October 7, 2008 • 13 mins
Entomophagy -- the practice of eating insects -- is common outside of Europe and North America. Despite cultural taboos, you've probably eaten insects without knowing it. Check out our HowStuffWorks podcast to learn more about entomophagy.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
from how Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Guess who's with me? Michael Douglas.
No Bryant even better than Michael Douglas, Less intense, a
(00:24):
little more laid back. Are you doing, Chuck, Well, we're
a pair of writers here at how stuff works dot Com.
We got some stuff to share with you. Have you
heard him into fag? I have and try every part
of the world except Europe, Canada and the United States.
That's so weird to me that that we we see
things so differently, right, I wouldn't need a bug. I wouldn't.
(00:47):
I've actually considered it. I've read your article and I
was thinking this would be an awesome, cool dinner party
to have, yeah, like have some normal food but also
have like fried cricket something like that. And the more
I thought about more, I was like, there's no way
I'm ever going to do this. Yeah, you know, I
almost ordered some uh for the article just too because
I could basically and I didn't. The story great one. Um,
(01:13):
so let's get into this, shall we. Let's let's talk
about this. You said Europe, America and Canada the only places.
So in Mexico, I didn't notice anyone eating bugs in Mexico.
It's big there, Okay, So I imagine that, Uh the
the there's regional differences based on the or is anyone
importing bugs, I guess? Or do people just generally eat locally?
(01:35):
You eat locally? And uh it's one reason people eat
bugs and actually we should call them insects, I guess
all over the world is because they're everywhere. They're cheap,
they're nutritious, and they prepare them to where you know,
they enjoy the taste. Well, I know, yeah, bugs are
I'm sorry. Insects are definitely plentiful. But I would imagine
(01:55):
it would take a lot to to fill up like
I can eat like a side of eefan is sitting.
How many how many, like you know, caterpillars would it
take to phil a man like me. I've been described
as beefy by the way, for factor fiction listeners. All right,
I don't know how many caterpillars would take the filling
in Josh, imagine it's more than uh ten. I would imagine.
(02:18):
But as you said, they are plentiful, so they are
well before we get into the whole modern uh into mafaji.
Is that how you pronounced it. Um, we should talk
a little bit about the history, because they did this
all throughout the Bible. The Greeks and Romans ate beatle
larva and locusts, and even Aristotle ate cicadas. So what
(02:39):
I noticed that I found strange was that in the
Bible there's some food that's off limits. Plenty of bugs
are are perfectly fine to eat, locus especially. I saw
recurring over and over again when I read the Bible
last night, and um, there was some that was off limits,
like rabbit, rabbit, uh, pelicans. Interestingly, I think, yeah, rabbits.
(03:01):
Um you said pigs, mice, weasels, And yeah, I probably
wouldn't eat a weasel. I neat a turtle. Turtle soup
is not bad. Um, This is all I mean. We
should say this is all Old Testament stuff, which I
know people that that subscribe to the Bible and its
teachings would tell you that the Old Testament isn't really
where it's at. It depends if you're of the judaic persuasion.
(03:23):
I imagine that you put a lot of stock in
the Old Testament. That's a good point, you know, also
called the Torah, right, But you can't eat those things
according to the Old Testament in Leviticus. But you can't
eat locusts and uh, grasshoppers and beetles. It's recommended. And
I know John the Baptist famously lived for months on
locust and honeycomb famously. Sure, so people have been doing
(03:45):
this a long long time, Aborigine Aborigines in Australia have
been doing it for a long time and continue to
eat grubs and apparently grubs taste like roasted almonds. You know,
I used to build ponds many life times ago, and
there was this kind of ongoing challenge. Yes, yes, um,
(04:05):
there's this ongoing challenge. Anybody who ate a grub, well
while we were digging, you know, became like the on
site you know, tough guy. Never saw anybody actually eat
Oh no never, never I saw one guy pretends to you,
but that was it. So yeah, these days, um, people
eat bugs. Like I said, they're plentiful, and by plentiful,
I mean for more than fourteen hundred edible species of insect.
