Eating Bugs For Fun and Profit

Leaning halfway into my trunk to retrieve some groceries, I was enveloped by a curious sound: something like a dozen open mouths full of Pop Rocks. The sound turned out to be the many tiny footfalls of a posse of earwigs. Dozens of them had stowed away in the legs of a roadside furniture purchase. Besides Journey's smash hit "Don't Stop Believing," no other sound is more viscerally, instinctually repulsive. When I say "instinctually," that's exactly what I mean. As humans, insects share a place in our collective psyche with other prehistoric classics like "fire," and "heights."  Of all the actions I could take upon finding a few dozen earwigs in my trunk, my last inclination would be to begin gobbling them up, one by one. Could there come a day when my grocery bags would be willfully filled with insects, instead of just incidentally?

Issues surrounding food scarcity, purity, and origin are reaching new heights of public awareness in the First World. Meanwhile, food shortage is ever an issue in the Third World. (Who knows what's going on in the poor Second World, that seldom-mentioned pariah of global numerical designations.) The question presents itself as we endure The Summer of the Mosquito: why don't we eat bugs already?

First off, we, as a species, always have. Entomophagy, or the human consumption of insects, was practiced by the people of the Ozarks, for instance, long before they were people as we know them. The fossil record tells us that eating termites predates bluegrass by a fair margin. The plenitude of insects in an era when the "spear" was next-gen tech makes eating whatever is crawling on the cave floor an obvious choice.

While desperation has its place in the bug-eating world, many cultures have integrated insects into their cuisine as a matter of choice.

In Columbia, many people enjoy eating ants. Invariably, these ants are specified to be "big butt ants." The hormiga culona  is an ant queen, often roasted and eaten with salt. Eating these ant queens is not limited to indigenous or desperate people in Columbia. The Colombian Ambassador to England, for instance, regularly imports his favorite six-legged taste of home. Objectively, this is no stranger than eating shrimp, but that's the intellect talking. Cultural conditioning is every effective: I still have no desire to eat an ant. (I don't like ordering food by mail.)

Not much of a hunter? Look no further than a Mexican street market for dried roasted crickets, sold by the pound. Aficionados recommend removing the legs before consumption. If you love crickets but don't want to support the cruel cricket livestock industry (that I may have just invented), trapping your own requires naught but a mason jar, some fruit, and some patience.

Grasshoppers are also a popular choice in some regions. Uganda hosts quite the grasshopper trade, with many entrepreneurs using flood lights, sheet metal, and oil drums to "harvest" them. Again, removing the legs and wings is key to good hopper prep.

The people of Cambodia get giddy at the sight of a deep-fried tarantula. Southern Africa loves its mopane worms. And who doesn't love a locust basket with a good brew?

International food chic aside, it seems impossible than Americans could ever embrace a plateful of termites. But is a pile of termites any crazier than a little wooden boat full of raw fish and pleasantly popping salmon roe? A few decades ago, finding a sushi bar in the Midwest was uncommon, to say the least. Now you'll find a few in most major towns. Can the country that brought the world Extreme Sports and punk rock step up and replace pork rinds with locust... rinds?

Well, why would we want to?

Insects are plentiful, nutritious, and may not feel pain or have any sense of individual identity. Insects are also hearty, and adapt easily to artificial breeding climates. This may not matter much to those of us with a Foods For Living around the corner, but the benefit to famine-stricken or low-income regions is obvious. And while America is not "famine-stricken" by any stretch, the harsh truth is that many people go hungry in our country every day.

What about the affluent? After all, insects are as much a delicacy as a last resort in many cultures. What may draw the yoga/smoothie crowd in America is the nutritional content of many insects: they're great sources of protein, fiber, and micronutrients, such as copper and zinc. I've often speculated that labeling anything "Superfood" could move it off the shelf, but crickets may be the limit of that hypothesis.

People professionally concerned with famine and food insecurity, such as the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, have long advocated eating insects. But the last few years have seen this idea come to the forefront, with edible bug articles featuring heavily in both humanitarian and epicurean circles.

Eating bugs is generally safe, in the way that eating plants is generally safe; you should know what you're eating and prepare them properly. People have indeed died from eating bugs, and the causes of such fatalities are not always clear.

Not everyone agrees with the eating-bugs-to-save-the-planet angle. No, PETA does not approve of eating insects. But they do offer some interesting nonlethal countermeasures for pest infestations in their website's FAQ.

If we in the Western world are to embrace insectile cuisine, we must do something that does not come naturally, by definition: we must allow our intellect to eclipse our instinct. The idea that bugs are gross is embedded deep in our DNA; tickling and itching probably have a lot to do with bugs. But we can adapt, and if the world keeps tacking on a billion people every few years, we'll have to. Even insects eat each other, and they're smart. Even cockroaches know enough to adapt their taste when the situation demands it.

So get with the program. 2 billion people are already doing it. And when you tell your friends that you've become a bug-eater and hear only the sound of crickets in response, at least you'll know where your next meal is coming from.