** Click here for Episode 185 **
I’m not a fan of either figs or wasps, but even if I were, this email from Andy from Birkenhead would make me consider changing my alliance to prunes and hornets:
I’ve just listened to Episode 185 and the bit about Martin having a vegan friend who wouldn’t eat figs. You mentioned that it seemed daft not eating figs just because a wasp may have laid its eggs in it.
But according to my friend Lindsey, wasps and figs have a symbiotic co-evolutionary relationship – a particular type of wasp (the fig wasp) burrows its way inside a young fig, pollinates it, lays loads of eggs then dies inside the fig. The fig then consumes the nutrients from the dead wasp. Later on the eggs hatch and lots of the baby wasps die, but a few burrow out to go on and live happy waspy lives. See here for a fig giving birth to wasps:
The fig gets pollinated and a juicy waspy snack, and in return the wasp gets somewhere safe to lay her eggs.
But this means that the characteristic crunchiness of figs is partly due to seeds, and partly due to the crunchy decomposing corpses of wasps.
And I guess if you munch your merry way into a fig just before it’s due to ‘give birth’, you’re in for quite a surprise as your mouth fills with scores of baby wasps.
Needless to say, I no longer buy fig rolls.
You might buy them if they were advertised as ‘Fig rolls – fortified with wasp protein! FREE WASPS in every pack!’ It’s really just a matter of marketing.
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Answer Me This! Podcast 
August 4, 2011 at 7:53 pm |
That may or may not be true, but all I know is that I will never eat a fig ever again. This image will haunt my dreams.
August 3, 2011 at 5:17 pm |
Kind of disgusting at first, but then again, everything we eat was once poo, decomposing flesh, decomposing poo, etc.
I guess the bigger fear would be a living wasp coming out of a date while we’re eating it. So I believe dates are all processed/dried in some way that will unfailingly kill all wasps before they’re ever sold. That’s probably not true, but please don’t correct me. I really don’t want to know.