(04:30):
That's just the edible kind. That's and that's just species.
It's not like there's fourteen hundred insects walking around we
can eat. I mean, how many millions or billions or
trillions of insects are there right now on planet Earth
that we could just pick up an eat a lot? Beatles?
For instance, there's close to three d and fifty kinds
of beetle alone that you can eat. And uh, ants, bees, wasps, butterflies, moss.
(04:55):
I'm sorry to interrupt you, Chuck. You said wasps, Yeah,
people eat wasps diad I imagine, uh yeah, they generally
with they will with most of the winged creatures will
take off the wings and the legs and prepare them
like either on a secure like a roasted wasp, or
sometimes they're boiled and putting soup that kind of thing. So,
but the venom doesn't affect you once it's dead, or
(05:18):
does it add spice or what? What? What's the deal?
You know, that's a good question. I didn't get get
to that my If you're just asking for my opinion,
I would say maybe if you eat it, it's not
bad for you. But if it's injected in your blood
streams or a stinger. It's probably a different kind of thing.
There's plenty of people out there for us to ask.
I noticed also that there's about three thousand ethnic groups
around the planet that consume bugs. They do, and I
(05:40):
think it's a it's telling and interesting that you you
kind of delineated it like that these are ethnic groups
that eat this. It's it's not it's it's a cultural thing.
We could eat anything at any given point in time
unless we consider it disgusting, which we do even to
an extent, right because, as you said, crustaceans like or
(06:02):
not crustaceans. But I'm sorry, um lobster Arthur pods. Yes,
lobsters and crabs are just a cousin of the spider basically,
and that's you know, you pay a lot of money
for a lobster to restaurant, and lobsters eat nasty stuff.
They're kind of bottom dwellers and they eat a lot
worse things than spiders do, like license plates. Yeah, well
(06:23):
the jaws did, I don't know, philostraphy linespit. Oh hey,
I can tell you. I've seen a couple of lobsters
that could have eaten the licensed plate. So yeah, it's
all basically in the eyes of the beholder. You know,
it's a cultural taboo. And in European, Canada, the United States, Uh,
not so in the rest of the world they eat
In South America, did they eat tarantulas and scorpions. Scorpions,
(06:45):
I've heard of eating tarantulas. I had never heard of
that before. It's I got the impression that it's prepared
in such a way that the hair remains on the
the ingested part of the tarantula. It is. There's actually
a good quote, because I wasn't brave enough to to
find a tarantula or eat one, because spiders get the
corona out of me. But Peter Menzel, he's the author
(07:06):
of a book called Man Eating Bugs, and he has
a great description about eating a tarantula. Is, uh, if
day old chickens had no bones, hair instead of feathers,
and with the size of a newborn sparrow, they might
taste like tarantulas. So he really kind of lost me
at day old chicken. The old chicken doesn't sound that bad.
It was the hair part that got me. That's just disconcerting,
(07:30):
I find. Yeah, I think the Americans aren't used to
eating anything that's Harry no I mean, have you ever
eaten pigskin? I've eaten the pork rins? Is that counting?
Have you ever found like a hair like an Aaron hair? No?
That is it's troubling. But you know what, Josh, is
funny you should mention arrant hair because there's a little
book that you may not know about by the Food
(07:50):
and Drug Administration. You know which one I'm talking about.
I don't remember the title, but I know what you're
talking The title really says it all. It's it's called
the Food Defect Action Levels, Levels of natural or unavoidable
defects and foods that present no health hazards for humans.
It's it's quite a mouthful, as it were. So basically
what this is, it's a big handbook that the FDA
(08:10):
puts out that that lists an acceptable amount of things
like arrant hairs, maggots, larvae that are in things that
you eat, that are acceptable to sell in stores because
it won't harm you. Acceptable by federal mandate, not necessarily
acceptable in a personal level. I found by by the
fact that it won't physically harm you. So I've got
(08:33):
a few. If you want to, I am all here,
and if I gag they'll please forgive me. Frozen broccoli,
there can be sixty or more aphids and or mites
per one grams. Broccoli in and of itself is bad enough.
