The key to a very 'radical' eating habit is to introduce a new trend. I love snails grilled or deep fried on stick, dipped in hot sauce. That's how we eat it in Indonesia.

How to make "snail-eating" attractive to people?

I know here in the Basque Country snails are quite popular, so I conducted a super fast research (15 people) to get a better understanding and find some insights that could help us take the concept further.

> Some statistics:
70% have TASTED snails at some point
57% among the ones that have tasted snails, LIKED them
87,5% DO NOT KNOW HOW to COOK snails

> Most relevant quotes:
[-]
 "Texture, slime and smell are disgusting and people make noise when eating."
"I've heard that it is very difficult to clean them. People share tricks! (clean them in the washing machine, sailors attach them to the outside of the boat and have them hanging on the water...)"


[+]
"The best part of the meal is the sauce!"
"I love the sauce! Do snails really have flavour after boiling them so many times?"
"It's like eating meat! And it is very enjoyable taking the snail out of the shell!!!"
"My family eats them on special celebrations, they love them!"
"Once they are cooked they are not gelatinous any more"

[Cooking process]
"Boil the snails several times. Take them out of the shell. Cook them with the sauce (onion, tomato, "chorizo", "jamón", peper...). Put them back on the shells (not always)"


> Oportunities
*Try to introduce them as a prepared meal (grow snails and cook them before they are sold, until eating snails is accepted and liked)
*Cook them with a sauce that colombians like
*Make meaning around the snails. Tell a story or sell it as a "fun" and "enjoyable" food for kids (you have to take them out of the shell!)
 


Does all this inspire somebody?

Is it a problem with some bacteria or risk of disease why you cook it many times and long?

If snail-farmers do not know this risk, they could bring in their snails to a Community Kitchen (as proposed in other concepts) to get a proffessional cook them against a small fee, and to be taught on safe methods, so they could learn how to do it themselves later on.

I have never eaten snails or frogs, I would prefer to only eat processed snail meat, if it was made into mince and blended with perhaps a nother kind of available meat into mince-meat-pies or is it possible to make tasty sausages out of the minced snails with spices in the mix?

Might be good to think about strategies for how eating snails might be popularised amongst locals for this concept?

I actually didn't know there was a non-edible type of snails... In Morocco, people are really fond of snails, and we have this sort of snail soup flavoured with thyme, cumin, and a snifter of lemon juice. I always thought of it as some sort of weird folkloric food, never linked it to its nutrition sources.