Entomophagy

Bruce Kraig was kind enough to email me this essay -- his contribution to the 2004 Oxford Symposium -- which he has given me permission to print in full here, which I do in hopes it may spark discussion.


Entomophagy


“Do you know how good these are? Don’t you know that this is the cleanest food you can eat, not like filthy pigs. They eat only natural grain, they are full of vitamins and proteins, and you know, they taste good.” A small, cheerful woman, wizened from the sun, the lecturer stood at her table heaped with mounds of lime-cured, red-black chapulines in several sizes. Seeing that we were impressed, she went on about how chapulines nourished “our ancestors,” making it something of a patriotic obligation to feast upon them. Then, reaching up to a cord stretched on two poles, she pulled down a string of gusanos de maguey and said, “These are really good.” And indeed they are, only unlike chapulines, they don’t come with their own toothpicks.

We were in one of the Mexican state of Oaxaca’s markets, this one near the street of the chocolate grinders. Chapulines are grasshoppers (Tettigoniidae or similar family) and gusanos de maguey are moth larvae that feed on agave plants. Gusanos are of two kinds and they are eaten seasonally: the white “worm,” or chicharra, from the leaves of the plant, in the spring; and the chinicuil, smaller and reddish in color, that appears in the fall. It happens that my colleagues and I had been videotaping grasshopper-catching and scenes of entomophagy for a couple of weeks. So much did we like the tastes that we were shopping for gusanos to snack on, and sal de gusanos, to go with Donahjis, like a Tequila Sunrise but made with local Oaxacan mezcal. Delicacies in Mexico and delicious, most North Americans offered caterpillars (or any insect) as food react with horror at the suggestion. Of course, that is exactly why we have taped and shown insect eating in programs made largely for American audiences.

Insects are the ultimate wild foods, protein on the wing, leg, and belly. So, why not eat insects? In 1885 Vincent M. Holt’s published a now classic tract of the same title. 1 Mixing earnestness and wit, Holt set out almost all the arguments that proponents of insect ingestion have put forward ever since. From traditional western medicinal uses, to ethnographic examples, drawing on authorities (Erasmus Darwin, for example), social utility, and plain gustatory satisfaction, all are marshaled to put the question. Using Holt as a template, what follows are some comments on the subject.

Distaste

According to a 1921 article in Natural History, during World War I food shortages were so acute that:

“the eminent entomologist, Dr. L. O. Howard, to ascertain the food value of insects. Favorable as the results may have proved, one can well imagine the storm of protest that would have resulted had the adoption of such a program by the general public been advocated. Yet to many it is surprising and can be attributed only to prejudice, that civilized man of today shows such a decided aversion to including any six-legged [or eight-legged to include the class Arachnida] creatures in his diet.”2

Holt argued the same thing, only his prescription was meant for both the urban and rural poor:

“....what a pleasant change from the labourer's unvarying meal of bread, lard, and bacon, or bread and lard without bacon, or bread without lard or bacon, would be a good dish of fried cockchafers or grasshoppers. ‘How the poor live!’ Badly, I know ; but they neglect wholesome foods, from a foolish prejudice which it should be the task of their betters, by their example, to overcome.”

Grasshoppers and their ilk are not tref. Almost every commentator on the subject cites the touchstone of food taboos, the Bible:

“Yet then may ye eat of all winged creeping things that go upon all four, which have legs above their feet, to leap withal upon the earth; even these of them ye may eat; the locust after its kind, and the bald locust after its kind, and the cricket after its kind, and the grasshopper after its kind.” (Leviticus, XI: 21–22).

If God says it is alright to eat certain kinds of insects, then why not us? Holt and others have asked.

In every one of my food history classes, I ask students about their reluctance to become insectivore (perhaps one out of every twenty will actually taste insect preparations that I bring to classes). The responses fall into familiar categories. One is gustatory, especially about larvae of any kind, and accompanied by the expression, “Yuk!” or “Yukkie!” Larvae resemble worms and worms are thought to be slimy because of a perceived epidermal sheen. That their intestines are visible through their skins only makes them more repellent. (Note 1) Snakes seem to evoke the same responses. All other considerations aside, it is texture that brings forth disgust: the “slimy,” quality. Asked if they eat jellied meats, or animal cartilage, the students shudder. When I hand out Gummie Worms, however, they disappear down gullets rapidly. Gelatinous is acceptable to Americans if it is sweet, but never savory. (Note 2).