You throw some aphids in there, it may actually make
it okay. I love broccoli. Your ground cinnamon may have
(08:53):
four hundred or more insect fragments per fifty grams. Which
fragments that's anything that's like that's like the hot dog
of spices apparently right. Uh. Your macaroni or noodle product
can have an average of two hundred twenty five insect
fragments or more and uh four point five rodent hairs
uh per two grams. And I know that's on insect,
(09:15):
but I just like to throw that in there. Roden
hair is pretty bad and actually, folks, um, you can
thank Upton Sinclair for it being just that small. I
think if had it not been for his the Jungle, right,
we would be eating you know, whole canned rodents in
our you know can tomatoes and things like that. Well,
I've got two more. I know this is uh probably
(09:36):
turning off some of our listeners, but these two are
I just can't. I think most of our listeners like
clicked on another podcast long ago, because they want to
hear these two. Trust me, you know, the nice black
and white whole peppercorn that you that you crunch onto
yourn an average of one milligram or more of mammalion
excretia for pounds. And by mammalion you you mean any
(09:58):
mammal mammal poop? Does that include humans? Animals? About that?
I mean it's like Joe down at the packing plant,
you know, maybe causing a little surprise with an FDA
standard the pepper packing plant. Maybe so. And the final
one popcorn you enjoy your movie theater, that popcorn, by
law can have one or more rodent excrecia pellet uh
(10:21):
per subsample. And they didn't say the size of the substances. Yeah. Wow, Well,
thank you very much, Chuck. I appreciate you sharing that
with us. I know our listeners do as well. Sure thing,
that was great. Do you have any more gross out
stuff that not gross out? But I think we should
just finish up by by talking a little bit about
the benefits of eating insects. Yeah. Also, I think that's
(10:42):
a great That's a great way to close out. I
also want to point out that there's a huge, huge,
difference between eating rodent excrecia and eating bugs as far
as cultures around the world, go right, we're not trying
to equate the two. No, of course not so so
go ahead, chuck, because from what I understand, they're there
really are some great health benefits to eating bugs, and
(11:03):
they're really good for you. Yeah, go ahead. Uh well,
a hundred grams of crickets, we'll give you, um only
a hundred and twenty one calories that's a uh forty
nine of which come from fat, and you'll get thirteen
grams of protein and seventy five milligrams of iron and
five grams of carbohydrates. What's what's the one powerhouse insect
(11:24):
if you're gonna if you're really looking to lose some
weight but retain muscle mass, that kind of thing. What
insect do you go for? One word? Caterpillar? Yeah, yes, caterpillar.
They you can get twenty eight grams of protein for
a hundred grams of caterpillar, as well as iron, vitamin
B one and B three. Yeah, and actually I looked
that up. I looked up salmon, and that's on par
(11:46):
with salmon actually, right, which is great for your heart.
It's great food. It's one of the all stars. So
if you can't afford salmon, go out into your backyard
and find some caterpillars. But there are some precautions you
should take first if you're going to raise your own
in x to eat or kept your own insects to eat, right, Yeah,
I mean, if you live in the United States, you
probably shouldn't go out to your backyard and get anything
(12:06):
because chances are they might have insecticide on them or something.
But if you did want to collect some, you could
capture them and feed them fresh grass for a few
days and that it like cleans out the system at
no time. Um. And if you're in a survival situation,
obviously you'd want to eat some in whatever well not
whatever body, Okay, Well, well here's where the warnings wisdom. Uh,
there's a rule of thumb. There's really easy to remember. Um, red, orange, yellow,
(12:30):
forget the fellow black, green, brown, wolf it down bare brown. Yeah, basically,
anything is brightly colored or really pungent you want to
stay away from because that's kind of their warning signal
to the world that I'm poisonous and I can hurt you.
