Put aside the ick factor and consider this: for many people around the world, eating insects is neither strange, disgusting nor exotic. Bugs are their food, their meals, what they and their ancestors have been eating for ages. Why?

Number one – the buggers are packed with powerful nutrition. Comparing iron content, beef has  6 mg per 100 grams of dry weight and Mopane caterpillars have an astounding 31 mg of iron per100 grams. Traditionally eaten in southern Africa, these plump caterpillars are also an excellent source of  potassium, sodium, calcium, phosphorous, magnesium, zinc, manganese and copper, according to a report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Number two: at least five million children a year die because their meager diets contain so little protein and calories. According to Frank Franklin, director of pediatric nutrition at the University of Alabama, a protein processed substance from edible insects could offer a less expensive solution to Plumpy/Nut, a peanut based food given around the world to children suffering from malnutrition.

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In passed summers I have lost countless battles with budworms as they happily gorged themselves silly on my geraniums and petunias.  As tiny, newborn worms, they stealthily bored into tender, young flower buds and ate their way out, speedily decimating every bud in flowerpots. Fatter and feistier, they then feasted on every blossom in sight. And when THOSE were chomped up, it was on to the leaves, which they carved up into clumps of dried out, Swiss cheese. (Budworm info in detail.)

 Along the way, I tried every Internet remedy to fight the voracious little monsters except poisonous insecticides. (These can be tricky. The budworms have to actually lap up the newly sprayed stuff, a toughie when you’re deeply concealed in thickly wrapped flower buds). Instead I sprayed the petunias and geraniums with soapsuds, coated them with vegetable oil, sprinkled them with onion powder, peppered them with chilies, planted smelly garlic in their soil and offered them beer and tobacco juice. All of which gave them a big laugh as they went on their merry rounds  destroying all my flowers.

Last summer I finally admitted defeat and forever banished petunias and geraniums from my garden. After scrubbing my flowerpots clean of the previous year’s soil, I gave some dahlias a whirl. For awhile they flourished. In fact for more than a while. But late in the summer, guess what appeared on my dahlia leaves? Yep. The budworms were back. (A master gardener writes about bad bug, budworms.)

So this year dahlias too were out. Yesterday I hit the downtown farmer’s market.  Extremely busy lately with a large project, I only had time for some fast web research prior to my flower selection. Not surprisingly, many of the market people who sold the flowers acted as though they have never even HEARD of budworms.  Others claimed their plants NEVER attracted budworms. And still others were as mystified as I about what plant species to try next.

Looking over some lovely verbena plants, about which I knew exactly zero, I noted they had very tiny flower buds, skimpy pickings, it seemed to me, for budworm’s fierce appetites. Deciding that verbena’s small delicate blooms would be far less appealing to budworms than chubbier petunia, geranium and dahlia blooms; I purchased some cheery pink verbena plants.

When I got home, I then made the mistake of searching for “verbena budworms” on the web. Almost instantly, the woeful picture you see above popped up. Are no flowers safe from this crawly scourge?

And so my quest for budworm-free flowers continues…

For all those sitting back watching the horse meat scandal spread like fire across European countries thinking it couldn’t happen here in the US, consider this:

After weeks of adamant denials in the UK, Burger King finally fessed up and admitted they have been serving so called “beef” burgers containing horse meat to their British customers for nobody knows how long. A monster global chain, Burger King has zillions of restaurants around the world including just about every city and town in the USA.

After another global chain Aldi also announced between 30% to 100% horse meat had somehow found it’s way into their meat patties, lasagna and spaghetti bolognese, they banned the stuff from their stores in Ireland and the UK.  As it happens here in little old NY we also have an Aldi store not far from my apartment. In fact there are at least 1200 Aldis around our country. Their horse meat tainted products were sold under the Selfus brand. When I checked Aldi’s brand list here in America, Selfus was not listed either because all their products had already been removed from Aldis USA or they were never there in the first place.

Just because Burger King and Aldi are international corporations selling their food around the world, that doesn’t mean their products (including their dodgy horse meat meals) are interchangeable across borders. Different countries after all have different tastes, preferences, styles and ways of doing business. More universal foods, however, can easily jump borders with packaging altered to fit different country’s expectations.

