Who really eats insects?
I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! is upon us again, which means we can look forward to Jason Donovan and Lauren Booth stuffing themselves with leeches and maggots for several weeks in order to get one up on each other. The bush-tucker trials may have a shock value in Britain but in other cultures insects are still appreciated for their nutritional value. Known as entomophagy, the consumption of insects has been a dietary norm in some parts of the world for thousands of years – ancient Romans and Greeks dined on them. In Taiwan, a bowl of stir-fried crickets for starters or a meal of sauteed caterpillars now count as restaurant delicacies. Ant-fried rice and deep-fried scorpion in chilli pepper feature on the menu at newly fashionable country restaurants, as they are thought to boost the sex drive. In the poor, rural north of Thailand, insects are also traditionally part of the diet. Among the most popular are locusts, crickets and cicadas. Market stalls sell these by the pound, s
