As I stated before, one of the reasons my health is great comes from the fact that I keep pork and shrimp off my plate. This information is for all of those individuals who love to dine on shrimp and pork. Just like pork chops, shrimp was another one of my favorite foods I loved to eat. Unlike bacon which I ate almost on a daily basis, shrimp was something that I consumed every other 2 to 3 weeks. I could never seem to get enough of shrimp when I was eating it and out of all the seafood I consumed back then I considered shrimp to be the best and tastiest type of seafood.

Just as I enjoyed eating pork back in the day I felt the same way about shrimp, but nowadays you wouldn’t catch me consuming neither one of these foods. Up to the present time it’s been over eight years since I’ve eaten shrimp and more years will be added on to this time because I have no intentions or desires of ever eating it again. Even though a shrimp is commonly known as a crustacean it belongs to the arthropod family. An arthropod can be defined as “arthro” which means joint and “pod” which means leg. Arthropods all have an exoskeleton which is a hard shell on the outside of their bodies made from a certain type of protein called “chiton”. Their exoskeleton never grows with their body so they actually molt their exoskeleton which replaces the old one. The fact that a shrimp is an arthropod means it belongs to a diverse group of organisms that includes lobsters, crabs, scorpions, spiders and insects. Since lobsters happen to fall into this category, it’s also considered to be a crustacean which means that crustaceans are arthropods.

Most arthropods are considered to be bottom feeders or scavengers eating just about anything that settles to the ocean floor and that includes shrimp. I stopped eating shrimp for a numerous amount of reasons which include the fact that they eat snails, worms, dead fish, crabs, decaying organic matter or any other shrimp smaller than them. Instead of using their eyes to look for food, shrimp search for and find their food using the numerous amount of feelers located on their head. Even though shrimp and fish are both creatures of the sea that people love to eat they differ in many ways. As I stated before, shrimp are arthropods which mean that they are invertebrates (They have no backbone) whereas fish are vertebrates meaning they have a skeleton on the inside of their body.

Due to the fact that all shrimp and lobsters are crustaceans who belong to the arthropod family they also have a relative that is known as the cockroach. As a matter of fact, did you know that shrimp are considered to be a “cockroach of the sea”? Don’t believe me? I challenge you to do the research and google it (type in: cockroach of the sea or lobsters are cockroaches) and one of the first words that will be revealed from the results of the search engine will be either shrimp or lobster. If you compare all three of them together it’s revealed that they all have an exoskeleton on the outside with a soft body on the inside and they all feed on waste.

So think about these factors the next time you desire a taste for shrimp or lobster. Would you want to consume an arthropod that’s a bottom feeder that eats decaying organic matter and have something like that in your body? Think about it the next time you’re indulging in that shrimp cocktail.