or any other lifeforms that take up residence in food sometimes… is it bad for you? Gross-factor aside, can they make you sick?
Oh-uh… yet another chance for me to reference “Home Comforts” by Cheryl Mendelson.
She says that if you find weevils in flour or meal, you can sift them out, freeze it overnight to kill any eggs, and then use the food with confidence. She also says that this grosses her out, and she’s never done it. But they are harmless.
Cockroaches, on the other hand, carry disease and anything they infest needs to be thrown out.
If I were ever faced with a pair of the wretched critters, and forced to choose one to consume, I believe I would choose the lesser of two weevils.
The first thing I thought of when reading the thread title was Empire of the Sun.
Jim (English boy imprisoned in a Japanese prison camp in China) painstakingly singles out each weevil in his bowl of rice and puts them to the side. He then says to an older woman prisonmate: “Huh, only 71 weevils today. The count is up but the trend is down.” and he makes an adjustment on his chalkboard graph. He finishes his rice and scoops all of the weevils up (a good heaping spoonful) and eats his protein.
MMMMMM-mmmm.
Yummy!!!
I meant Christian Bale (the actor who protrayed Jim in the aforementioned film… and now, not when he was a kid, you pervs!)
Weevils are eevil, I hate them. Containers with tight lids have put an end to their bloody reign of terror in my house! HUZZAH!
Someone else has read Home Comforts! I just took it back to the library, and I’m plotting about how to make Mr. Lissar buy me a copy for my birthday.
Having just read Crossroads of Twilight by Robert Jordan( and let me say it was among the most boring books I have ever read) he spends pages and pages (and pages) describing how Perrin and his merry men try to buy some food that didn’t contain weevils. Without much success, so his characters were eating them, and they survived. Unfortunately. So it must be ok 
V
In Patrick O’Brian’s novels, weevils in the ship’s biscuit seemed to be pretty common. I think they called them “boatmen,” and IIRC, noted them and kept on eating.
But I’m not sure if literary references are really what you were asking for in the OP…