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Why Not Eat Insects?

Why not, indeed. If you were to read Mr. Holt's excellent treatise, with its mellifluous Victorian prose, you would be convinced, too.

"What a godsend to house keepers to discover a new entrée to vary the monotony of the present round! Why should invention, which makes such gigantic strides in other directions, stand still in cookery? Here then, mistresses, who thirst to place new and dainty dishes before your guests, what better could you have than 'Curried Machafers' -- or, if you want a more mysterious title, 'Larvæ Melolonthæ à la Grugru?'"

When I was an undergraduate student, I spent a lot of time with entomology students at the University of Maryland. Their idea of a good time was passing around live hissing cockroaches from Madagascar at the dinner table. Entomology students are a peculiar lot. I did learn this: if a guy tells you his dissertation is about carrion beetles, you do NOT want to look in his refrigerator. Or eat at his house.