One might be under the impression, given their experience and humungous budgets, these giant corporations conduct their business in highly streamlined ways no matter their location.  A quick glance at the available facts surrounding this horse meat scandal in Europe however instantly dispels that quaint notion.

The complex journey of the horse meat adulterated food is difficult to follow (on purpose?) and highly unsettling. According to Financial Times (paywall link): “The Findus products revealed to contain horsemeat … came from a Comigel factory in Luxembourg. Comigel in turn was supplied with meat from a company in southwestern France called Spanghero, whose parent [company] is called Poujol.” Benoît Hamon, France’s consumer affairs minister, said “that Poujol ‘acquired the frozen meat from a Cypriot trader, which had sub-contracted the order to a trader in the Netherlands. The latter was supplied from an abbatoir and butcher located in Romania.’”

If this isn’t a recipe for food disaster somewhere along the line, what is? And with a tangled difficult to trace trail like that, tacking the US onto this kind of shadowy, convoluted chain of horse meat manipulation wouldn’t be any more surprising than the rest of the story.

If you started your day with Aunt Jemima’s blueberry pancakes, chowed down on a McDonald’s fish patty for lunch, snacked on a Weight Watcher’s Ice Cream Sandwich, polished off a Kraft’s Macaroni & Cheese for dinner and sipped a beddie-bye cup of Nestle’s hot chocolate, chances are you ate a decent helping of wood pulp. Processed from that pulp into a food extender, cellulose (the white powder shown above) is being substituted for costlier ingredients in more and more of America’s processed foods. An industry insider estimates that food producers save as much as 30% using cellulose over more expensive extenders like oats and sugar cane fibers. The Street put out a partial list of manufacturers featuring cellulose in a surprising range of products.

While I’ve long noticed cellulose listed on various food ingredient labels, I only recently discovered the stuff was actually made out of gritty wood pulp. Which doesn’t sound like it would be too terrific for one’s digestion. Which in fact it isn’t. Cellulose is indigestible which makes it, according to food manufacturers, a great, cheap sugar substitute for low sugar items so popular with consumers.  Because it mimics fat so well, cellulose is also increasingly being shoveled onto the low-fat food bandwagon.

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How many pesticides do you consume in a day? If you eat potatoes, instead of sweet potatoes, you chomp on lots more of these nasty chemicals. In fact potatoes contain so many pesticides (the EPA lists 90 for spuds) that removal of the skin, where the contaminants mostly hang out, is recommended. In an EWG list of the “Dirty Dozen” vegetables and fruits MOST contaminated with pesticides, potatoes come in at number 11.  In a superior list of the “Clean 15” LEAST contaminated veggies and fruits, sweet potatoes are at number 14.

On top of this, guess which one of the two veggies ranks number one in the nutrition department?  Yep, sweet potatoes. Based on a system of points given by CSPI for dietary fiber, natural sugars, complex carbohydrates, protein, vitamins and minerals and after deducting points for fat content, sodium and cholesterol, sweet potatoes score a whopping 184 points. This is FULL 100 points over the next nutritious vegetable, making sweet potatoes the undisputed Ruler of the healthful vegetable kingdom.

A 6-oz. sweet potato contains 214 calories.  With its’ super high nutrient value, it’s considered a beneficial substitute for starches and carbs and is recommended in three popular diets: the Atkins, Sugar Busters and South Beach Diets.

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With meat prices rising and bank balances hanging out in the sub-basement, some less costly protein substitutions are definitely in order. Here are four talented proteins that are super cheap, super rich in nutritional value and–equally appealing–super fast to get to the table. They are canned salmon, eggs, beans and peanuts.

I have always loved eggs and pretty much ignored their bad cholesterol rap. Mainly because I just couldn’t believe such a perfect whole food package untainted by preservatives or additives could be bad for you. And sure enough, recent studies show that eggs have been tarnished with an undeserved bad cholesterol label. Officially, they are again healthy for us.

They are also one of the least expensive proteins. Not to mention one of the most versatile. A snap to put together (always good), what’s more delicious and vitamin packed than a fluffy omelet sautéed with veggies. And what protein travels better than hard-boiled eggs in their shells or in egg salad sandwiches. And what protein better serves dieters than eggs, of which two equal a petite 136 calories. (They are one of my 20 Low Cost Slimming Snacks).

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