Appearance is a second locus of distaste. Holt and many others point out a paradox:

“The lobster, a creature consumed in incredible quantities at all the highest tables in the land, is such a foul feeder that, for its sure capture, the experienced fisherman will bait his lobster-pot with putrid flesh or fish which is too far gone even to attract a crab. And yet, if at one of those tables there appeared a well-cooked dish of clean-feeding slugs, the hardiest of the guests would shrink from tasting it. Again, the eel is universally eaten, fried, stewed, or in pies, though it is the very scavenger of the water —there being no filth it will not swallow—like its equally relished fellow-scavenger the pig, the " unclean animal " of Scripture. There was once an equally strong objection to the pig, as there is at present against insects. What would the poor do without the bacon-pig now?”


Well, what’s wrong with grasshoppers? I ask my students. The reply is that they are ugly and “filthy.” All those legs and buggy eyes are unappetizing. Crustaceans, from shrimp to crawdads, are delectable, multiple legs, hideous faces, and vile eating habits notwithstanding. Sowbugs, or woodlice (genera Oniscus and Porcellio) would never do, though they, too, are crustaceans. Perhaps that the desirable arthropods live in symbolically purifying water rather than crawling on or in the earth makes them edible. Asked to speculate, students rarely come up with suitable answers. Logic only works occasionally in the world of food taste and distaste.

People are schooled in modes of disgust. Insects are so alien as to give rise to fears. I confess to a certain arachnophobia, even knowing the sources of this irrationality. One is having seen as a young child a monstrous, blood sucking spider in the classic movie fantasy, "The Thief of Baghdad." Nightmares followed. The other was having awakened one morning in my boyhood home in rural New Jersey find a black widow spider on my chest, its multiple eyes staring me in the face. I owe my later success as a sprinter on the school track team to that spider. Though I have eaten varieties of insects, the beautiful photograph of a young Cambodian woman munching on a fried tarantula on the cover of Man Eating Bugs send a frisson through me and countless others with arachnophobia.3 The vehicles of popular culture has made insects so alien as evoke the same emotions, whether through personal experiences or not.

Yet a third reason for loathing insects as food is the modern obsession with germs. Since the discovery of disease carrying microbes in the late nineteenth century, most people have been afflicted with some form of microphobia, bacterophobia chief among them. People wash compulsively, antibacterial washing liquids are hyped by advertisers and sold in great numbers (even though they are no better than plain soap), and many more products are sold in the neverending struggle to gain total antisepsis. If the students are any example, insects are guilty whether or not an individual insect genus is a vector for human diseases. Holt would have found this attitude foolish, but might have appreciated its religious qualities.

Only when one points out that each person in North America unwittingly ingests, by estimate, half a kilogram of insects each year does it become clear that eating insects might not be unusual for western peoples. The United States Food and Drug Administration permits certain numbers of insects in processed foods. For example, ketchup can contain 30 fruit fly eggs per 100 grams, peanut butter, 30 fragments for each 100 grams, canned corn, 2 insect larvae per 100 grams, 2 maggot for each 100 blueberries, 100 insect fragments per 100 grams of curry powder, 1percent of wheat may be infested, 5 percent of sesame seeds, 10 percent of coffee beans, and horror of horrors, 60 insect fragments in each 100 grams of chocolate. Now we can appreciate the old sailors' joke about extra protein in their maggot infested hardtack and apples.

