A very interesting commentary about insects as food is in anthropologist Marvin Harris’ book “Good to Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture” (originally titled “The Sacred Cow and the Abominable Pig”). In a chapter about insect eating, Harris proposes a number of reasons for taboos about or resistance to insect eating in the West. In other sources like “Man Eating Bugs,” by Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio, I have found additional possibilities.

For example, Harris writes “The reason we don’t eat them is not that they are dirty and loathsome; rather, they are dirty and loathsome because we don’t eat them.” (note that “we” is referring to Europeans and Americans of European descent) Harris claims that the European rejection of insects as food comes from a time long before indoor plumbing or before anyone made the connection between germs and disease. In those days, a locust living in a meadow or a spider living in the forest was probably a lot cleaner than meat from the farmhouse or local butcher. And yet, because of cultural norms and associations between insects and bad things (disease, dead animals, bodily waste), insects were considered “dirty.” There are many more reasons for the West’s shunning of insects as food in Harris’s book and various other places.

WWDD – what would Dad do?

The answer was obvious – eat them with (figurative) relish. So we did.