By Donna Westfall – January 31, 2018 – Credit to Vanity Fair/Secret Talent Theatre –

While walking on the treadmill chatting with Jaime Yarbrough, notorious for eating insects; he mentioned a video on youtube.com of actress, Nicole Kidman. I wouldn’t have believed it if I didn’t see it with my own eyes.

Nicole Kidman is eating worms. Live worms, then fried crickets and grasshoppers. She started with blue colored horn-worms – live. She calls it microlivestock.  Millions of people eats bugs and have been since the beginning of time.

Entomophagy is the practice of eating insects, especially by people.

This afternoon, Jaime brought over some bamboo caterpillars, fried…. snacking on them like nuts and offered me some.  Sad to admit, I’m still revulsed by the things and couldn’t put it into my mouth.  But, at some point I will try.

Then he put a jar of them on my table and explained that they run about $4 American US dollars.  He buys them in Thailand.  You can’t get them in the states.  The FDA apparently has some loopholes about importing insects with an exoskeleton.  Human’s skeleton’s are internal.  Worms are external.  They are made up of bone or nail-like matter most closely resembling shellfish and people with allergies may be affected.

The next set of questions covers who else benefits from insects as food?  There are pet shops that sell insects for:  carp, frogs, lizards (e.g. chameleons), nightingales, swallows, numbats, anteaters, armadillos, aardvarks, pangolins, aardwolfs, bats, and spiders.  The numbats, anteaters, armadillos, aardvarks, pangolins, and aardwolfs aren’t a consideration for our area as they live in Australia or Africa.

Is there a market to start a business raising insects?  That’s on the horizon as we speak, because several people from the community are exploring different ways of creating businesses, bringing in businesses and creating jobs for the local area.

This is a picture of the place where Jaime goes to purchase fried worms.  It’s called the White Temple in Chiang Mei, Thailand.  What an exotic and wonderous place to visit.