Speaker 1: So let's play a quick game to get ready for
Speaker 1: this episode. I know you're very competitive, so can you
Speaker 1: name at least five of the ten commonly eaten insects
Speaker 1: around the world?
Speaker 2: Name five? Okay?
Speaker 3: Crickets, worms, mm hmmm, the egg the ant eggs, yeah, good, beetles, Yes, ah,
Speaker 3: that's what.
Speaker 1: You got.
Speaker 2: Four? Oh that's all I got? What else that's good? Ants?
Speaker 1: Crickets, grasshoppers, beetles, termite scorpions.
Speaker 3: Grassops scorpions, yes, grubs.
Speaker 1: There's so much, but there are so many insects. Over
Speaker 1: two billion people in the world eat insects as part
Speaker 1: of their diets.
Speaker 3: My name is Evil Longoria and I am Myra and
Speaker 3: welcome to Hungry for History, a podcast that explores are
Speaker 3: past and present through food.
Speaker 4: On every episode, we'll talk about the history of some
Speaker 4: of our favorite dishes, ingredients, and beverages from our culture.
Speaker 2: So make yourself at home, even culturally it's part of
Speaker 2: their diet.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, How do you feel about eating insects? Which
Speaker 1: ones have you had?
Speaker 3: I've had crickets and what are the crickets called though?
Speaker 3: Chapolinis chapolinis and cscamlis.
Speaker 2: Those are the two I've had. A warm. I've had
Speaker 2: a warm and tequila. Yeah, but that's it. That's it.
Speaker 3: I haven't had grasshoppers, I haven't had beetles, I haven't
Speaker 3: had ants. No, just I'm taking for Mexico. The chapolinas
Speaker 3: were there was a variety. There was large, small, medium, spicy,
Speaker 3: not spid like. They had bins and bins and bins
Speaker 3: and you could choose which one you wanted.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I love chapoliness. I love a good chapoline. I
Speaker 1: always have them in my fridge. I have what Yeah,
Speaker 1: how do you how do you eat them? How do
Speaker 1: you prepare them? I just have just on a corn.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I put some avocado, some chapoliness, some fresh lime juice,
Speaker 1: nothing more delicious. They have protein.
Speaker 2: It's tasty for me. That has just how much protein
Speaker 2: does that really have? I mean, how much do you ton?
Speaker 1: A ton to that? Not a lot? And we will
Speaker 1: get to that they have a ton of protein. Well,
Speaker 1: we will get there.
Speaker 3: So okay, So I want to know this because I
Speaker 3: don't want to have to eat a bucket of chapolinas
Speaker 3: just to get the equivalent of one egg white.
Speaker 2: Okay, you don't.
Speaker 1: We'll get to protein, which is such a buzzyard right now.
Speaker 3: I heard that if you're allergic to shellfish, that you probably.
Speaker 2: Would be allergic to eating insects.
Speaker 1: They have similar proteins.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's good to know. But people been eating insects
Speaker 2: for a long time.
Speaker 1: For a long time. They're nutrient dense, they're sustainable, and
Speaker 1: they're culturally significant across the world, in particular Asia, Africa,
Speaker 1: and Latin America. And we even have biblical traditions even
Speaker 1: mentioned insect eating in the Book of Leviticus, the third
Speaker 1: book of the Old Testament. Most winged insects are considered unclean,
Speaker 1: but insects that hop like locusts and crickets and grasshoppers
Speaker 1: are permitted, and so which you know, many communities in
Speaker 1: the West were eating bugs, you know, if they're mentioned
Speaker 1: in these in these books. But they eventually avoided eating
Speaker 1: insects altogether, because then it just became too difficult to
Speaker 1: identify which species were allowed and which were not. But
Speaker 1: even in the New Testament we see insect eating as
Speaker 1: a more sort of in a more symbolic tone. John
Speaker 1: the Baptist is described as surviving on locusts and wild
Speaker 1: honey and the wilderness, and so this idea of this
Speaker 1: diet of bugs signals austerity and resilience and really like
Speaker 1: spiritual minimalism. Right, insects in the biblical world, they exist
Speaker 1: at this intersection of survival and spiritual meaning and law.
