Bugs You Can Eat

  • By Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio
  • Posted 11.20.07
  • NOVA

Before fast food, farms, or even wild game, insects fed prehistoric hunter-gatherers all over the planet. A near taboo in the Western world, entomophagy (insect-eating) is still practiced by millions of people in traditional societies—and by us, a couple of gastronomically adventuresome Western journalists. It began simply enough with witchetty grubs in Australia, but before we knew it, we were caught. In this slide show, explore just a few of the stops on our journey to becoming gourmands of all things creepy-crawly.

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Fried dragonflies. Greasy tarantulas. Fat, juicy witchetty grubs. Find out what they taste like here.

This feature originally appeared on the site for the NOVA program Master of the Killer Ants.

Credits

Images

(all)
© Peter Menzel

Images and quotes excerpted with permission

(all)
Man Eating Bugs: The Art and Science of Eating Insects by Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio (Ten Speed Press, 1998).

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