A large majority of the world's people knowingly eat insects. But, until recently western attitudes toward this dietary supplement has been tinged with awe and pity:

"Nowadays the use of insects as a diet is practically restricted to wild or half-civilized peoples, but even so they form an important item in the food supply of mankind...." "It is, perhaps, among African negroes that insects are most extensively used a food—a practice undoubtedly due more to necessity than choice. Owing to peculiar climatic conditions and the ravages made by animal diseases, but few goats, sheep, and cattle are kept by the natives and these are too highly prized to enter very frequently into the diet, serving rather as signs of wealth; chickens and occasionally dogs are the only domestic animals freely eaten. The meat supply of the various tribes is, therefore, limited, necessarily consisting mainly of fish and game, the capture of which involves not a little trouble and is dependent on too many contingencies. To this scarcity is attributable the perpetual craving for animal food from which the black race has been suffering for centuries and which is undoubtedly to a large extent responsible for cannibalism[!!]." 4


Similar arguments have been made for Asia and Mexico, including cannibalism among Aztecs. Equating anthropophagy and entomophagy is an odd pairing, but provides maximum shock. That much is easily observed in the recent pop culture phenomenon, reality television. Set as contests, participants gobble down worms, spiders, leeches accompanied by squeals of terror from the diners and the viewing audience: Grand Guignol with bugs.

Traditional Entomophagy

Holt cites travellers ancient and modern who approvingly described entomophagy outside the western world. In this, he touched upon a voluminous literature past and present. A good sampling of this has been collected by Emeritus Professor Gene R. DeFoliart, a distinguished entomologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.5 One of the best studied insect devouring regions of the world is Mexico, past and present. As Raymond Sokolov observed Mexico offers a splendid opportunity to uncover the roots of a national cuisine (or cuisines), including the use of insects.6 Sophie Coe's discussion of some, based on the observations of Sahagún and others is a good concise account.7 There is good archaeological evidence for broad spectrum food gathering by the peoples of Mexico since deep in prehistory. Eating patterns developed over millennia had not changed by the Hispanic period -- having no food aversions anything walking, swimming, flying or crawling was fair game. For the Aztecs, or Méxica, living on Lake Texcoco (and other peoples throughout the country) sustenance came from the water. Fish, frogs (tadpoles, too), young salamanders (Axolotl), and lots of insects were on the menu. As Clavigero, as an Italian visitor, noted at the end of the 18th century: "At all times the markets are full of a thousand species of vermin, raw, cooked, fried or toasted, sold especially for the sustainment of the poor." Among these were members of the water boatman family (Corixidae) including axayacatl (nymphs and adults) and ahuautli (eggs), and backswimmers ( Notonectidae). Adults forms were ground, wrapped in corn husks and cooked.

"The bug eggs were collected on loosely twined ropes flung into the lake. They could be made into tortillas, tamales, or wrapped in maize husks to be toasted. They were said to taste like fish, or like caviar. Izeahuitli were tiny worms netted on the lake. When cooked with salt and chili, they became blackish and had the consistency of crushed bread crumbs. They were made into tortillas to dry and keep, but they did not last very long.8

Having eaten these and other insects that follow, I can report that these do not have much flavor when mixed with flour and water and then fried into small cakes. When served up au natural as "caviar," then indeed they taste like fish.

Water insects are but one of many insects in the Mexican food vocabulary. DeFoliart cites a report that 200 species are still consumed. 9 Escamoles, are the eggs and larvae of a kind of black ant. Appearing in the spring and resembling tiny white eggs, they are usually sauteed and served with mildly spiced sauces. Their flavor, and texture, is very much that of fresh corn kernels, as if just shucked from the ear. They are really good when scooped up with a bit of fresh corn tortilla.

Like much of Mexico's food, taste in insects are regional. Axayacatl and like creatures are specialties of Mexico City, but in Taxco Jumiles are the local treat. Members of the "stink bug" family (Pentatomidae, Order Hemiptera) are abundant in the spring. Small, green, and shield-shaped beetles, they food on encina (an evergreen oak) leaves. When in season, families from Taxco swarm into the neighboring mountains (Taxco is a charming mountain top town) to collect them. Jumiles are usually mashed in a molcajete (grinding bowl), mixed with a fresh tomato-onion-chile sauce, and servd with fresh corn tortillas. The crushed insects emit a distinctive odor, slightly cinnamon-like, but upon eating the flavor is like iodine because they are loaded with it. Jumiles are an acquired taste, especially when eaten raw as vendors and collectors will, and perhaps the reason locals say that once you have tasted jumiles you'll never leave Taxco.

