Terraces Dinning Hall recently yesterday it was adding a new “Caterpillar Salad” to its entrée and salad menus. The move came after months of positive feedback and attention on social media from students after a temporary “trial period” was run earlier this year.
“When we first introduced the prototype dish earlier this year, students went crazy over it,” said Debbie McDebberson, the lead spokeswoman for the dining hall. “We thought that students wouldn’t react or would ignore the salad, but many students were very vocal about it on social media sites, which prompted us to permanently add it to the menu.”
The head chef, William McWilliams, noted he learned about the dish while working in the Peace Corps right after college. “I went to the island of Paiu-Paiu Gaboo where I helped prepare meals for the starving children of the island after culinary school. It was very popular with the kids as they had little actual protein. Also, I don’t know if you have ever had caterpillar, but they have an interesting taste. Kind of like chicken.”
The island of Paiu-Paiu Gaboo is not recorded in any official indexes or records of any nature.
Many students have applauded the introduction. Serena McSerenason, a junior music student, thinks the salad will help introduce more variety in the typical college student diet of bad greasy cheap food saying, “It could really help kids get some nutrients.” Wendy McWenderson, a freshman Epidemiology major, used to eat caterpillars as a child in her native West Virginia, while living in a collapsing coal mine with her father, Rusty. “If you fry them with mayonnaise, they actually taste pretty good,” she said.
However, the excitement among the student body isn’t universal. Many students such as Wendel McWendelson, a sophomore Library major, think the introduction of the salad is exclusionary of other insects such as crickets, bees, or even cockroache, saying, “You never see them talking about having a cockroach salad. It’s always caterpillars. It’s because our society is systematically biased against cockroaches.” Other students are afraid that the caterpillars are factory raised and aren’t given the proper time and air to breath and be free. Senior art major, John McJohnson, doesn’t want more industrialized factory fed food to end up on his plate at the end of the day. “It’s inhumane what they do to those poor bastards," he said. "They coop them up all day and bind their little legs so they don’t move and get fat as possible.”
In response, Sodexo has issued a statement ensuring students that the caterpillars will come from “completely organic and local sources” just like the rest of their ingredients. McDebberson identified numerous local organic caterpillar farmers such as Al’s Caterpillars and The Butterfly Effect as standout examples.
The new salads are to be added next semester after winter when the caterpillars will be the freshest and available and will come in numerous kinds of flavors such as moth, monarch, and hairy. There will be numerous different kinds of dressings as well, however, are chef McWilliams secret recipe he learned in his Peace Corps time.
