Anyone hungry for a cricket cocktail? How about a mealworm covered caramel apple? This video was on my MSN homepage this morning. The “candyman”, Larry Peterman, of Hotlix Candy in Grover Beach, California prepares some great delicacies for the entomophagy inclined. In New York, at the annual gala of the Explorer’s Club at the Waldorf-astoria, the chefs cook up some tasty finger food which include deep fried tarantulas and sushi with crickets. What’s not to love about eating insects? Many are high in protein, unsaturated fats, and vitamins and minerals. You unknowingly eat many insects a day anyway! For example, (per 100g) there are about 80 insect fragments in chocolate, 20 maggots in canned mushrooms, 60 insect fragments in peanut butter, 2 full insects in cornmeal and 150 insect fragments in wheat flour.
Photo taken by Steven G. JohnsonRoger Gold at Texas A&M University teaches a class called Insects and Human Society, and the most popular part of the class is the day when he serves fire ant quesadillas, pizza with crickets, termite bark and cricket brownies (mmmm sounds good to me!). I know a guy (now a student at NCSU) who ate a live black witch moth, but it didn’t settle so well in his stomach–too many scales, maybe? As for me, I have only eaten a single damselfly, which I decided tasted exactly like grass but was a bit too crunchy for my taste. I don’t think I will be making my 10 pet Madagascar hissing cockroaches a part of any of my meals anytime soon!
