This man eats 30,000 live bugs a year — and says the worst part is about their taste

There’s nothing like the delight of flipping through channels on cable and landing on something completely bonkers. It’s slowly becoming a lost art, but TLC is somehow keeping that fire burning — the latest being an entire episode about Carlos, 26, who eats live cockroaches and mealworms.

Back in the 1990s to the mid-2000s, Jerry Springer stretched what people thought was possible — even appropriate — for television. One could argue that his on-air antics probably created the concept of “trash TV.” But Springer has since passed away, and the Kardashians seem more interested in building their social media empires rather than being invested in the diminishing returns of mining drama from their personal lives for television.

TLC is the only bastion of such content these days. 90 Day Fiancé just seems to get wilder as time passes, but it’s really inarguable that the star of the network is slowly becoming My Strange Addiction. For those who have never watched the show, the premise involves producers finding Americans who can’t stop drinking nail polish, eating tissue paper, or, in Carlos’ case, eating bugs.

“Mealworms [are] a contender for, like, one of my most favorite insects.” Carlos goes on to describe the taste: “And my favorite thing about them is the flavor. It’s a lot like buttered popcorn.” He offers other comparisons, claiming cockroaches actually taste like custard and crickets like a veggie delight. He describes the texture as ticklish in his mouth.

Most people you’ll meet don’t even want to see a cockroach, forget actually eating one. But for Carlos, he has been eating bugs for as long as he can remember. “My earliest memory as a child was when I was like 4 years old, and I was eating bugs at that age,” Carlos explained. Nowadays, he downs 100 live bugs a day and approximately 30,000 every year.

Carlos believes that his need to eat live animals is a primal desire for control. “When I eat and chew live bugs, it makes me feel like I am the master of their destiny,” Carlos said. Eventually, during the episode, Carlos is taken to a health practitioner who warns that toxins from the insects could flow into his bloodstream and cause multi-organ failure. The medical practitioner especially warns Carlos against eating cockroaches because they’re, well… pretty dirty and full of harmful bacteria.

Carlos realizes that the heart palpitations he’s been getting from time to time might actually be tied to his peculiar diet. If you’ve still never looked up from your phone while flipping through channels and watched an entire omnibus of My Strange Addiction… first of all, congratulations on your fortitude. But one of the most important parts of an episode is when they finally try to convince the person with the strange addiction to quit their habit. Sometimes they succeed, sometimes they don’t. And sometimes they quit, only to relapse off-screen.

For Carlos, however, he made it rather clear that he will finally trade cockroaches for crockpots. His family, friends, and the rest of the world will definitely thank him for that.