Worms, Fried, Baked Or Grilled?

A couple of my English friends just back from Thailand were saying how strange it was to see some local people buying insects for food, not for their buggies or pet monkey, but for themselves. The idea is not totally strange to me, as I do know, and have witnessed in a couple of countries visited, that people do eat them as naturally as putting on chicken, pork or beef on the table.

In Barcelona, up to not long ago, there was a very big stall, one of the dozens in the city centre's famous Municipal market, that sold a great variety of insects including worms, as food for people. They had a big, faithful and regular clientele who were used to and appreciated such, to them, delicacies. The stall had been the supplier of this specialized food for 4 years. But somehow, almost out of a blue, had to close up "till there is regulated and established norm for commercialisation that such products are considered suitable for human consumption", the Spanish Agency of Security in Food & Nutrition so stated. It caused a lot of comments from all sectors of the public, both pro and against. Since then it has remained everybody's query why it had been allowed to operate for 4 full years in the first place.

Soon after, there's an news article on the " Daily Mail ", the London press, signed by Beth Hale, in which she explained that, after long and thorough investigations, experiments and debates by scientists, they proposed that we should include insects amongst our habitual diets. Adding that when these are dried, they contain double the protein of meat; and raw fish providing rich minerals. These are in fact eaten in many countries outside of Europe through centuries. Thailand, China, Japan, Vietnam, Mexico, Bali, and New Guinea amongst them. Insects are no different from say crabs, prawns, oysters or lobsters, snails, etc.

But the most interesting part of this article was when she said that, apart from the nutritional values of insects and worms, eating them is also highly beneficial to the protection of the natural and healthy environment because, "it reduces plagues and minimizes the pressure of eating conventional meat." Conventional meat? Well, whatever that means.

The Organisation of Agriculture and Alimentation is also of the agreement that eating insects would make it more sustainable the hungry world today and it's development. To breed them for food contributes to preserving the forests, which is necessary to attract them, hence some countries have such projects to protect their forests.

Apparently the Thai government even distribute recipes of locusts, because they can't afford the expenses of enormous amount of pesticides needed to get rid of them! Now you have heard it all.

Tags:insects,worms,forest

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