I hate to tell you this, Whammo, but neither the cheese mites nor the follicle mites is a joke. They’re both going strong. (I know this because I’m a student in entomology, so we hear a lot about this stuff.)
I’d bet you already know about the dust mites that live in your bedding and on some other places where humans hang out for long periods of time. So there’s no need to terrorize you further with stories about those guys.
But I do feel that I should point out that almost everyone eats at least a few arthropodal critters pretty often. The FDA actually has regulations stating how many insect parts per foodstuff mass can be present in flour, tomato paste, orange juice, and many other basic food items.
Do you like fig newtons? Every fig newton has many, many microscopic insect parts. All figs harbor a colony of fig wasps, which have a mutualistic relationship with fig trees. Fig wasps pollinate the female fig flowers and then produce offspring inside the fruit. Eventually, the wasps burst from the fruit to pollinate more fig flowers. But whenever you eat a sweet, ripe fig, you’re also ingesting quite a few itty-bitty bugs.
As far as the insects someone might ingest on purpose…
I like to eat live waxworms (larvae of the wax moth, Galleria melonella.) They’re pretty tasty. I used to work in an insectary, where we raised insects for teaching and research. My boss had to tell us peons not to eat the waxworms, because we were destroying the colonies with our snacking!
If you feel you’d prefer less Klingon-eque fare and would rather eat your food dead and cooked, there are a few cookbooks you could check out. The Eat-a-Bug Cookbook gives some recipes for cooking up insects. So does Butterflies in My Stomach.
But I digress from the topic of the OP…
I’d rather eat waxworms, live or lightly pan-fried (they taste like slightly nut-flavored shrimp when sauteed with a little garlic. Yummy!), than many of the crappy white or orange blocks of wax labeled “cheese” by supermarket chains.
On the other hand…it’s hard to beat a good myzritha, or a delicious Parmesan, Manchego, Romano, Brie, Bleu cheese, gjetost, or real, homemade Mozzarella or farmer’s cheese.
How about waxworms with linguine in an olive oil, garlic, and basil sauce with Parmesan? My mouth waters at the very thought…
