Why Eating Insects Is an American Tradition

Both #NativeAmericans and colonists enjoyed fried cicadas, grasshopper flour, and insect fruitcakes.

by Mark Hay April 2, 2018

"In just over five years, the apostles of insect eating have moved #entomophagy in the Unites States and Europe from a Fear Factor sideshow to a regular fixture in food industry trend lists. These entopreneurs, dozens of newly minted bug farmers and cricket-laced protein bar hawkers, built their culinary foothold through compelling arguments about nutrition and sustainability. #Crickets, for example, provide leaner protein than animal meats, require minimal feed and water to rear, and produce far fewer greenhouse gas emissions per pound. These claims may be overblown, but they’re effective.

"Common wisdom holds, however, that the industry still faces one major headwind: culture. While the vast majority of the world has some history or current practice of insect eating, Europe and America, many insect eating enthusiasts and experts claim, do not. In the absence of precedent, we’re primed to see eating creepy crawlies as loathsome.

"There’s a little problem with this common wisdom, though. America does have a history of insect eating. Native communities across the modern United States developed culinary traditions around dozens of insect species, from crickets to caterpillars, #ants to aphids.

"White settlers and other newcomers ultimately denigrated these traditions. But well into the 19th century, they occasionally participated in them, or formed limited insect-eating cultures of their own. In some communities, insect eating remained relatively common well into the mid-20th century; a few continue today.

"The origins of these foodways are not as well documented as the development of, say, cakes or bagels. But we do know that by the time Europeans and other newcomers encountered American Indians, many had highly developed insect harvesting practices. In the 19th century, the Shoshone and other Native communities in the Great Basin region formed massive circles and beat the brush to drive thousands of grasshoppers into pits, blankets, or bodies of water for mass collection; they then roasted them on coals or ground them into flour. The Paiute and other groups out West dug trenches with precise, vertical walls around trees, then smoked out caterpillars for regularized, large-scale harvests. Some Paiute communities around Mono Lake in California reportedly organized their calendar around the life cycles of certain larvae, as well as other types of small game such as rabbits or lizards.

"Some of this insect eating just made practical sense. Grasshoppers were thick on the plains during average seasons, and in heavy swarm years, a plague of hoppers-turned-locusts could blot out the sky. Into the 20th century, lumberjacks in Oregon claimed that caterpillars were so plentiful that, during their month-long feeding season, the sound of their crap falling from the trees was like an unending sleet storm. Harvesting this bounty was a time- and energy-efficient way of gathering protein.

"But in many communities, insect eating was not merely a matter of survival or convenience. American Indians with plenty of other options for hunting or harvesting collected insects as a delicacy. A mid-20th century account of the Cherokee in North Carolina notes that they dug up young cicadas, removed their legs, and fried them in hog fat as a treat. Sometimes they baked them into pies or salted and pickled them for later. They also apparently loved roasted #cornworms and yellowjacket #grubs, which were hardly as convenient to harvest as a locust swarm."

Read more:
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/history-of-eating-bugs-america