Speaker 1: So they're really quite interesting in that sense.
Speaker 2: So what's the first recorded case of eating insects? Is
Speaker 2: there a recipe book? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Well not. You know, it's interesting because we have the
Speaker 1: first recorded written evidence. But the recorded case of eating
Speaker 1: insects is we see in Europe can be found in
Speaker 1: northern Spain and Meda in a series of paintings that
Speaker 1: date back from like northern Spain is where I'm from?
Speaker 2: Are you talking about?
Speaker 1: Ask at the media. I'm not sure where that is?
Speaker 1: Is that in as studios? I don't know. Look, insect
Speaker 1: eating is not super common in the US or in
Speaker 1: you know, or in the modern US, or in Europe,
Speaker 1: but it definitely used to be, because we see the
Speaker 1: recorded case of insect eating in Europe the first in me.
Speaker 1: It's in the Basque country in the Oh, that's where
Speaker 1: my people are from.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's you.
Speaker 1: This is why I have bugs in my fridge to eat.
Speaker 2: It's in the cant Province. Technicquely.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, so it's in between a studios and Basque country.
Speaker 1: I want to say that. You know, scientists have recorded
Speaker 1: identified about a million in sectist species so far, and
Speaker 1: over two thousand of them are eaten around the world.
Speaker 1: Oh that's a lot of bugs. Yeah, that's a lot
Speaker 1: of blocked Yeah. Well there was pretty digestible, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: because the're roasted and fried and ground and you know,
Speaker 1: you just have to avoid the ones that feed on
Speaker 1: toxic plants or live in polluted areas. You are brightly colored.
Speaker 1: But yeah, how do you know that?
Speaker 2: How about cuse me, bug? Are you eating toxic plants?
Speaker 2: Because that means you're toxic for me?
Speaker 1: But yeah, not all insects are edible. But let's talk
Speaker 1: about these like references to it. So we have this
Speaker 1: recorded case in Spain, in northern Spain. This blew my mind. Aristotle,
Speaker 1: the fourth century BC philosopher. He dedicated a section of
Speaker 1: his work Estaria Animalum to the most delicious way of
Speaker 1: eating bugs. He loved chichiras cicadas. He said they taste
Speaker 1: it best in their final stage of development, and he
Speaker 1: also said that female locusts cooked in sweet oil with
Speaker 1: their eggs still in inside were very sweet. And he
Speaker 1: said that grasshoppers were a mouth wateringly nutritious snack. I
Speaker 1: think that is fascinating that Aristotle wrote about this. Plainy
Speaker 1: the Elder for century BC Roman author he liked to
Speaker 1: eat beetle larvae raised on flour and wine. So this
Speaker 1: you know. So we see in antiquity and then with Christianity,
Speaker 1: the practice of eating bugs in Europe really kind of
Speaker 1: died out because of all of these biblical things. It's
Speaker 1: like it became confusing, what can I eat? What can
Speaker 1: I not eat? But we see that it didn't fully
Speaker 1: go away. There's this early seventeenth century account by an
Speaker 1: Italian naturalist, Ulisse Aldrovandi of German soldiers in Italy snacking
Speaker 1: on fried silkworms and that they were like, wow, this
Speaker 1: is delicious. And there was a French naturalist, Renee Antoine
Speaker 1: for Shaw, so.
Speaker 2: He made a plea to bring insects back to the
Speaker 2: dining table. But it didn't catch on.
Speaker 1: It did not catch on.
Speaker 3: What about the US Native American communities must have eaten
Speaker 3: insects now they.
