Why don't we eat insects for food?

In many cultures insects are valued as food. For example, in Israel locusts are bred for food.

Why don't we eat them in the West? The main reason is the usual pathetic squeamishness about "creepy crawlies" from a pampered generation which is used to their protein arriving pre-packaged, hermetically sealed and bearing no relationship to the animal it came from.

"We" do- for some values of "we". A quote from the link:

"Human insect-eating is common to cultures in most parts of the world, including North, Central and South America; and Africa, Asia, Australia and New Zealand. Over 1,000 species of insects are known to be eaten in 80% of the world's nations."

There are more pleasant things to eat, and its just not a cultural standard. People will eat them if they have to, roaches fried with a bit of salt isnt that bad if its the area between life and death, but ideally they would prefer to eat things that aren't commonly thought of as skin-crawling and gross.

This is not to say that there is nobody and nowhere that eats insects and the like though.

@person below: are you sure they aren't for pet food? Snakes and spiders and scorpions and the like?

Insects have a lot of protein, especially crickets.

But there is a problem. Are they safe? Does it have a pesticide or something that is bad ? Insects are small, there are many, it would be difficult to know if it has a pesticide.

You have to be careful what you feed your cat because it could lead to health problems or tumors later in life. If you have no cat food then fish and tuna are okay to substitute for a while. My vet also recommends some raw hamburger every once in a while, not too much though. Milk is not a good thing to feed, cats are bad with lactose and will get the runs.

Some people still do!! But somewhere down the line society decided it was gross and you would be looked down upon if you did, but hey, there are plenty of people who still eat incests all around the world. They sell crickets to eat at the local mall(I live in New York).

Some of the more popular insects and arachnids eaten around the world include crickets, cicadas, grasshoppers, ants, various beetle grubs (such as mealworms), the larvae of the darkling beetle or rhinoceros beetle,various species of caterpillar (such as bamboo worms, mopani worms, silkworms and waxworms), scorpions and tarantulas. There are 1,417 known species of arthropods, including arachnids, that are edible to humans.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entomophagy

people dont eat insects for food

In western countries people believe that particular animals are dirty and therefore they make cultural standards. I went to China and tried scorpion, it was not great but people there did not believe it to be something that was unacceptable or strange.

you ever tried to catch an insect to eat, boy? whoooooo dawgy thems is halloween without butterscotch and cracker stay in school