I ate my lunch-time edamame today with burning fear in my heart.

Last time I ate edamame, I was happily sucking the soy beans out of their salty pods when I realized that I had sucked a bean that been previously ingested by something else. A worm, to be exact, had gotten to it first and that worm had died a full-bellied death in the processing that followed. He was frozen inside the bean pod, packaged, and subsequently microwaved/steamed while remaining undetected inside an integral part of my diet. I did not eat the worm, I only rocketed its corpse into my mouth. That’s like saying, “I didn’t poop my pants, I just ran to the bathroom with clinched cheeks and almost had a disastrous accident at age 24.” Not the end of the world, but still pretty unacceptable.

All that being said, I feel it’s easily understood that rocketing the body of a lifeless worm into your mouth is a shocking and uncomfortable experience. Naturally, it has resulted in some wariness on my part.  Having to cautiously pop out every single bean and inspect it pre-eating has zapped a lot of the fun out of the process of eating edamame. I can’t just go for it.  I tried to eat them as I have in years passed, but as I stuck whole pods into my mouth and scraped out the salty soy goodness, all I could taste was imaginary slime. Even halfway through the serving, I was still grimacing with every bean, just knowing (despite the fact that I’ve eaten MILLIONS of soybeans in my day, and only ONE of them had a worm in it,) that the next pod was going to contain a fat, dead, green tinted, protein filled worm.

I would hate to think that I could let one little multi-legged creature get between me and my favorite tortilla chip replacement, but it’s looking that way.  At least I can save (read: redirect) the $5 I normally dedicate to edamame at sushi restaurants to raw fish/alcoholic beverages.  I’m not even tempted by wormy beans anymore.