Speaker 1: Were there was this rich culinary traditions, like lots of
Speaker 1: species were eaten and white settlers looked down upon these practices,
Speaker 1: but even they also incorporated into their diets. So in
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, the Shoshone and other communities in the
Speaker 1: Great Basin Area, like in Nevada, Utah, California, Oregon, they
Speaker 1: formed these massive circles and beat brush to drive grasshoppers
Speaker 1: into pits and blankets, and then they roasted them and
Speaker 1: ground them into flour. So we have lots of evidence
Speaker 1: between lots of Native American communities that really gathered bugs,
Speaker 1: and this sort of gathering of bugs were organized around
Speaker 1: the cycles of certain larvae, and so it was really
Speaker 1: a very important part of the diet. Insects were abundant,
Speaker 1: they were practical, they were delicious, and we have yeah.
Speaker 3: And then I just find it hard than when you
Speaker 3: say delicious.
Speaker 2: I find it hard to believe any any of it
Speaker 2: was delicious.
Speaker 1: They yeah, but it as a sustance.
Speaker 2: It's like sustance. I don't know, huh, delicious, But.
Speaker 1: I think I think a good of the tapoline with
Speaker 1: like lime and a little bit of chile. I think
Speaker 1: it's delicious, and it's like a texture. It's hard to
Speaker 1: pep for, I think to people to get around this
Speaker 1: like path the text, Oh my god, it's a bug.
Speaker 1: But we see them like the Cherokees of North Carolina.
Speaker 1: They would fry to taras and hog fat and sometimes
Speaker 1: they were baked into pies and you know, yeah.
Speaker 3: I guess like if you didn't know and and and
Speaker 3: you were okay with the texture, then you would eat
Speaker 3: it for sure.
Speaker 1: It's definitely a cultural thing, you know, and it was practical,
Speaker 1: you know, because they're so abundant. But it was really
Speaker 1: a part of this cultural spiritual life and seasonal life.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: It was kind of revolved around the seeds ins of
Speaker 1: gathering in the larvae and this and that, so you know,
Speaker 1: harvester ants. They were used as hallucinogenic aids and spiritual
Speaker 1: rituals and you know in the south central California tribes.
Speaker 1: So they really were a very important part of the
Speaker 1: original diet of the Americas. But then Westerners started yucking
Speaker 1: the yum.
Speaker 2: They had to realize that they needed to eat bugs
Speaker 2: to survive.
Speaker 1: They did, they did. And there's this archaeologist David Matson.
Speaker 1: He talks about Native Americans in the Great Basin and
Speaker 1: they traded insect fruitcakes. They were like nuts berries and
Speaker 1: insect bits stride into a bar and they traded this
Speaker 1: to immigrant wagon trains in the mid nineteenth century, and
Speaker 1: this trade sustained segments of western migration in the US.
Speaker 1: And so this may have this insect eating. They have
Speaker 1: saved early settlers lives, especially the earliest Mormon settlers in Utah.
Speaker 1: And so there's evidence of this. And you know, eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy four, there was a locust swarm that decimated crops
Speaker 1: in the Midwest. And to dress this food scarcity, a
Speaker 1: Missouri entomologist who's a studyer of bugs, This man named
Speaker 1: Charles Valentine Ray. He developed recipes for eating locusts and
Speaker 1: these were and you worked with a local like known
Speaker 1: cater and these were distributed across the region.
Speaker 2: But our locus chichada's basically or no, they're different.
Speaker 1: No, I think they're different. Chichatas are cicadas?
Speaker 2: Did this? Yeah? Did the insect eating and the colonies
Speaker 2: catch on?
Speaker 1: No? I mean it was short lived. It was short list. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, like everything, right, Colonists they weaponized native practices
Speaker 1: and this included insect eating. So this was a sign
Speaker 1: of inferiority. And by the mid twentieth century there were like,
Speaker 1: you know, it was shameful. It was not it was
Speaker 1: beneath them. With industrialization, it just became difficult to harvest insects.
Speaker 1: So it just kind of really happen.
Speaker 3: Can we just get to the protein, Like how much
Speaker 3: protein could a tiny little insect half? Because you know,
Speaker 3: everybody's obsessed with getting the protein in obsessed.
