The One-Straw Revolution_ An Introduction to Natural Farming - Masanobu Fukuoka [41]
Among wild foods insects are often overlooked.
During the war, when I worked at the research center, I was assigned to determine what insects in Southeast Asia could be eaten. When I investigated this matter, I was amazed to discover that almost any insect is edible.
For example, no one would think that lice or fleas could be of any use at all, but lice, ground up and eaten with winter grain, are a remedy for epilepsy, and fleas are a medicine for frostbite. All insect larvae are quite edible, but they must be alive. Poring over the old texts, I found stories having to do with "delicacies" prepared from maggots from the outhouse, and the flavor of the familiar silkworm was said to be exquisite beyond compare. Even moths, if you shake the powder off their wings first, are very tasty.
In a patch of mustard and wild turnips.
So, whether from the standpoint of flavor or from the standpoint of health, many things which people consider repulsive are actually quite tasty and also good for the human body.
Vegetables that are biologically closest to their wild ancestors are the best in flavor and the highest in food value. For example, in the lily family (which includes nira, garlic, Chinese leek, green onion, pearl onion, and bulb onion) the nira and Chinese leek are highest in nutrition, good as herbal medicine, and also useful as a tonic for general well-being. To most people, however, the more domestic varieties, such as green onion and bulb onion, are regarded as the best tasting. For some reason, modern people like the flavor of vegetables that have departed from their wild state.
A similar taste preference applies to animal foods. Wild birds when eaten, are much better for the body than domestic fowl such as chickens and ducks, and yet these birds, raised in an environment far removed from their natural homes, are regarded as good tasting and sold at high prices. Goat's milk has a higher food value than cow's milk, but it is the cow's milk which is in greater demand.
Foods that have departed far from their wild state and those raised chemically or in a completely contrived environment unbalance the body chemistry. The more out of balance one's body becomes, the more one comes to desire unnatural foods. This situation is dangerous to health.
To say that what one eats is merely a matter of preference is deceiving, because an unnatural or exotic diet creates a hardship for the farmer and the fisherman as well. It seems to me that the greater one's desires, the more one has to work to satisfy them. Some fish, such as the popular tuna and yellowtail must be caught in distant waters, but sardine, sea bream, flounder, and other small fish can be caught in great abundance in the Inland Sea. Speaking nutritionally, creatures which live in freshwater rivers and streams, such as carp, pond snails, stream crayfish, marsh crabs and so on, are better for the body than those from salt water. Next come shallow-water ocean fish, and finally fish from deep salt water and from distant seas. The foods that are nearby are best for human beings, and things that he has to struggle to obtain turn out to be the least beneficial of all.
That is to say that if one accepts what is near at hand, all goes well. If the farmers who live in this village eat only the foods that can be grown or gathered here, there will be no mistake. In the end, like the group of young people living in the huts up in the orchard, one will find it simplest to eat brown rice and unpolished barley, millet, and buckwheat, together with the seasonal plants and semi-wild vegetables. One ends up with the best food; it has flavor, and is good for the body.
If 22 bushels (1,300 pounds) of rice and 22 bushels of winter grain are harvested from a quarter acre field such as one of these, then the