Status: Real
Paul Farrington emailed me with a question about the
HOTLIX Insect Candy Company:
"The site looks real, the products look real, there are no obvious giveaways except the sheer unbelievable grotesqueness of the very concept! What’s your take?" Well, my take is that the insect candy is definitely real, though I've never ordered any of it and submitted it to an entomologist for confirmation. (Nor do I plan to.) But there's no reason to believe the candy wouldn't be real. After all, insects are eaten in many cultures. It's only Westerners who are squeamish about eating them. A
recent article in the Smithsonian's Zoogoer magazine discusses insects as food, pointing out that honey is nothing more than "bee vomit," and even notes the existence of the HOTLIX Insect Candy Company:
Although people worldwide have been enjoying edible insects since ancient times, their value—in terms of both nutrition and conservation—is often overlooked by the modern Western world...
An estimated 2,000 insect species are consumed around the world, and people do not just eat insects, they relish them as delicacies. In Africa, caterpillars and winged termites are fried and eaten as roadside snacks (after wings, legs, and bristles are removed, of course), and often considered tastier than meat. Grasshoppers and bee larvae seasoned with soy sauce are favorites in Japan, where pricey canned insects are also available. Papua New Guinea is known for its nutty-flavored sago grubs (Rhynchophorus ferrugineus papuanus or R. bilineatus), beetle larvae that inhabit dead sago palm trees and are honored at annual festivals...
Specialty food shops in Europe have started to sell insects imported from Africa. Even a U.S. company, Hotlix, sells various lollipops with embedded insects, chocolate-covered cockroaches, grubs, slugs, and grasshoppers, and mealworms in barbeque, cheddar cheese, and Mexican flavors.
Comments
And FYI, the worms left a rather odd aftertaste when eaten in a bunch, but eaten individually they give very little flavor.
Hotlix Larvets (cheddar cheese or mexican spice flavors) are also pretty good on salads. Healthier for you than crutons.
I've eaten chocolate covered ants, which was kind of like a more subtle nestle crunch bar, and also chocolate covered grasshoppers. I prefered the ants, although neither was particularly disgusting. They were not hotlix brand however, as this was back in the 80's. I'm going to hesitantly say that the ants at least were purchased from Macy's Cellar at the time, but I'm not 100% sure about that.
And quite tasty too (the scorpion I had I've not been able to find again but had the texture of dry popcorn).
I once saw a cricket candy in the Vancouver Aquairium. I checked the ingredients to make sure that it was a cricket, and indeed there was a real cricket in the ingredients list.
Mate of mine actually ate one, and apparently had a hell of a job getting the legs from between his teeth.
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/1946070.stm
"Items on the menu include beer-battered insects, Kentucky fried bullfrog with gumbo gravy and Piranha fish and chips."
The website http://www.edible.com while not mentioning the restaurant lets you order all the insect sweeties your heart desires.
Peter
Brings a new clarity to the phrase pissed drunk.
'arse-shops'.
Mort, I was being polite but not saying something like that!
I know I would disappoint some of you if I failed to point out that scorpions and slugs are not insects. Scorpions are arachnids and slugs are shell-less mollusks. Grubs, caterpillars, and mealworms are, however, insects in larval form.
They're real.
ant bolognaise etc?
i thought i had heard of one but can't find it so far??..
http://www.hotlixeurope.com