“Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, guess I’ll go and eat worms…”
So goes the old children’s song. But could you convince your children to make worms a regular part of their diet?
An Austrian company has produced a mealworm hive for the home. You feed the little wrigglers vegetable scraps from your kitchen, and harvest the larvae when they’re around three centimeters long – an environmentally friendly source of protein, vitamins and fiber. Sounds great, right?
Of course entomophagy (that’s insect-eating to you and me) has a long tradition in China. I consider myself an adventurous gourmand, and have little truck with anyone who is squeamish about consuming animals unless they have a strict vegetarian diet. I have been down to the night market at Wangfujing and munched on cricket, and I have the pictures to prove it.
My children too are broad-minded eaters. “Is this bear? It tastes like reindeer,” Noah once memorably observed in a Helsinki café. However I think bugs may be a step too far, even for them. Children’s likes and dislikes are not subject to reason. Joseph, for example, won’t eat noodles.
“But you like rice?”
“Yes.”
“And you like pasta?”
“Yes.”
“Well, this is pasta made of rice.”
“I don’t like it.”
Also, at a hefty USD499, the mealworm hive would need to produce a lot of protein before it paid for itself. Still, I see they’re selling silkworm cocoons down at the supermarket. Maybe I’ll tell the boys they’re fruit…