Other insects are national in character, though the preparations are local.
Among them are the grasshoppers and gusanos de maguey mentioned above. They are white larvae of the giant skipper moth (Aegiale hesperiaris) and Agathymus spp) and the pink larvae of carpenter moths (Xyleutes redtenbacheri). The former are the infamous "worms" found in bottles of mezcal. (Note 3). Gusanos are addictive, especially the chicharra or white ones, pickled in lime juice, dried, or fresh. Roasted and salted, they are tasty enough to be served regularly in the cafeteria of the huge food processor Herdez. The general manager says that the workers cannot get enough of them. In the countryside, traditional cookery calls for peeling the skin of the maguey plant, wrapping the caterpillars in a bag made from it, and then toasting the insects in hot wood ash. Called mixiote whe made with meats, this is a glorious dish. The flavor of gusanos when cooked just so is very much like a very good smoked bacon.

Chapulines are the other most widely eaten insects, not just in Mexico, but world-wide. There are several kinds of Orthoptera eaten, but the "long horn" is likely the most widely used. Grasshoppers swarm in the fall, just as large seeded grasses upon which they dote come to fruit. As the chapulin vendor said, they eat grain intended for us, so we eat them. Precisely the same point Holt made about several "verminous" species which devour good English gardens. In the morning, before the creatures really stir themselves, people armed with long poled nets set out along the roads and in fields to capture their prey. Once caught, the grasshoppers
are placed in large clay pots with leaves in order to "purge" their guts. They are then plunged into boiling water for a few minutes, after which the heads, wings and some legs can be removed. Drained and dried they are ready for cooking or drying and curing. Rarely, if ever, are they ground as in some African countries. Chapulines' flavor varies with the ingredients with which they are cooked or preserved. Lime, for instance, imparts a delicious limey flavor. Normally, they are sauteed and served plain with lime and salt, or with a sauce, chile pasilla is usual but chile guajillo is also good.
Why Not Eat Insects?

For a variety of reasons such delectables as gusanos, chapulines, and escamoles have become desirable items in upscale restaurants. Not only is this so in Mexico, but in North America, as well. Tastes for food insect has been growing through entomphagic organizations and the usual organs of publicity. The summer of 2004 saw the emerge of 17-year cicadas, called Brood X. Television and newspapers were filled with stories about the hordes that descended upon the East Coast, many accompanied by recipes. Cooking contests were held and chefs tried their hands at fancy preparations (it's best to roast them). Amusing though these stories are, there are other good reasons to consume insects.


Again, Holt anticipated modern arguments. In his day the poor were always short of protein, so why not use a source ready at hand. Compared to food ordinary food animals, insects are remarkably efficient protein and mineral delivery devices. The following table gives some idea of nutrional values.





Insect Protein (g) Fat (g) Carbohydrate(mg) Calcium (mg) Iron (mg)
Giant Water Beetle 19.8 8.3 2.1 43.5 13.6
Red Ant 13.9 3.5 2.9 47.8 5.7
Silk Worm Pupae 9.6 5.6 2.3 41.7 1.8
Dung Beetle 17.2 4.3 .2 30.9 7.7
Cricket 12.9 5.5 5.1 75.8 9.5
Small Grasshopper 20.6 6.1 3.9 35.2 5.0
Large Grasshopper 14.3 3.3 2.2 27.5 3.0
June Beetle 13.4 1.4 2.9 22.6 6.0
Caterpillar 6.7 N/A N/A N/A 13.1
Termite 14.2 N/A N/A N/A 35.5
Weevil 6.7 N/A N/A N/A 13.1
Beef (Lean Ground) 27.4 N/A N/A N/A 3.5
Fish (Broiled Cod) 28.5 N/A N/A N/A 1.0 10

Crude protein per body weight amounts to 30-70% of body weight and, based on studies of tryptophan, lysine and other elements, insect protein is of good to middling quality. As DeFoliart says:

