THE DRUGSTORE BEETLE Why Not Eat Insects? is the title of a short polemic published in 1885 by Vincent Holt. In it he argued that insects were nutritious, delicious, and readily available. The only obstacle to their widespread consumption, it would seem, is the inbred disgust that many people feel at swallowing, say, sautéed silkworms or curried cockchafers. In many parts of the world, however, bug eating is not only common but relished: In Thailand, for example, salted silkworm pupae are a delicacy, as are mangdana, or giant water bugs, which are often tossed into salads. Insects are, in fact, remarkably nutritious: According to data compiled by Iowa State University, 100 grams of grasshoppers contain about 20 grams of protein and only 6 grams of fat. Whether we admit it or not, though, we all eat bugs all the time—unknowingly. Insects such as granary weevils, meal moths, and spider beetles have been hiding in our food ever since the Egyptians invented grain storage 4,500 years ago—and so we often eat them too. The drugstore beetle, Stegobiuim paniceum, seen here poking its head out from behind a bread crumb, feeds not only on flour, spices, and fish food but also on books, mildly toxic medicines, and even tin and lead sheets— “anything but cast iron,” as one wag put it. The Food and Drug Administration, recognizing the ubiquity of such insect pests, sets limits on acceptable levels of bugs rather than banning them completely from food. Pitted dates, for example, are condemned only if 5 percent or more of each batch are contaminated by dead insects or their excreta. Golden raisins are permitted up to 35 fruit fly eggs per 8 ounces. |
BODY LICE Three species of lice call humans their home: the crab louse, the head louse, and its descendant (pictured here, mating) the body louse, Pediculus humanus corporis, which lives in clothing, feeds on human blood, and leaves the body only when it cools, after death. One famous louse host was Thomas à Becket, murdered in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170 by henchmen of England’s King Henry II. As his robe-swaddled body lay in state the next day, onlookers were alternately aghast, then convulsed with laughter, to see that “the vermin boiled over like water in a simmering cauldron.” Lice cannot survive in unworn clothing; hence, body lice are most common in crowded conditions like prison camps, where washing is infrequent. That explains why the diseases they transmit in their feces—typhus, trench fever, and relapsing fever—occur so commonly in wartime. Typhus, a disease caused by bacteria called rickettsias, has been blamed for numerous military debacles, the earliest in 1489 when it killed 17,000 soldiers in a war over Granada between the Moors and the Spanish army of Ferdinand and Isabella. Further, typhus claimed so many millions of lives during the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution that it threatened to torpedo the newly born Soviet state, leading Lenin to exclaim, “Either socialism will defeat the louse, or the louse will defeat socialism.” |
