The thing that is BUGGING me!

Now a new study postulates that eating insects are good for you (The Hindu last page and TOI centre page of today 14-5-2013). I am finding this difficult to digest! But if others can digest them, who am I to question that? When you can eat a hot dog why not a hot roach? 

Insects are incredibly efficient at converting vegetation into protein and apparently, every 100 kg of feed produces 40kg of protein compared to only 10kg of protein from beef. In parts of Africa, where swarms of locusts are wiping out crops, rather than killing them with insecticides, the locusts are harvested and used for food. Termites are commonly eaten in most parts of Africa. 

Now what will happen to the pest control industry? Mortein, Hit etc. We have the idea that if you see an insect, spray it. Now it will change to if you see it, simply eat it! The Chinese have a humorous take on their gastronomic tastes: "We eat everything that flies except planes, everything that has legs except the table and chairs.” And they eat deadly scorpions too! One man's meat is another man's poison, they say. Should we now change this to ‘One man’s poison is another man’s meat’….

Believe it or not, most of the world eats bugs. Inadvertently we are all already eating bugs, whether we mean to or not. Peanut butter is allowed to have thirty insect fragments per hundred grams, and chocolate is O.K. up to sixty according to US Govt’s Food Regulations (FDA).

Sometime back eating insects was a staple on “Fear Factor”… now they are featured on “Top Chef Masters”! Offering your friend a delicious buggy snack, dry roasted crickets for instance, will inevitably result in comments such as ''Gross!'', ''Disgusting'', and of course, ''You’ve got to be kidding me!'' These reactions are a result of our culturally imposed food values. But think about it. We react the same way to Gay Marriages here in India which now is legal in many countries.

People have been eating insects since the beginning of time. In the ancient empires of Greece and Rome, Entomophagy (the eating of insects) was commonly practised. Locusts and cicadas were popular among both the rich and the poor. Wine and bran fed stag beetle larva and honeyed locusts were served at the Royal family’s grand banquets. So you see, insects have been eaten throughout time by everyone from peasants to kings. Why shouldn’t we follow our ancestors’ examples?

While there are insects I find annoying in my part of the world - Chennai (such as mosquitoes, flies and ants), their relatively small size makes them seem less threatening than some other tropical cousins like cockroaches. I realize that many people are used to seeing such creatures every day and therefore don’t find them unnerving. However, this knowledge didn’t help me much when I went to Dharmasthala and Kollur in Karnataka on a pilgrimage. I found crawling, flying, creeping and scuttling roaches everywhere… above our bed, below our bed, in the bathroom etc. In fact the temple Mookambika in Kollur is infested with cockroaches. Anyway at Dharmasthala, after some comically desperate manoeuvres  I finally succeeded in banishing the bugs from the room. Perhaps if I had known that roaches make a tasty food (ground up with chillies to make a spicy Thai delicacy), I would have invited a few Indonesian and Thai friends of mine.

However, I don’t think I’d ever be able to switch to a bug-eating lifestyle, no matter how tasty or nutritious they might be. I’ll leave that to those with more adventurous palates and stronger stomachs. I am no Andrew Zimmern to try out Bizarre foods!

In Korea where they eat dog meat, there is a joke that is in circulation. The houses which have dogs as pets sport a sign which says 'BEWARE OF HUMANS'.

I remembered the joke in the Tamil Movie ‘Sabash Meena’ where the comedian complains, "Look there is a fly in the tea." And the tea-shop owner replies, “then what… for the ten paise you pay, do you expect an elephant to float?”

There are other similar jokes…

“Waiter, there's a dead beetle in my soup.” “Yes sir, they are not very good swimmers.”

“Waiter, there's a fly in my soup.”  “That's all right sir, he won't drink much.”

“Waiter, there's a fly swimming in my soup.” “So what do you expect me to do, call a lifeguard?”

“Waiter, what's the meaning of this fly in my tea cup?”  “I wouldn't know sir, I'm a waiter, not a fortune teller.”

And now if you complain. "Waiter, there is a roach in my burger", you may hear "That would be Rs 10 extra on your bill sir"