The title "They Eat That?: A Cultural Encyclopedia of Weird and Exotic Food from around the World" says it all. This fun encyclopedia, organized A-Z, describes and offers cultural context for foodstuffs people eat today that might be described as "weird"--at least to the American palate. Entries also include American regional standards, such as scrapple and chitterlings, that other regions might find distasteful, as well as a few mainstream American foods, like honey, that are equally odd when one considers their derivation.

A long narrative entry on insects, for example, discusses the...