So so stick to worms or grubs. Yeah, tons cool,
(12:51):
and we recommend before you go eat and eat bugs,
read how into fas you works on how stuff works
dot com. Let us know what you think. Send an
email to podcast at how stuff works dot com. H
brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
from how Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Guess who's with me? Michael Douglas.
No Bryant even better than Michael Douglas, Less intense, a
(00:24):
little more laid back. Are you doing, Chuck, Well, we're
a pair of writers here at how stuff works dot Com.
We got some stuff to share with you. Have you
heard him into fag? I have and try every part
of the world except Europe, Canada and the United States.
That's so weird to me that that we we see
things so differently, right, I wouldn't need a bug. I wouldn't.
(00:47):
I've actually considered it. I've read your article and I
was thinking this would be an awesome, cool dinner party
to have, yeah, like have some normal food but also
have like fried cricket something like that. And the more
I thought about more, I was like, there's no way
I'm ever going to do this. Yeah, you know, I
almost ordered some uh for the article just too because
I could basically and I didn't. The story great one. Um,
(01:13):
so let's get into this, shall we. Let's let's talk
about this. You said Europe, America and Canada the only places.
So in Mexico, I didn't notice anyone eating bugs in Mexico.
It's big there, Okay, So I imagine that, Uh the
the there's regional differences based on the or is anyone
importing bugs, I guess? Or do people just generally eat locally?
(01:35):
You eat locally? And uh it's one reason people eat
bugs and actually we should call them insects, I guess
all over the world is because they're everywhere. They're cheap,
they're nutritious, and they prepare them to where you know,
they enjoy the taste. Well, I know, yeah, bugs are
I'm sorry. Insects are definitely plentiful. But I would imagine
(01:55):
it would take a lot to to fill up like
I can eat like a side of eefan is sitting.
How many how many, like you know, caterpillars would it
take to phil a man like me. I've been described
as beefy by the way, for factor fiction listeners. All right,
I don't know how many caterpillars would take the filling
in Josh, imagine it's more than uh ten. I would imagine.
(02:18):
But as you said, they are plentiful, so they are
well before we get into the whole modern uh into mafaji.
Is that how you pronounced it. Um, we should talk
a little bit about the history, because they did this
all throughout the Bible. The Greeks and Romans ate beatle
larva and locusts, and even Aristotle ate cicadas. So what
(02:39):
I noticed that I found strange was that in the
Bible there's some food that's off limits. Plenty of bugs
are are perfectly fine to eat, locus especially. I saw
recurring over and over again when I read the Bible
last night, and um, there was some that was off limits,
like rabbit, rabbit, uh, pelicans. Interestingly, I think, yeah, rabbits.
(03:01):
Um you said pigs, mice, weasels, And yeah, I probably
wouldn't eat a weasel. I neat a turtle. Turtle soup
is not bad. Um, This is all I mean. We
should say this is all Old Testament stuff, which I
know people that that subscribe to the Bible and its
teachings would tell you that the Old Testament isn't really
where it's at. It depends if you're of the judaic persuasion.
(03:23):
I imagine that you put a lot of stock in
the Old Testament. That's a good point, you know, also
called the Torah, right, But you can't eat those things
according to the Old Testament in Leviticus. But you can't
eat locusts and uh, grasshoppers and beetles. It's recommended. And
I know John the Baptist famously lived for months on
locust and honeycomb famously. Sure, so people have been doing
(03:45):
this a long long time, Aborigine Aborigines in Australia have
been doing it for a long time and continue to
eat grubs and apparently grubs taste like roasted almonds. You know,
I used to build ponds many life times ago, and
there was this kind of ongoing challenge. Yes, yes, um,
(04:05):
there's this ongoing challenge. Anybody who ate a grub, well
while we were digging, you know, became like the on
site you know, tough guy. Never saw anybody actually eat
Oh no never, never I saw one guy pretends to you,
but that was it. So yeah, these days, um, people
eat bugs. Like I said, they're plentiful, and by plentiful,
I mean for more than fourteen hundred edible species of insect.
(04:30):
That's just the edible kind. That's and that's just species.
