The Daily Fly
Est. 1765
Official Newspaper of
Fly Views
Encouraging survey results!
The Society of Fly-Eaters conducted their own survey recently... Tim Train tells us all about it.
Hello. My name is Timothy Train and I have an admission to make. I am a Fly-eater. I find them juicy, flavoursome, delicious, healthy and enervating.
Not that there's anything wrong with this, of course. In fact, if you are reading this article, chances are that you, too, enjoy eating flies. And I am sure that you have many brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, friends or chance acquaintainces who enjoy flies, too.
But my question is this: do you really enjoy eating flies? Do you really, truly think that they are the tastiest, nicest, bestest meal ever? What about your relatives? Have you ever asked them? Maybe they just say they like flies, because they think they are 'cool'. Maybe they secretly find them greasy and disgusting. Maybe they eat them because they think it's polite, but slip them in the bin when you're not looking...
It's okay. Many people harbour these doubts about one of the best meals in the world. In fact, some disturbing figures cited recently by the Australian Bureau of Statistics found that, out of Australia's fly-eating population, 20% 'had their doubts' about the practice, 30% 'sometimes thought Ham tasted better', and 22% 'started eating flies because they wanted to be popular'.
These figures are truly frightening. Of course, you can't always trust the Australian Bureau of Statistics. So here at the Society of Fly Eaters, an institution known for objectivity, rationality and Scientific Rigour, we decided to do a study of our own...
The Study
We asked 100 people to participate in our study. We firstly gave them a list of fifty different foods, and asked them to rate the foods in order of preference. Unfortunately, we must note that, in this initial part of the experiment, flies scored very low. This seems to indicate that peoples perception of Fly-eating requires some work.
Secondly, we blindfolded the participants and fed them on twenty foods from the list we had given them. We asked them to rate the foods in order of preference. Here are the foods:
1) Boiled fly.
2) Acrylic Paint.
3) Raw Garlic.
4) Raw Frogs Legs.
5) Human hair, lightly fried.
6) Melted crayons.
7) Raw Gravel.
8) Live Spiders.
9) Dog poo.
10) Cats toenails.
11) Green eggs and ham.
12) Turpentine.
13) Home Brand Dishwashing detergent.
14) Newsprint (fresh from the printers).
15) Grated Fleas.
16) Snot from some kids nose.
17) Fresh dirt.
18) Cockroach testicles.
19) Worms.
20) Rice Pudding.
Here, we are happy to report that the Boiled Flies consistently rated better than most of the other foods on the list (barring melted crayons and cats toenails, which many of our participants seemed to be fond of for some reason). Indeed, a large number of our participants rated flies at the top of their list. On the basis of the 'Taste Test', the Society of Fly Eaters must rationally conclude that, to most people, flies are absolutely delicious.
Nevertheless, it is obvious from these results that there is still a stigma attached to the eating of flies in the wider community. We shall be looking at ways to tackle this shortly.
Tim Train
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