Survival food

Someone on Facebook recently posted a photo of canapés that had been served at a lavish Manila book launch. Unexpectedly, the topping was the larvae of red weaver ants. The photo showed dainty morsels of white toast onto which had been spooned a tiny pile of ant larvae, pale and translucent. But the diner, who had probably been hoping to taste something like caviar, found them disappointing. The taste was bland and underwhelming. Eating grasshoppers in Mexico was more thrilling the diner said.

Gastronomic adventure, along with the boom in cheap world travel, has become one of the great hallmarks of our age and is frequently extolled as a virtue. “Good food and good eating” says celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain, “are about risk.” Yet there is something deeply troubling about this. Maybe because the sentiment takes the luxury of choice for granted. Or so very easily forgets, to adopt an old aphorism, that one person’s chic canapé is another person’s survival food.