Chapter 7
Bugs for Lunch
In 1875 Charles Valentine Riley, Missouri’s state entomologist—or insect expert—threw a dinner party. He promised guests a four-course meal featuring local food. The invitation was welcome, because it came during a time of near famine. Thick clouds of Rocky Mountain locusts had swarmed across Missouri, gobbling everything in their path: crops, grass, stored grains, fruits—even the wool off of sheep. The insects descended across the land in masses so thick that people cleared them with shovels and fed them to their animals.
Riley knew that American Indians in the area roasted locusts for food, and he decided that other Missourians could turn the tables on these pests. He planned a menu of locust soup, baked locusts, locust cakes, and locusts with honey. His goals: to demonstrate that locusts were a good source of protein for hungry settlers and that the insects tasted good too. Some who took the challenge claimed the locusts tasted like crawfish. One local caterer even promised to put them on his menu.
Locusts swarm in Morondava, a town on the western coast of the island nation of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. Locusts are an edible insect.
Eating insects—or entomophagy—isn’t as unusual as many North Americans believe. Nearly two billion people around the world are entomophagists. People from 80 percent of the world’s cultures harvest—and eat—more than nineteen hundred different insect species. For example, deep-fried grasshoppers are a favorite treat in Mexico. In parts of Asia, Africa, Australia, and Central and South America, people snack on the larvae of wasps and other insects.
We may think eating bugs sounds gross, but that’s just one point of view. In some parts of the world, people find the idea of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches equally revolting.
- : Six-legged arthropods with three body parts (a head, a middle section called the thorax, and an abdomen), antennae, and compound eyes (made of many small units that work together). Most insects have one or two pairs of wings. Ants, beetles, and crickets are all insects.
- : A subgroup of insects with sucking mouthparts, including squash bugs, stinkbugs, and bedbugs.
- : Eight-legged arthropods with two body parts (a cephalothorax—the combined head and thorax—and an abdomen). Unlike insects, arachnids have no wings or antennae. Spiders and scorpions are arachnids.
- : Long, wormlike arthropods with many legs. Millipedes have two pairs of legs per body segment, while centipedes have one pair per segment.
- : These little critters, sometimes called pill bugs, or roly-polies, roll into a ball when startled or touched. Like lobsters, crayfish, and barnacles, sow bugs are crustaceans. But because they’re small and land-based, we think of them as bugs.
Why Eat Bugs?
The main reason people eat insects is because they’re delicious! Certain ants taste sweet and nutty. Some stinkbugs have an apple flavor. Grubs and worms taste like bacon. And remember those locusts the settlers ate in 1875? Right now, their cricket relatives are hitting store shelves in snack packs and protein bars.
Bugs have also been dubbed a superfood, a food that is high in nutritional content. When properly harvested and cleaned, insects are a very healthful food source, providing nearly the same levels of protein, vitamins, and minerals as fish, meat, and beans. And they’re lower in saturated fats, the fats that increase the risk of heart disease and stroke.
Eat Insects to Conserve Resources
Another reason for eating bugs is that it’s good for the planet. That’s because raising insects for food requires less land, water, and feed than raising cows, chickens, or pigs. So entomophagy can help save natural resources such as habitats for wild animals and plants, and clean water for humans and animals to drink.
Producing beef, chicken, and pork requires a great deal of real estate. Including the land devoted to pasture and crops to feed animals, nearly 70 percent of agricultural land in the United States is used for raising livestock. Around the world, jungles and forests are being cut down, in many cases to clear land for grazing animals. Edible insects, however, can be raised on tiny plots and in bins stacked on top of one another. Producing 1 pound (0.5 kg) of beef requires ten times the land area as producing 1 pound of edible cricket protein. Pound for pound, raising chickens or pigs takes nearly three times as much land as raising crickets. Eating more insect protein and less of other meats can help conserve land, including forested land. This is important because the world’s forests play a key role in absorbing the carbon dioxide that fuels global warming and in producing the oxygen we breathe.
Raising insects for food also requires less water than raising other livestock. This is especially true when you consider the water used for growing the crops to feed the animals. To produce 1 pound (0.5 kg) of crickets, a grower needs about 1 gallon (3.8 L) of water. A single hen egg requires an average of more than 50 gallons (190 L) of water to produce, and 1 pound of beef takes close to 2,000 gallons (7,571 L)!
In addition, bugs have more efficient digestive systems than other farm animals. This means they are better at turning the food they eat into protein that people can eat. For example, a beef cow converts only about 10 percent of the food it eats into edible protein. About 90 percent of what it eats goes to waste. In contrast, insects convert up to 90 percent of what they eat into edible protein.
A market in Oaxaca, Mexico, offers a range of edible insects. Raising insects is Earth-friendly, and the creatures are highly nutritious.