It's not like there's fourteen hundred insects walking around we
can eat. I mean, how many millions or billions or
trillions of insects are there right now on planet Earth
that we could just pick up an eat a lot? Beatles?
For instance, there's close to three d and fifty kinds
of beetle alone that you can eat. And uh, ants, bees, wasps, butterflies, moss.
(04:55):
I'm sorry to interrupt you, Chuck. You said wasps, Yeah,
people eat wasps diad I imagine, uh yeah, they generally
with they will with most of the winged creatures will
take off the wings and the legs and prepare them
like either on a secure like a roasted wasp, or
sometimes they're boiled and putting soup that kind of thing. So,
but the venom doesn't affect you once it's dead, or
(05:18):
does it add spice or what? What? What's the deal?
You know, that's a good question. I didn't get get
to that my If you're just asking for my opinion,
I would say maybe if you eat it, it's not
bad for you. But if it's injected in your blood
streams or a stinger. It's probably a different kind of thing.
There's plenty of people out there for us to ask.
I noticed also that there's about three thousand ethnic groups
around the planet that consume bugs. They do, and I
(05:40):
think it's a it's telling and interesting that you you
kind of delineated it like that these are ethnic groups
that eat this. It's it's not it's it's a cultural thing.
We could eat anything at any given point in time
unless we consider it disgusting, which we do even to
an extent, right because, as you said, crustaceans like or
(06:02):
not crustaceans. But I'm sorry, um lobster Arthur pods. Yes,
lobsters and crabs are just a cousin of the spider basically,
and that's you know, you pay a lot of money
for a lobster to restaurant, and lobsters eat nasty stuff.
They're kind of bottom dwellers and they eat a lot
worse things than spiders do, like license plates. Yeah, well
(06:23):
the jaws did, I don't know, philostraphy linespit. Oh hey,
I can tell you. I've seen a couple of lobsters
that could have eaten the licensed plate. So yeah, it's
all basically in the eyes of the beholder. You know,
it's a cultural taboo. And in European, Canada, the United States, Uh,
not so in the rest of the world they eat
In South America, did they eat tarantulas and scorpions. Scorpions,
(06:45):
I've heard of eating tarantulas. I had never heard of
that before. It's I got the impression that it's prepared
in such a way that the hair remains on the
the ingested part of the tarantula. It is. There's actually
a good quote, because I wasn't brave enough to to
find a tarantula or eat one, because spiders get the
corona out of me. But Peter Menzel, he's the author
(07:06):
of a book called Man Eating Bugs, and he has
a great description about eating a tarantula. Is, uh, if
day old chickens had no bones, hair instead of feathers,
and with the size of a newborn sparrow, they might
taste like tarantulas. So he really kind of lost me
at day old chicken. The old chicken doesn't sound that bad.
It was the hair part that got me. That's just disconcerting,
(07:30):
I find. Yeah, I think the Americans aren't used to
eating anything that's Harry no I mean, have you ever
eaten pigskin? I've eaten the pork rins? Is that counting?
Have you ever found like a hair like an Aaron hair? No?
That is it's troubling. But you know what, Josh, is
funny you should mention arrant hair because there's a little
book that you may not know about by the Food
(07:50):
and Drug Administration. You know which one I'm talking about.
I don't remember the title, but I know what you're
talking The title really says it all. It's it's called
the Food Defect Action Levels, Levels of natural or unavoidable
defects and foods that present no health hazards for humans.
It's it's quite a mouthful, as it were. So basically
what this is, it's a big handbook that the FDA
(08:10):
puts out that that lists an acceptable amount of things
like arrant hairs, maggots, larvae that are in things that
you eat, that are acceptable to sell in stores because
it won't harm you. Acceptable by federal mandate, not necessarily
acceptable in a personal level. I found by by the
fact that it won't physically harm you. So I've got
(08:33):
a few. If you want to, I am all here,
and if I gag they'll please forgive me. Frozen broccoli,
there can be sixty or more aphids and or mites
per one grams. Broccoli in and of itself is bad enough.