"We don't know how much it would cost to cultivate insects as food; however, we believe that because of their high protein content, high digestibility, variety in food diets, high conversion efficiency, and great reproductive potential associated with a short life cycle, the useful biomass obtained would be significant when compared to other products which are used to obtain protein. That is why insects should be taken into consideration as a food alternative for a world in which human nutrition has been a huge problem."11

Besides, prepared well, insects taste good, as in Holt's pungent phrase, talking about cockchafers:

"What a godsend to housekeepers to discover a new entrée to vary the monotony of the present round! Why should invention, which makes such gigantic strides in other directions, stand still in cookery? Here then, mistresses, who thirst to place new and dainty dishes before your guests, what better could you have than "Curried Maychafers"-- or, if you want a more mysterious title, "Larvae Melolonthae á la Grungru?"

And now that "bugs" of all sorts are becoming familar, cute and anthropomorphized, through movies (see both versions of "Men in Black," "It's a Bug's Life," and "Joe's Apartment, the latter with sentient, talking cockroaches) it won't be long before formerly disgusting creatures grace the everyday table. Simply consider "Babe."


1. Vincent M. Holt, Why Not Eat Insects? (repr. with intro. by
Laurence Mound, London: British Museum, 1988 [1885]).

2. J. Bequaert, “Insects as Food: How They Have Augmented the Food Supply of Mankind in Early and Recent Times,” (Natural History, March-April 1921)

3. Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio, Man Eating Bugs, The Art and Science of Eating Insects (A Material World Book: Napa, CA, 1998).
Note also the rather good horror movie, "Arachnophobia."
4. Bequaert.

5. www.food-insects.com/book. DeFoliart gives a lengthy bibliography including classic studies such as F.S. Bodenheimer, Insects as Human Food (The Hague, W. Junk, 1951).

6. Raymond Sokolov, " Before the Conquest" ("A Mattter of Taste), August, 1989. Two other columns on entomophagy followed, including "Insects, Worms, and Other Tidbits" in Septemer, 1989, with recipes, one of them for Jumiles.

7. Sophie D. Coe, "Aztec Cuisine," Petits Propos Culinaires, #s 19, 20, 21 (London, 1985) and Sophie D. Coe, America's First Cuisines (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1994).

8. Coe, p. 99.
9. Gene R. DeFoliart, cited in Food Insect News, 1991.


10. Data collected from The Food Insects Newsletter, July 1996 (Vol. 9,
No. 2, ed. by Florence V. Dunkel, Montana State University) and Bugs In the System, by May Berenbaum ( Iowa State University Entomology Department, February 25, 2000 by John VanDyk).

11. DeFoliart, Chapter 3, "The Use of Insects as Food in Mexico,"
www.food-insects.com/book

Note 1: Worm repulsion, equated with rejection, is commemorated in this version of a children's folk song:
Nobody loves me, everybody hates me
Think I'll go and eat wormsLong ones, short ones, fat ones, thin ones
See how they wriggle and squirm

I bite off the heads, and suck out the juice
And throw the skins away
Nobody knows how fat I grow
On worms three times a day
Ohh...nobody loves me.
(http://www.niehs.nih.gov/kids/lyrics/worms.htm)

Note2. This particular taste preference is relatively new since jellied meats were common into the twentieth century, especially among German-Americans. Newly arrived Americans often retain their old tastes for gelatinous meats: Carnitas among Mexicans is an example, but they also consume insects. The next generation tends not to.
Note 3. Menzel and D'Aluisio ( p. 116) give an interesting explanation for the worm in the bottle. Real tequila and mezcal are made from agave which give home to the caterpillars. The true beverages are double distilled and must be at least 110 proof, but the animals' bodies can only be preserved at 140 proof or above. Therefore the worm at the bottom of the bottle shows authneticity and percentage of alcohol.

See also:



F. S. Bodenheimer, Insects as Human Food (The Hague: W. Junk, 1951)

Charles Curran, Insects in Your Life (New York, Sheridan House, 1951 [1937].)

Farming bugs.