Eat Bugs to Clear the Air
Finally, raising insects instead of beef cattle can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Farming machinery used in growing feed crops and tending livestock produces carbon dioxide emissions. What’s more, cattle themselves produce methane, which also contributes to global warming. Cows are ruminants, meaning their food goes through a digestive process called enteric fermentation. Microbes inside the cow’s stomach break down fibrous grasses and grains, producing methane. Cows expel the gas from their bodies. Methane absorbs far more heat than carbon dioxide, so it heats Earth even more. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has estimated that 1 ton (907 kg) of methane in the air absorbs twenty-eight to thirty-six times more energy from the sun than 1 ton of carbon dioxide. Many insects also release small amounts of greenhouse gases during their digestive processes. But insects aren’t ruminants, and the amount of methane they produce, even when raised in large numbers, comes nowhere near the levels in cow manure, belches, and flatulence.
United Nations food experts believe that entomophagy can help feed a growing and hungry world population. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has been working since 2003 to promote edible insects as part of its efforts to fight global hunger. For example, FAO funds research into the benefits and challenges of entomophagy. It also works to educate and raise awareness of the advantages of eating insects. FAO brings together international experts in nutrition, farming, and government relations from the Netherlands to Africa, and from Asia to North America to help people raise insects for food.
Buggy for Chocolate
Just one more thing: you probably have already eaten bugs. Every time you devour a chocolate candy bar, chances are that you’re eating bugs or at least bug parts. The US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) publishes a guide for food manufacturers establishing how many insect parts are safe and acceptable in different foods. For example, the agency allows up to sixty bug bits in 100 grams (3.5 ounces) of candy bars. When it comes to peanut butter, thirty insect fragments or fewer are allowed per 100 grams.
Many manufactured foods have bug bits in them. For example, when you eat a chocolate candy bar, you are more than likely eating a small—and safe—amount of bugs.
USFDA regulators say that eliminating insect parts from our food is impossible. Using more insecticides to try to reduce the insects would put more toxic chemicals into our food. The risk isn’t worth it. According to the USFDA, a few bugs in our food won’t hurt us. Those insects are natural, unavoidable, and nonhazardous.
Before You Bag a Bug
When diving into entomophagy, always know what you’re eating. Here are some safety pointers:
When you first start exploring edible insects, including those that are packaged or prepared in restaurants,
- No bugs for you if you have shellfish allergies. People who are allergic to shellfish should avoid eating insects. Like insects, shellfish are arthropods—members of a huge and diverse biological phylum, or group. Insects and shellfish share common proteins that can cause allergic reactions in some people.
- If you have another type of food allergy, start small with insects. Eat very small portions to begin with. Invite an adult to be with you—and have your allergy remedies handy just in case you have a reaction.
When preparing insect-based meals,
- Think about the sources. Raise your own insects or buy them from a trusted insect farm or market to ensure that they are safe to eat. Animals, including insects, can absorb toxic chemicals into their tissues if they eat contaminated foods or live in polluted environments. Learning about the producers who raise edible insects can be a good way to determine which brands or markets provide healthful choices.
- Clean and cook. As with other meats, you should always wash your insects before cooking and cook them before eating them. You can roast, grill, boil, deep-fry, or toast them, depending on your recipes and your tastes.
For serious entomophagists who want to catch their own insects,
- Know your insects. Study before you start collecting insects on your own in the wild. Make sure you know which bugs are edible and how to identify them. Consult a reputable field guide, with illustrations, photos, or both. You can also look online, but stick to reliable resources such as a university’s entomology (study of insects) department or an agricultural extension service. (Check Further Information at the back of this book.) See if adults in your family, school, neighborhood, or community can help you find edible insects. You’d be surprised that some adults enjoy edible bugs!
- Red, orange, yellow: Avoid that fellow. Pay attention to the colors of the insects you are thinking about eating. In the wild, bright colors such as red, orange, and yellow are a warning. They warn predators that an insect is unsafe to eat or even poisonous. Brown and green bugs are usually okay to eat. Even then, make sure you’ve properly identified the insect before eating it.
Unless you have positively identified an insect as edible, avoid hairy insects whose hairs may irritate the mouth and throat. Avoid insects that spray a stinky liquid. (This is another of nature’s warnings to stay away.) Stay away from insects that are known to eat poisonous plants such as poisonous mushrooms. And definitely don’t eat insects that carry diseases, such as ticks and most mosquitoes.
- Harvest clean insects from safe places. Stick to yards and gardens that you know are not treated with pesticides or other chemical poisons. When collecting edible insects, stay away from industrialized and polluted areas. When collecting near roadways, avoid ditches where contamination from runoff collects. Keep to the uphill side of the road instead.
- Wear clothing that will protect you from sun, insect bites, and plant irritants. And remember to apply insect repellent to discourage mosquitoes and ticks.