The Next Big Food Fad?

All of the pundits are trying to figure out how to feed the exploding world population, which just reached 7 billion and is expected to reach 9 billion in 2043. That’s only 32 years from now.

Ordinary people are arguing about the perceived benefits of organic vs. conventionally grown fruits and vegetables. Many are concerned about the damage that raising livestock does to the Earth and to the humans that consume their flesh, and lots worry about the depletion of wild caught seafood as well as the contaminants in some farm-raised fish. And, of course, the horror stories about the inhumane treatment of poultry and other critters have outraged everybody. So where do we go from here if we want to feed humanity and save the planet? Bugs may be the answer.

Humans have been eating insects for centuries – the English word for it is entomophagy. The Old Testament mentions eating crickets and grasshoppers and Ancient Romans considered beetle larvae to be gourmet food. In the 20th century, Japanese emperor Hirohito’s favorite meal reportedly was a mixture of cooked
rice, canned wasps, soy sauce and sugar. In Laos and Thailand, weaver-ant pupae are a highly prized and nutritious delicacy – they’re prepared with shallots, lettuce, chilies, lime and spices, and served with sticky rice. Even though we Americans think bugs are icky, insects are a popular food in many developing regions of Latin America, Africa, Asia and Oceania. The 1962 Italian hit film Mondo
Cane (“A Dog’s World”), you may recall, had a scene in a Mexican village
where a street vendor was spooning live cockroaches onto warm tortillas for
hungry people who faced the challenge of keeping the scampering critters from
escaping before they ate them.

Insects are high in protein, B vitamins and minerals like iron and zinc, and they're
low in fat. Insects are easier to raise than livestock, they produce less waste, and more than 1,000 edible species have been identified. It’s said that the taste is nutty. While the proportion of livestock that is inedible after processing is 30% for pork, 35% for chicken, 45% for beef and 65% for lamb, only 20% of a cricket is not edible.

And if this seems creepy to you, know that you’re probably already consuming at least a pound of bugs a year without knowing it. Most processed foods contain small amounts of insects, within limits set by the Food and Drug Administration. Federal regulations allow the FDA to establish maximum levels of “natural or unavoidable defects in foods for human use that present no health hazard.” The alternative would be to use lots more pesticides. For chocolate, the limit is 60 insect fragments per 100 grams. Flour beetles and weevils that infest granaries are milled along with the grain, ending up as miniscule black specks in your bread. Peanut butter can have up to 30 insect parts per 100 grams, and fruit juice can have five fruit-fly eggs and one or two larvae per cup.

Want to get a head-start on mastering this up-and-coming cuisine? Check out The Eat-a-Bug Cookbook  by David George Gordon (Ten Speed Press), available at http://www.amazon.com.