Distribution of people eating edible insects

At least 2 billion people around the world eat insects regularly. More than 1,900 insect species have been identified as edible, including beetles (31), caterpillars (18), and bees, wasps, and ants (14). People who eat insects are mainly distributed in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

In Mexico, insect food has become a protein and vitamin supplement for Mexicans. Whether in luxury high-end hotels or ordinary restaurants, insect dishes are available at high prices. Ant eggs are the most popular insect food in Mexico and are only sold in big hotels. Some insect foods, such as larval ants and butterfly larvae, as well as some water bugs, have been artificially cultivated and exported to the United States and some European countries.

Mexicans also like to stew or fry agave aphids; grasshoppers can be fried with onions, peppers, apples, lemon slices, etc., and they taste quite like lobster. In addition, there are more than fifty kinds of insects, including cactus bugs, fart bugs, wasps, cicadas, dragonflies, butterflies, small beetles, sheep bugs, bumblebees, etc., all of which are delicacies on the Mexican table. In some developed countries such as the United States and Europe, insects are made into canned foods and sold in specialized stores and restaurants. The main varieties are bee chocolate, ant chocolate, caterpillar chocolate, fried grasshoppers, sugar water silkworms and sugar water bees, as well as using insects The candied fruit is delicious and popular.

Colombia, Japan, Thailand, Germany, Australia, Zaire, Uganda, Mexico, etc. produce a large amount of insect health foods every year. Russia and some African countries are also using ant resources to develop health food.

In ethnic minority areas such as Yunnan in China, the custom of eating insects is still maintained. In Yunnan, you can often eat bee pupae, bee larvae, silkworm pupae, bamboo insects, woodworms, ants, stink bugs, and brown worms. , cordyceps, crickets, cow dung bugs and other insect foods. There is a kind of sour ant there, which is very big. The Dai people use a fine net to cover the ant nest, and the adult ants come out carrying their eggs, but they cannot get through the net bag, so they have to leave the ant eggs behind. Ant eggs mixed with fried eggs taste delicious. The Jinuo people also like to eat ant eggs. There are large ants that live in groups in the trees. Their nests hang like big bags on the trees. They often dig out a basin of ant eggs. These ant eggs are as big as beans and as small as For example, poppy seeds, when mixed with vinegar, make a "pop" sound in your mouth when eaten, giving it a unique taste. The large crickets in Xishuangbanna are 40~50mm long, some are as thick as a thumb, and have fat flesh. When eating, wash the wings, legs, and internal organs, put them into a pot, boil them, take them out, drain them, and mix them with a kind of food called The beans from "Meng Nailin" are chopped together and mixed with ox sarbi (i.e. cow gall) to make cricket sauce, which is called "Sada Gong" in Dai dialect. When eating, add onions, garlic, turnips, salt, and eat with raw cabbage and water spinach. It tastes sour, bitter, spicy, cool, crisp, and very delicious. You will feel refreshing and refreshing after eating. Tianjin has a way of eating "grasshoppers rolled in pancakes", which is to eat dried locusts rolled in pancakes; Shandong Japanese people always like to serve scorpions to guests; there are many kinds of insect dishes in hotels in Guangdong, and insect delicacies have become the current diet Fashion.