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This Just In...
Kevin Fischer is an award-winning veteran broadcaster who has been seen and heard on Milwaukee TV and radio stations for nearly three decades.
Kevin, who is a legislative aide to state Sen. Mary Lazich (R-New Berlin), can be seen offering his views on the news on the public affairs program, “INTERchange,” on Milwaukee Public Television Channel 10. He lives with his wife, Jennifer, in Franklin.
Culinary no-no #58
By Kevin Fischer
Sunday, Jun 8 2008, 07:47 PM
When it comes to culinary no-no’s, this guy could provide several every week.
His name is Andrew Zimmern. He’s the host of Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern on the Travel Channel.
Just as the title of the program conveys, he eats strange, weird foods. Like bugs and insects and other creepy critters.
Take a look, but just so you know, this video isn’t offensive, but it does raise the “yuck” factor to an extremely high level.
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How executives at the Travel Channel could sit around a conference table and think this kind of programming is high quality boggles the mind.
Zimmern could probably convince Janet Raloff the junk he wolfs down every week is not only delicious, but good for you. Raloff writes for Science News, and in a recent column, “Insects (The original white meat)” has documented that many people eat bugs, all kinds of bugs, and that bugs are pretty darn healthy.
Did you know, for example that, as Raloff writes, “Food and Drug Administration’s actual rules allow up to 60 insect fragments on average in a composite of six 100-gram chocolate samples. For peanut butter, it’s OK to have up to 30 insect pieces per 100 grams.”
But the FDA won’t approve drugs that could be beneficial in fighting 694 ailments. Imagine that. But that’s another blog.
Certain bugs in some places are as popular as Big Mac’s and Whopper’s.
Raloff writes, “Youngsters in central Africa may down ants or grubs while at play. Urbane snack-seeking consumers throng street vendors throughout Southeast Asia to buy fried crickets. Even car-driving Aborigines in Australia’s outback may motor a couple of hours to find, and then picnic on, a cache of honey ants. Residents of at least 113 nations eat bugs, says Julieta Ramos-Elorduy of the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City:”
Doesn’t that give you the heebie-jeebies?
It shouldn’t, because eating bugs, or entomophagy if you want the scientific term, is claimed to be very nutritious.
One expert quoted by Raloff who has started his own company that supplies frozen and dried insects to chefs says you’d be crazy to eat lobster because those crustaceans eat trash compared to the salad bar diet of insects.
And we’re not talking a solitary bug or two here, folks. We’re talking lots and lots and lots of insects on the menu.
In Mexico, 1,700 species of insects are devoured. That’s the equivalent of about 60 Baskin-Robbins’.
Go to any 5-star restaurant in Mexico, and some insect is on the menu….every day!
In Africa, worms are highly sought after.
And again, we’re reminded, like the old Life commercial ..................
that eating bugs and insects is……….
well………
a really good thing.
A team formed by food scientist Francis O. Orech of the University of Maryland Eastern Shore in Princess Anne found, according to Raloff at Science News that, “Crickets contained more than 1,550 milligrams of iron, 25 milligrams of zinc and 340 milligrams of calcium per 100 grams of dry tissue."
Convinced yet?
I mean, think about it. We’ve got food experts from all around the world claiming that if you’d only down more bugs, you’d be singing like Julie Andrews in “Mary Poppins.” (Work with me, guys. You know the song. I just didn’t want to spell it).
Ahhhhhhhh.
But like the PUBLIC school teacher who sends his/her child/children to PRIVATE schools, we learn that these food experts don ‘t practice what they preach.
Take Sandra G.F. Bukkens, an independent nutrition consultant based in Barcelona, Spain. Raloff quotes her as saying, “Overall, I was pleasantly surprised. Insects were far more healthy than I expected.” But Raloff adds:
Despite this upbeat assessment, Bukkens isn’t pushing insects on her family. “I’ve eaten them, but I’m not particularly keen about them,” she says. If food were limited, she would “eat anything. But since we have plenty of meat in developed countries, I don’t see why we should switch to insects.”
I’ll give Raloff credit. She does admit the painfully obvious duo of reasons why convincing a vast number of Americans and Europeans to dive into a plate full of bug larvae is next to impossible: concern about hygiene, and the way the damn things look.
I don’t care how many eggheads Raloff or anybody else interviews or how many bugs Andrew Zimmern swallows on the Travel Channel…………..
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Beef.
It’s what’s for dinner.
Here is the entire Science News article written by Raloff.
To read previous Culinary no-no’s, please click CULINARY NO-NO under my TAGS section.
DON'T FORGET TO VOTE IN THE 2008 BEST IN FRANKLIN-AREA DINING SURVEY
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