly that.

In the trial, subjects were presented with a given a randomly chosen flyer emphasizing that eating a chocolate truffle full of mealworms would either (A) help make the world a better place, or (b) be tasty and also make them part of a trend. While about 62 percent of people being urged to eat worms because it was the right thing to do actually chose to eat the worm candy, roughly 76 percent ate worms after being told it would make them cool. Not only that, but that latter group of people generally thought that the bugs tasted better than the former.

This is all both disgusting and has me rethinking the effects that advertising might have had on my taste palate, and also my life choices in general.

Thank you for reading this blog post. I am going to go throw up now.