They passed out cigarettes, laughing as they tied plastic trash bags around their legs, pulled on their headlamps and grabbed long, ovular green nets from a car. Six of them set off for the farmland.
Two stayed behind. His companions spread out quickly, plowing through stalks that scraped their shoulders. Many people squirm at the mere idea of eating an insect, but grasshoppers β called chapulines in Mexico, a word from the Indigenous Nahuatl language β have been consumed in various parts of the country since pre-Hispanic times, along with hundreds of other insects, including gusanos de maguey maguey worms , escamoles ant eggs and jumiles stink bugs.
But a push by scientists to encourage their consumption and cut back on ranching has in recent years inspired some new products; grasshopper hamburgers, sauces and pizza among them.
Their numbers are expected to climb with climate change β so perhaps, enthusiasts say, we should all just learn to love them. Sonora is the cattle capital of Mexico. But prolonged drought is killing off the herds. Some say they have a smoky taste. Others suggest burnt cereal. The harvesting is typically done by individual families that sell their bounty at flea markets, many of them in central and southern Mexico where grasshoppers are popular.
Livestock contributes At the Pixza chain, customers can order pizza topped with them. And, as it turns out, if you eat one type of bug you might not shy away from others, as is the case in many other countries.
