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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Bugs A Tasty Treat In Other Nations

Charles Leroux Chicago Tribune

When Air Force pilot Scott O’Grady was rescued six days after his jet had been shot down over Bosnia, America heaved a sigh of relief.

When it was learned that to survive, O’Grady had eaten bugs, some Americans nearly heaved.

But the rest of the globe’s peoples - though some may blanch at hens’ eggs or escargot - are far less squeamish about eating insects than are those of us who come mainly from a Western European gustatory tradition.

Bolivians munch roasted leafcutter ants as though they were peanuts and claim they taste like bacon. In Mexico, a variant on the taco features ant eggs cooked in butter. Many a red agave worm (not a true worm but a caterpillar) has viewed the world from the bottom of a tequila bottle, and even the fastidious Swedes use ant pupae (an intermediate stage in insect development) to flavor gin.

Fancy restaurants in Mexico City serve a small cup of ants they call escamoles for about $20. In Thailand, grasshoppers are sold in city markets in what has become a $6.5-million-a-year industry.

A former Chicago Tribune foreign correspondent reports eating fried termites in Zaire and says, “They tasted like french fries - crunchy and delicious.”

For some in the Middle East, insect consumption is codified by the Bible. In the book of Leviticus, Chapter 11, the Lord addresses Moses and Aaron, telling them: “Say unto the people of Israel, … among the winged insects that go on all fours, you may eat those which have legs above their feet with which to leap upon the earth. Of them you may eat: the locust according to its kind, the bald locust according to its kind, the cricket according to its kind and the grasshopper according to its kind.”

In outdoor markets in Africa, sun dried insects are displayed in barrels much the way dried beans or spices might be shown in Western markets.

It is estimated that some 500 species of insects - grasshoppers, crickets, caterpillars, termites, aquatic insects, bees, wasps - appear on menus somewhere in our world.

For those who have espoused a greater awareness of the role of insects as food, O’Grady - though the dozen or so ants he ate were so few as to have played little or no role in his survival - has become the poster boy.

“The point is not to encourage eating insects here in the United States,” said Gene DeFoliart, University of Wisconsin emeritus professor of entomology. “It’s that we ought to be aware of the nutritional value of insects to other cultures.”

He noted that people the world over tend to ape things American, and adopting our squeamishness toward dining on the insect kingdom might cut out a much-needed source of protein.

“Dried insects are 60 percent to 70 percent protein,” DeFoliart said. “When they are reconstituted during the cooking process, they are about 20 percent protein, very similar to the meats we eat here.”

Protein isn’t the only nutrition in insects. Caterpillars and termites contain six to seven calories per gram, more than almost any other food.

People living on a predominantly cereal diet become deficient in lycine, an amino acid that promotes muscle development. Insects are lycine-rich and also supply iron, especially important to pregnant women; zinc, which often is deficient in largely vegetarian diets; thiamine, an aid to metabolism and nerve function; and riboflavin, which promotes growth.

Of interest to Americans preoccupied with their coronary arteries is the fact that fats in insects are highly unsaturated.

John Yuenger has taught a Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape course at a variety of sites, including the Air Force Academy. Now retired from the military, Yuenger said that bug eating, though covered in the course and in the synopsis of the course that is packed in survival kits, is seldom an issue.

“They’d be likely to go through plants, setting snares to catch rodents or whatever, and all that before turning to bugs,” he said.

“Eating bugs would tend to happen with someone so hungry that the stomach overruled the mind.”