This is in relation to the UK "I am a celebrity, get me out of here".

Here is the link to the article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3475543.stm

The bushtucker diet - the new Atkins?

By Caroline Ryan
BBC News Online's health staff



Jennie with winner Kerry McFadden
It was never like this in the BBC canteen - or when she was round at Liz and Phil's.

But former BBC Royal correspondent Jennie Bond's bushtucker diet was actually a very healthy - if bizarre - form of the Atkin's diet.

The food she ate had loads of protein and no carbs - just what Atkins devotees are looking for.

The diet isn't dangerous - and you don't even have to eat the grubs live.

So forget Atkins - the bushtucker diet could catch on.

The bushtucker menu

But what exactly did Jennie eat in her I'm a Celebrity trial.

She started with her "greens" - a leaf mimic - a flat green insect which, astoundingly, looks like a leaf.

Stuart Hine, an etymologist at the Natural History Museum, told BBC News Online: "These insects have a horrible stench.

"And those secretions are there for a reason - to put other creatures off eating them."


A stick insect or, as Jennie knows it, dinner
Next on the menu was a yabby, a type of crayfish which is native to Australia.

It is said to have very sweet meat and particularly succulent claws - when cooked. Raw, it would have been a little more slimy.

Next, Jennie ate a stick insect as a "palate cleanser" - before moving on to the main course - the witchety grub, said to be an Aboriginal delicacy and rich in proteins and fats.

When cooked, witcheties are said to taste like almonds. Ten large grubs would provide the daily nutritional needs of an adult.

Dessert was a fish eye - something Jordan and Kerry McFadden had balked at even though it is considered a delicacy in countries including Japan.

Squeamish

Stuart Hine says: There is a lot of protein in this food. It could be considered as a kind of 'Atkin's diet'."

Eating insects is not dangerous - and it is only our Western squeamishness that puts us off.

People regularly eat insects in many parts of the world. And, many years ago, so did we.

"In the late 1700s and early 1800s in the UK, slugs and caterpillars were an immediately available food for poor people," says Stuart.

"They were probably quite a common thing to eat."

So, if you fancy the Bushtucker diet and can't make it to the outback, how about slugs for tea?

i ever tried in thailand...i bought 2 handfuls of worm + grasshopper from a road stall.

tho i still retained that 'yucky' mentality, i still tried to bite off some parts of them.... i popped in those worms sprinkled with soya sauce. they have a bean texture but with a horrible stench. i thought it will be a better idea to eat the worms while walking along the bangkok bazaars....becoz i dont think i will be able to face them when i get back to the hotel.

for the grasshoppers, i pinched off the tail and tried chewing. oh now...they are just shells...later on i tried the middle 'meaty' part...it tastes 'spicy', just like when u accidentally ate an ant. so forget it...i didnt finish the bag of insects.

i dont know if my next day's tummyache was due to the insects...at the same time the hotel aircon was too cold during that night. or perhaps my tummy could not get used to digesting the worms.

prob the next time i return to thailand again, these worms wont be as yucky to me anymore...

I think I'll pass .. lol

Fumih, you were very brave to try that bag of insects!

I have read that insects can be very nutritious, but we tend to simply not look at them as food. Odd since crustaceans are pretty darn close marine relatives, we have no trouble with all the legs and antennae on our shrimp. I have also read that in some places (somewhere in Africa?) they butterfly and roast the larvae of giant silkmoths, it is almost solid protein and has a nutty flavour. I'd try it.

Honeypot ants are popular in some cultures, but I'd worry that they are high in carbs.

It's just a cultural thing. Intellectually I have no trouble with the IDEA of eating insects. It would be quite a different thing to actually gobble them up.

Just look at how extraordinarily difficult it is for starving people, even those with ethical issues about it, to eat the flesh of other dead humans in extreme situations like plane crashes in remote inaccessible frozen wastelands... And most of us would find it very difficult to consume insects, despite intellectual acceptance. I would have to be starving to overcome the sqeamishness. But extreme situations can and does change this...think of the starving prisoners of war who ate rats with relish for example...

Val

Correction: The above should have read 'even those without ethical issues'

And eating 'rats with relish' is no doubt going to cause some amusement...

I really should check what I write before hitting that post button!

Val

I prefer mustard if you don't mind. Relish is full of sugar.