Speaker 1: According to the BBC, Google searches for protein have risen
Speaker 1: two hundred and thirteen percent over the last decade, reaching
Speaker 1: an all time high in twenty twenty five. But yes,
Speaker 1: they're a rich source of protein. They contain forty to
Speaker 1: seventy percent protein by dry weight, above on par with
Speaker 1: or above traditional sources like beef for chicken.
Speaker 2: The average grasshopper weighs about half a gram. According to
Speaker 2: an article, a grasshopper has twenty grams of protein. That's
Speaker 2: a whole thing of yogurt. By the way, that's a lot.
Speaker 1: What so, yeah, you don't have to Yeah, that's a lot.
Speaker 2: And they a lot.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of protein, way more than a steak,
Speaker 1: way more. It is more than a steak. And they
Speaker 1: have all of the essential amino acids your body needs.
Speaker 1: They have iron, they have zinc, they have vitamin bees,
Speaker 1: their nutrient pat You know what, it's crazy.
Speaker 3: This is why Simba in the Lion King was sustained
Speaker 3: with eating bugs and not other animals.
Speaker 1: There you go, Simba leeds. Simba knew what was Simba
Speaker 1: knew he's like protein. Simba knew how to get more protein.
Speaker 1: According to the World Health Organization, over two point three
Speaker 1: billion people experience food insecurity, and experts say that if
Speaker 1: people in the US and in Europe could get over
Speaker 1: the ick, edible insects could revolutionize food systems and be
Speaker 1: part of a climate friendly solution to address world hunger.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's amazing.
Speaker 3: So which cultures do have like insects and their and
Speaker 3: their diets? Like, what are some what are some iconic dishes?
Speaker 3: Because I know Mexico, but obviously there's others. I know
Speaker 3: I know China because I went to China and they
Speaker 3: had a lot of insects there, because you had two
Speaker 3: billion people worldwide consume insects as their diet.
Speaker 2: But which what are some examples?
Speaker 1: Well, Asia, China, you said, actually the earliest earliest written
Speaker 1: evidence of insect use involving bees and wasps in particular
Speaker 1: up here in Chinese literature that go back to the
Speaker 1: first millennium BC, and that's only the written evidence, so
Speaker 1: it likely goes back, you know, much much further. And
Speaker 1: they are eating worms, crickets, silkworms, deep fried or stir fried.
Speaker 1: But also in Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos it's a
Speaker 1: common street food and they're either fried or roasted with soy, sauce,
Speaker 1: chili or garlic like grasshoppers and crickets, kind of like
Speaker 1: in Mexico. Water bugs are used in soups and stews.
Speaker 1: A pan has moca simmered and soy and sugar, and
Speaker 1: it's I know, it's it's it's it's different. It's different.
Speaker 1: We're just not used to it. I know. Larva, I
Speaker 1: think that's what it is. It's a it's a closing
Speaker 1: thing with.
Speaker 3: Like eating octopus. Some cultures are like, how could you
Speaker 3: do that?
Speaker 1: Right? Yeah, right, it just gets you know, you get
Speaker 1: past it. Africa, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo eat like weavil,
Speaker 1: larva termites.
Speaker 2: Australia catchites. I don't know, they're so tiny. Australia must
Speaker 2: have eat bugs. They have so many bugs down there,
Speaker 2: but they probably have a lot of tucks and eaten bugs.
Speaker 1: Baby, they have a witchity grub is something that they
Speaker 1: eat a lot there. It's this white larva eaten raw
Speaker 1: or lightly cooked.
Speaker 3: Does anyone know about the America because in Mexico we
Speaker 3: have chappolinas, maggie worms, escamolas. But is there what other
Speaker 3: Latin American countries eat bugs?
Speaker 1: Columbia, Venezuela eat certain n species and beetle larva. Insects
Speaker 1: were more than food. They were big symbolic part of
Speaker 1: this ritual world type of agriculture and seasonality and the sacred.
Speaker 1: So we see things like my gay worms and other
Speaker 1: larva closely connected to the cycles of planting and harvest,
Speaker 1: and it could be included in offerings to the gods.
