Chocolate covered ants

Sales of insects for food in the United Kingdom are shooting up say vendors. Scorpions, tarantulas and ants are seeing an increase in sales as much as 30 percent. Some are saying it is because of the increasing interest in eating insects after watching the reality television show I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!, a very popular programme that has just ended. It drew 10 million viewers.

The celebrities on the TV show dined on scorpions, locusts, crickets and other insects. 

Selfridges, a very posh and very large department store on London's Oxford Street, is now selling baked Cambodian tarantula for £15.99. The Edible food company imports the tarantulas from Cambodia and say the insect helped keep people alive during the famines of the Khmer Rouge years.

"When insects are cooked their poison becomes non-toxic," said Edible's Todd Dalton. "We even do chocolate-covered scorpions."

LazyBone UK, an online store, has seen its sales of edible insects jump 30 percent: "Chocolate ants are our biggest sellers," said LazyBone's Chris Spratley.