Transcript:

EDIBLE INSECTSambience: drumming, chanting We're listening music of the Asmat people in Indonesia. These hunter-gatherers live in the world's largest swamp and subsist, in part, on sago grubs- a beetle larvae harvested from sago trees. I'm Jim Metzner, and this is the Pulse of the Planet."Most of the countries that we visited where people eat bugs have a very long history of doing so. It's not something new that's come up as a trendy food."Peter Menzel is the photographer and author of Man Eating Bugs, a book which looks at the different cultures around the world where insects form a regular part of the diet. Peter and co-author Faith D'Alusio visited some thirteen countries, from Venezuela to Indonesia, collecting recipes and exploring the relationship between culture and food."Insects are a very important source of protein for a lot of people in the world. They're readily available. There's no farming of them in most cases. They're right out their back door or in their fields. In a lot of cases they're a bridge food for people between crops. We witnessed it in a lot of places where hunter gatherers still do hunting and gathering. One of the main things that is most readily available were insects. Men were off getting bigger game and women and children were able to get the more easy things like insects and sometimes it wasn't that easy and it required a lot of work. In Australia it was a lot of digging for witchity grubs and honey ants. But in a lot of places, small kids were able to climb trees and gather stink bugs and augment their diets."We'll hear more on edible insects in future programs.Check out our website, pulseplanet.com for a link to my latest project - a work of fiction. Im Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.