You throw some aphids in there, it may actually make
it okay. I love broccoli. Your ground cinnamon may have
(08:53):
four hundred or more insect fragments per fifty grams. Which
fragments that's anything that's like that's like the hot dog
of spices apparently right. Uh. Your macaroni or noodle product
can have an average of two hundred twenty five insect
fragments or more and uh four point five rodent hairs
uh per two grams. And I know that's on insect,
(09:15):
but I just like to throw that in there. Roden
hair is pretty bad and actually, folks, um, you can
thank Upton Sinclair for it being just that small. I
think if had it not been for his the Jungle, right,
we would be eating you know, whole canned rodents in
our you know can tomatoes and things like that. Well,
I've got two more. I know this is uh probably
(09:36):
turning off some of our listeners, but these two are
I just can't. I think most of our listeners like
clicked on another podcast long ago, because they want to
hear these two. Trust me, you know, the nice black
and white whole peppercorn that you that you crunch onto
yourn an average of one milligram or more of mammalion
excretia for pounds. And by mammalion you you mean any
(09:58):
mammal mammal poop? Does that include humans? Animals? About that?
I mean it's like Joe down at the packing plant,
you know, maybe causing a little surprise with an FDA
standard the pepper packing plant. Maybe so. And the final
one popcorn you enjoy your movie theater, that popcorn, by
law can have one or more rodent excrecia pellet uh
(10:21):
per subsample. And they didn't say the size of the substances. Yeah. Wow, Well,
thank you very much, Chuck. I appreciate you sharing that
with us. I know our listeners do as well. Sure thing,
that was great. Do you have any more gross out
stuff that not gross out? But I think we should
just finish up by by talking a little bit about
the benefits of eating insects. Yeah. Also, I think that's
(10:42):
a great That's a great way to close out. I
also want to point out that there's a huge, huge,
difference between eating rodent excrecia and eating bugs as far
as cultures around the world, go right, we're not trying
to equate the two. No, of course not so so
go ahead, chuck, because from what I understand, they're there
really are some great health benefits to eating bugs, and
(11:03):
they're really good for you. Yeah, go ahead. Uh well,
a hundred grams of crickets, we'll give you, um only
a hundred and twenty one calories that's a uh forty
nine of which come from fat, and you'll get thirteen
grams of protein and seventy five milligrams of iron and
five grams of carbohydrates. What's what's the one powerhouse insect
(11:24):
if you're gonna if you're really looking to lose some
weight but retain muscle mass, that kind of thing. What
insect do you go for? One word? Caterpillar? Yeah, yes, caterpillar.
They you can get twenty eight grams of protein for
a hundred grams of caterpillar, as well as iron, vitamin
B one and B three. Yeah, and actually I looked
that up. I looked up salmon, and that's on par
(11:46):
with salmon actually, right, which is great for your heart.
It's great food. It's one of the all stars. So
if you can't afford salmon, go out into your backyard
and find some caterpillars. But there are some precautions you
should take first if you're going to raise your own
in x to eat or kept your own insects to eat, right, Yeah,
I mean, if you live in the United States, you
probably shouldn't go out to your backyard and get anything
(12:06):
because chances are they might have insecticide on them or something.
But if you did want to collect some, you could
capture them and feed them fresh grass for a few
days and that it like cleans out the system at
no time. Um. And if you're in a survival situation,
obviously you'd want to eat some in whatever well not
whatever body, Okay, Well, well here's where the warnings wisdom. Uh,
there's a rule of thumb. There's really easy to remember. Um, red, orange, yellow,
(12:30):
forget the fellow black, green, brown, wolf it down bare brown. Yeah, basically,
anything is brightly colored or really pungent you want to
stay away from because that's kind of their warning signal
to the world that I'm poisonous and I can hurt you.
So so stick to worms or grubs. Yeah, tons cool,
(12:51):
and we recommend before you go eat and eat bugs,
read how into fas you works on how stuff works
dot com. Let us know what you think. Send an
email to podcast at how stuff works dot com. H
brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready, are you
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