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Prehistoric sites have uncovered piles of snail shells indicating they were eaten early on by man. The Romans loved snails, cultivated special vineyards and clean ponds where snails were fed and fattened. Here, snails leisurely purged off mud, impurities from its system. The first French recipe for snails was written in the 1300s, and by the 16th century, snails had become a popular banquet dish.

Snails (escargot, kuhol, suso) is also a favorite among Filipinos. Snails are rich source of nutrients needed by malnourished Filipinos: protein 15 percent, unsaturated fat 2.4 percent, contains vitamins A and C, calcium, magnesium, zinc, copper, iodine; 80percent water. Snails is natural, organic, low-carb (Atkin’s friendly).

What about the Golden Kuhol or golden apple snail (Pomacea canalicuta)? Its profusion directly destroys the livelihood of Asian farmers by infesting and damaging over half of the rice fields in the Asian region.

Native to South America, the Golden Kuhol was introduced in Taiwan as people food. It later spread to Indonesia, Thailand Cambodia, Hong Kong, southern China, Japan. It was propagated in the Philippines with the hope of providing additional food high in protein for many malnourished families.

The Golden Kuhol’s high nutritive value as easy-to-digest food for humans and farm animals generated interest among public and private sectors in the Philippines in the ’80s.

Golden Kuhol is now everywhere, but forgotten as food. How come our Department of Nutrition does not push the hi-protein Golden Kuhol as people food?

Among Filipinos, the desired snail is the scarce, more expensive roundish suso, called periwinkle in English (Littorina littorea), and the black, long thin helix snail usually cooked in coconut milk. In France, the delicacy is the large Burgundy snails. Nicknamed the "Land Lobster" for its similar texture to lobster with an earthier flavor.

Is Burgundy snail the same as the Golden Kuhol? If it is, how come the protein-deficient Filipinos are not taught by nutritionists to process, cook and eat the Golden Kuhol? Unlike scavengers, these snails are clean as these depend mainly on young edible field leaves as food source.

Farmers have discovered Golden Kuhol to be a good source of supplementary feed for livestock and poultry. The snail meat provides protein and energy-giving fat while the shell contains calcium, phosphorous, vitamins, and minerals.

Golden kuhol are freshly collected from the fields, manually crushed, mixed with raw rice bran, and then fed right away to the animals.

Big animals eat the Golden Kuhol whole straight from the fields which add to its health and weight. Ducks fed with Golden Kuhol meal can attain 70 percent increase in egg production rate. Due to its high nutrition, crushed Golden Kuhol could replace fish, meat and bone meal in broiler diets.

The laborious and time-consuming task of manually crushing Golden Kuhol will be mechanized, thanks to Camarines Sur State Agricultural College. The researchers, led by Marife Pesino, designed a Golden Kuhol grinder-crusher which grinds at varying textures for feed needs.

The design of the Golden Kuhol crusher-grinder is not only economical and environment-friendly but more important, the machine can be operated by women and children.

Performance tests showed that the machine could efficiently and perfectly crush and grind golden kuhol when operated at 1500 rpm and 2070 rpm, respectively, with the desired particle size recommended for optimum feed digestibility.

Email address: dahli_a@yahoo.com

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