This compendium will tell you everything you ever wanted to know about food, plus quite a few things that might well put you off it. The Cambridge World History of Food justifies itself as the food book of the millennium. The two volumes include commentary on almost everything that humans have ever eaten, including some items that many of us no longer find palatable (such as snakes, dogs, and, even, insects). Watching the scene in the 1960s Italian film Mondo Cane in which a woman eats a plate of cooked ants with relish might make us squirm, but the chapter by Darna Dufour and Joy Sander on insects shows that they are good nourishment. Smoke-dried caterpillars, for example, are a rich source of protein (53% by weight) and will provide 425 kilocalories per 100 grams (an amount falling between the values for similarly prepared fish and tapir). Insects, however, may never have been popular as food, although we do enjoy the product of their labors in the form of honey. And the manna from heaven that helped the Israelites survive in the wilderness is actually the cocoon of a desert beetle.
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