Transcript:

EDIBLE INSECTS - Silkwormsmusic; ambience: Silkworms, munchingThe sounds we're listening to are made by silkworms as they feed. But, as we'll hear in a moment, silkworms make a pretty good snack themselves. I'm Jim Metzner, and this is the Pulse of the Planet, presented by the American Museum of Natural History."The people in Guang Jao --which is formerly Canton, a short hydrofoil ride from Hong Kong--enjoy a lot of exotic foods such as scorpions, black water beetles, silkworm pupae; you name it and you can find it in the markets and restaurants in Guang Jao."Peter Menzel is a photographer and co-author of the book Man Eating Bugs. Now, in order to write a book about humans eating insects, you've got to do some field research. Peter tells us what a silkworm pupae tasted like."The silk worm pupae that we ate in Guang Jao were quite good and they were served up in a number of different ways. One way was with ginger, red peppers and onions. They were stir fried with a little bit of sweet sauce. They were never mix, really mixed with anything else to mask their flavor because they were quite good. They tasted like peanut butter foie gras."But silkworms, like any other food, fall in and out of fashion as tastes change. Once considered a food to turn to only in times of necessity, the worms are now back in vogue in China."The silk worm is very rich in protein and amino acids and it was a dietary supplement that was quite often very much appreciated when people were going hungry in China. In several cities in China we found that it wasn't poor people that were eating insects. That you actually couldn't find silk worm pupae being sold in street stalls anymore. They were only in some of the better restaurants."Our thanks to Eiji Ohya for the silkworm recordings.Pulse of the Planet is presented by the American Museum of Natural History. Additional funding for this series has been provided by the National Science Foundation. I'm Jim Metzner.