Man Eating Bugs: The Art and Science of Eating Insects by Peter Menzel and
Faith D鈥橝luisio, Ten Speed Press, 拢14.99/$19.95, ISBN
1580080227
MY husband, the lapsed vegetarian, is always going on about how people should
eat insects if they鈥檙e so keen on animal protein. To which I reply that it was
I, not he, who dared to eat a chilli-fried locust that night in Bangkok. But
then he remembers I lacked the courage to try one of the hairy beetles the Thai
were enthusiastically knocking back at the same food stall.
Man Eating Bugs is about the beetle-munchers among us. Peter Menzel
and Faith D鈥橝luisio travelled the world, taking gorgeous pictures of insect-eaters.
A sweet-faced Cambodian girl bites the abdomen off a juicy tarantula,
a Dani boy from Irian Jaya opens his mouth to reveal two fat green stinkbugs,
Aussies knock back witchetty grubs, Chinese attack steaming bowls of scorpions
with chopsticks. The pictures are linked by tales of insect eaters and what the
things tasted like鈥攁ll good, concise travel writing. But what sells the
book is, perhaps inevitably, its 鈥測uk鈥� factor and鈥攊n the pictures of the
insects alone, never mind the ones where they鈥檙e being eaten鈥攖his is off
the scale.
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It鈥檚 not that entomophagy is rare. The authors also found happy bug-eaters in
Japan, Mexico, South Africa, Uganda, Peru, Venezuela and, astonishingly, the
finicky US. In California (where else?) you can buy 鈥渁mber鈥� candy complete with
edible bug as a souvenir of your Jurassic Park ride at Universal
Studios鈥攁nd a company makes cricket lollipops and candy apples coated with
mealworms. Entomologists calculate that Native Americans in Utah could gather
enough crickets in an hour to supply the protein equivalent of 43 Big Macs.
Efficient (and truly fast) food.
Yet one person鈥檚 feast is still another person鈥檚 object of revulsion. South
African women collecting termites for supper were disgusted when they were told
that the Chinese eat scorpions. And there are caveats: apparently one should
never eat any insect if one is allergic to shrimp, shellfish, dust or chocolate.
I doubt the Dani worry about that. And my locust? It tasted of chilli.