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Entomophagy
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Entomophagy (from Greek ??t?µ?? éntomos, "insect(ed)", and f??e?? phagein, "to eat", which together means "insect eating") is the practice of eating insects as food. Entomophagy is seen in a large number of taxonomic groups including insects (that eat other insects), birds, reptiles, amphibians and mammals.
The term is also used to describe human insect-eating that is common in some cultures in parts of the world including Central and South America, Africa, Asia, and Australia, but uncommon and even taboo in some societies.
insects are entomophagous and these are usually classified into predators and parasitoids, while some are cannibalistic.
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Encyclopedia
Entomophagy (from Greek ??t?µ?? éntomos, "insect(ed)", and f??e?? phagein, "to eat", which together means "insect eating") is the practice of eating insects as food. Entomophagy is seen in a large number of taxonomic groups including insects (that eat other insects), birds, reptiles, amphibians and mammals.
The term is also used to describe human insect-eating that is common in some cultures in parts of the world including Central and South America, Africa, Asia, and Australia, but uncommon and even taboo in some societies.
Non-human consumption of insects
Many insects are entomophagous and these are usually classified into predators and parasitoids, while some are cannibalistic. Nematodes that live within insects (parasites) are also termed entomophagous. Some bacteria and fungi are also known to growing on or inside insects and these usually cause the death of their hosts. These too are sometimes termed entomophagous, although the term entomopathogen is more appropriate. (See also Entomopathogenic fungi)
History of human entomophagy
Before humans had tools to hunt or practice agriculture, insects must have represented an important part of their diet. Evidence of this has been found by analyzing coprolites from caves in USA and Mexico. Coprolites in caves in the Ozark Mountains were found to contain ants, beetle larvae, lice, ticks, and mites. This is not unexpected, as most apes are, to a greater or lesser extent, insectivorous.
Cave paintings in Altamira, north Spain, dated to about 9,000 to 30,000 BCE, depict the collection of wild bee nests. At the time people must have eaten bee pupae and larvae with the honey. Cocoons of wild silkworm (Theophilia religiosae) were found in ruins in the Shanxi province of China, dating from 2,000 to 2,500 years B.C. The cocoons had large holes in them, suggesting the pupae were eaten. Many ancient entomophagy practices have been passed down to the present, forming traditional entomophagy.
Present-day
Entomophagy can be divided into two categories: insects used as a source of nutrients and insects as condiments. Some insects are eaten as larvae, others as adults. Over 1200 species of insects are used as food by people throughout the world. Commonly eaten insects and arachnids include grasshoppers, crickets, termites, ants, beetle larvae (grubs), moth caterpillars and pupae, spiders, tarantulas, and scorpions.
Specific cases
The consumption of Hormiga culona (literally "large-bottomed ant") Atta laevigata is traditional in some regions of Colombia. In some places the commercial exploitation of food insects has led to their decline.
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 an important source of food protein.
Entomophagy in popular culture
Barrington Hall, a student co-op at U.C. Berkeley known for its anarchist tendencies, had a yearly insect banquet for many years until the co-op was closed down in 1990 because of the rowdy behavior of its residents. Entomophagy is also featured on some reality TV shows for its shock value.
In Steven Spielberg's well-known 1984 adventure movie Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, there is a scene taking place at a banquet at a Maharaja's palace. While this scene is best known for a part in which the dinner guests are fed chilled monkey's brains; there is also a short part prior to it in which a plate of cooked beetles is served.
The Explorer's Club holds an annual dinner at New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel featuring a wide array of unusual dishes including many featuring insects.
Advantages
Increased efficiency and lower environmental damage
Insects generally have a higher food conversion efficiency than more traditional meats. While many insects can have an energy input to protein output ratio of around 4:1, raised livestock has a ratio closer to 54:1 . This is partially due to the fact that feed first needs to be grown for most traditional livestock. Additionally endothermic (warm-blooded) vertebrates need to use a significantly greater amount of energy just to stay warm whereas ectothermic (cold blooded) plants or insects do not. An index which can be used as a measure is the Efficiency of conversion of ingested food to body substance: for example, only 10% of ingested food is converted to body substance by beef cattle, versus 19-31% by silkworms and 44% by German cockroaches. Studies concerning the house cricket (Acheta domesticus) provide further evidence for the efficiency of insects as a food source. When reared at 30°C or more and fed a diet of equal quality to the diet used to rear conventional livestock, crickets showed a food conversion twice as efficient as pigs and broiler chicks, four times that of sheep, and six times higher than (oxen) when losses in carcass trim and dressing percentage are counted.