Speaker 1: They carried deep symbolic meaning like sometimes they were sociated
Speaker 1: with fertility or regeneration or the afterlife, and so even
Speaker 1: the act of preparing and sharing insects could be ritualized,
Speaker 1: so they were considered delicacies. They sort of straddled these
Speaker 1: lines of spirituality, nutrition and all of it. Basically, just
Speaker 1: like we talked about at the beginning of the episode,
Speaker 1: connected to natural cycles and lunar phases and animal migration.
Speaker 1: So just even gathering insects was such a big part
Speaker 1: of the culture.
Speaker 3: And so I know that, I mean, I could see
Speaker 3: how insects are environmentally sustainable food compared to livestock, because
Speaker 3: livestock beef, like raising beef, is one of the leading
Speaker 3: drivers of tropical deforestation.
Speaker 2: It uses an enormous amount of water.
Speaker 3: You've got to grow the feed, so that takes up land,
Speaker 3: the fossil fuels needed to transport the animals from the
Speaker 3: farm to the slaughterhouse to market, it all adds up.
Speaker 2: And I know that. You know, cattle alone produces more
Speaker 2: greenhouse gases than cars.
Speaker 3: So by comparison insects, if we could get out over
Speaker 3: the ick, we could probably definitely have a more environmentally sustainable.
Speaker 2: Source of protein.
Speaker 1: Definitely, the same ten pounds of feed that yields just
Speaker 1: one pound of beef can produce six pounds of insect
Speaker 1: protein with a much smaller carbon footprint. Wow, you just
Speaker 1: have to get over the ick.
Speaker 3: Well, the ick is that you know, when you see
Speaker 3: the wings or the legs or the head, that makes
Speaker 3: it a hard sell for me at least.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they just need a rebranding, right, So people need.
Speaker 2: To market, they need a good publicist.
Speaker 1: They need a good publicist, they need they need a rebrand,
Speaker 1: especially in the US and in Europe, because other people
Speaker 1: in other parts of the world look like we're way
Speaker 1: behind in the West and so many things, and this
Speaker 1: is one of them. This is one of them. We're
Speaker 1: so disconnected.
Speaker 3: Our food chain in general is definitely definitely disconnected from
Speaker 3: where food comes from, the cost of you know, human
Speaker 3: life and labor. We don't factor in a lot. We
Speaker 3: just sit at a table and demand an avocado out
Speaker 3: of season.
Speaker 2: We got to do better, We got to do better.
Speaker 1: We got it. Well.
Speaker 3: You had a chance to chat with Monica Martinez of
Speaker 3: Don't Bugito? Does she say bugito, which is a pre
Speaker 3: Hispanic snack at yah, And she had a lot to
Speaker 3: say about sustainability.
Speaker 2: Here's a sneak peak of that conbo.
Speaker 5: We just caught the chickens in the couch and just
Speaker 5: goes straight to the insects. So on that note, I
Speaker 5: start playing in my studio, like I was like trying
Speaker 5: to design some little farms, thinking that people can grow
Speaker 5: their own proteins in the kitchen, and I was using mealworms,
Speaker 5: which are not really warms. A lot of people when
Speaker 5: you say the word norm it's like yuck, gross. But
Speaker 5: milworms are larvae. I don't know that sounds better. But
Speaker 5: they're a type of beetle. Is a darkling beetle, and
Speaker 5: beetles are one of the largest insect families in the world.
Speaker 5: So insects composed eighty percent of the biomass of the planet.
Speaker 2: Isn't that insane?
Speaker 1: She was absolutely brilliant. She grows her own bugs and
Speaker 1: an urban farm in Oakland. She has a background in
Speaker 1: industrial design and art. She's brilliant. She's giving insects a
Speaker 1: major rebrand in the US. She's from Act City. She's awesome.
Speaker 1: So make sure you tune in next week to hear
Speaker 1: that conversation in its entirety.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for joining for this episode all
Speaker 3: about bugs. We hope you enjoyed it as much as
Speaker 3: we did.
Speaker 1: Thank you everyone. Don't forget to rate us and leave
Speaker 1: us a message. We love hearing from you. See you
Speaker 1: next week.
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