Current Examples
Entomophagy can be divided into two categories: insects used as a source of nutrients and insects as condiments. Some insects are eaten as larvae or pupae, others as adults. Though not insects, arachnids such as spiders, tarantulas and scorpions are also eaten. A total of 1417 species of insects have been recorded as being eaten by over 3000 ethnic groups. These include 235 species of butterflies and moths, 344 species of beetles, 313 species of ants, bees and wasps as well as 239 species of grasshoppers, crickets and cockroaches, amongst others. Other commonly eaten insects are termites, cicadas and dragonflies. Insects are known to be eaten in 80% of the world's nations.
The commercial exploitation of food insects has led to their decline in some places.
The consumption of Atta laevigata is traditional in some regions of Colombia and northeast Brazil. In southern Africa, a species of moth called Gonimbrasia belina is found throughout much of the region; its large caterpillar, the mopani or mopane worm, is a source of food protein. In Australia, Witchetty grub is considered a source of food amongst the Indigenous population.
Entomophagy has been featured on some reality television shows, such as Fear Factor. Barrington Hall, a former student cooperative at U.C. Berkeley held an annual insect banquet for many years until the co-op was closed down in 1990. The New York Entomological Society held a Centennial Banquet on Wednesday, May 20, 1992 at the Explorers Club in New York. The theme for the evening banquet was the use of insects as food. Appetizers and desserts featured insects in their preparations. The Explorers Club itself holds an annual dinner at New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel featuring a wide array of unusual dishes including many featuring insects. Theme park operator Six Flags Inc, based in New York, staged a contest as part of a promotion leading up to Halloween in which it also offered customers free entry or line-jumping advantages if they ate a live Madagascar hissing cockroach; the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) opposed the overall promotion. "Insects do not deserve to be eaten alive especially for a gratuitous marketing gimmick," PETA spokeswoman Jackie Vergerio told Reuters. Two restaurants in Vancouver offer cricket based items. Vij's Restaurant offers parathas made from crickets, which are made by roasting crickets and grinding them into a flour used to make the paratha, and its sister restaurant Rangoli Restaurant offers cricket pizza, which is made by sprinkling whole roasted crickets on naan dough.
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