Insects reproduce at a faster rate than beef animals. A female cricket can lay from 1,200 to 1,500 eggs in 3 to 4 weeks, while for beef the ratio is four breeding animals for each market animal produced. This gives house crickets a true food conversion efficiency almost 20 times higher than beef. For this reason and because of the essential amino acids content of insects, some people propose the development of entomophagy to provide a major source of protein in human nutrition. Protein production for human consumption would be more effective and consume fewer resources than animal protein. This makes insect meat more ecological than vertebrate meat.
Insects have many attractive qualities for food production besides their high energy efficiency. For example the spatial usage and water requirements are only a fraction of that required to produce the same mass of food with cattle farming. Production of 150g of grasshopper meat requires only very little water, while cattle requires 3290 liters to produce the same amount of beef.
Disadvantages
Toxicity
Pesticide use can make insects unsuitable for human consumption. Herbicides can accumulate in insects through bioaccumulation. For example when locust outbreaks are treated by spraying, people can no longer eat them. This may pose a problem since edible plants have been consumed by the locusts themselves.
Cases of lead poisoning after consumption of chapulines were reported by the California Department of Health Services in November 2003 Adverse allergic reactions are also a possible hazard.
Cultural taboo
Within Western culture, entomophagy (barring honey and some food dyes) is seen as taboo. There are some exceptions. Casu marzu, for example, also called casu modde, casu cundhídu, or in Italian formaggio marcio, is a cheese made in Sardinia notable for being riddled with live insect larvae. Casu marzu means "rotten cheese" in Sardinian and is known colloquially as maggot cheese. A scene in the Italian film Mondo Cane (1962) features an insect banquet for shock effect. Western avoidance of entomophagy coexists with the consumption of other invertebrates such as crustaceans and mollusks, and is not based on taste or food value. Within Judaism, most insects are not considered kosher, though honey, locusts, grasshoppers, and related species are.
The anthropologist Marvin Harris has suggested that the eating of insects is taboo in cultures that have other protein sources that require less work to obtain, like farm birds or cattle, though there are cultures which feature both animal husbandry and entomophagy. Examples can be found in Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe where strong cattle-raising traditions co-exist with entomophagy of insects like the mopane worm.
Unintentional entomophagy
Since it is impossible to entirely eliminate pest insects from the human food chain, insects are present in many foods, especially grains. Food laws in many countries do not prohibit insect parts in food, but rather, they limit the quantity. People in rice eating regions, for example, typically ingest significant numbers of rice weevil (Sitophilus oryzae) larvae, and this has been suggested as an important source of vitamins.
Here are examples of food products for humans, and their maximum permissible levels of insect contamination, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Contamination below these maximum levels presents, according to the FDA, no health hazard.
| Product | Type of insect contamination | Maximum Permissible Level |
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| Canned sweet corn | Insect larvae (corn ear worms or corn borers) | 2 or more 3 mm or longer larvae, cast skins, larval or cast skin fragments, the aggregate length of insects or insect parts exceeds 12 mm in 24 pounds | | Canned citrus fruit juices | Insects and insect eggs | 5 or more Drosophila and other fly eggs per 250 ml or 1 or more maggots per 250 ml | | Canned apricots | Insect filth | Average of 2% or more by count has been damaged or infected by insects | | Chocolate and chocolate liquor | Insect filth | Average is 60 or more insect fragments per 100 grams (when 6 100 g subsamples are examined) | | Peanut butter | Insect filth | Average of 30 or more insect fragments per 100 grams | | Wheat flour | Insect filth | Average of 150 or more insect fragments per 100 grams | | Frozen broccoli | Insects and mites | Average of 60 or more aphids and/or thrips and/or mites per 100 grams | | Hops | Insects | Average of more than 2,500 aphids per 10 grams | | Ground thyme | Insect filth | Average of 925 or more insect fragments per 10 grams | | Ground nutmeg | Insect filth | Average of 100 or more insect fragments per 10 grams | | Ground cinnamon | Insect filth | Average of 80 or more insect fragments per 10 gram |
See source for information on other food products.
Further reading
- Holt, Vincent Why Not Eat Insects? 1885 Pamphlet
- Sri Kantha, S. Insect eating in Japan. Nature, Nov.24, 1988; 336: 316-317.
- Ichinose, K. More insect eating. Nature, Feb.9, 1989; 337: 513-514.
- DeFoliart, G. Insects as human food. Crop Protection, 1992; 11: 395-399.
See also
External links
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