Don’t let the food bug you

What we con­sider pests in some parts of the world is con­sid­ered a delicacy—or just plain lunch with a crunch. Did you know that more than 1,700 species of insects are edi­ble? Not only are they in abun­dance, but they are highly nutri­tious and sus­tain­able. I learned a lot about eat­ing bugs in the fall issue of World Ark mag­a­zine from Heifer International.

Here’s the scoop in case you are con­sid­er­ing going green by includ­ing edi­ble insects in your next stir fry. Ento­mophagy, the prac­tice of eat­ing insects, is pick­ing up pop­u­lar­ity in the U.S., not just in the coun­tries where it is rather com­mon: South­east Asia, Cen­tral Africa and Latin Amer­ica. Accord­ing to the arti­cle “Extra Crunch with Lunch” by Sarah Schmidt, the United Nations Food and Agri­cul­ture Orga­ni­za­tion is step­ping up efforts to include edi­ble insects in the fight against poverty and mal­nu­tri­tion in the above countries.

Appar­ently, it is pretty com­mon to eat bugs which are high pro­tein, con­tain­ing more per gram than meat, as well as a wide range of vit­a­mins and min­er­als. Put that idea next to the fact that the world pop­u­la­tion is expected to grow from 7 bil­lion to 9 bil­lion by 2050 and sud­denly insect eat­ing becomes more attrac­tive. They don’t require much space or resources to raise and they pro­duce less waste than your aver­age meat-bearing edi­ble animal.

Restau­rants from Los Ange­les to New York are spout­ing bug-laden recipes like choco­late chirp cook­ies (with crick­ets) and a scor­pion side salad. The irony, claims the arti­cle, is that just as it is becom­ing more in fash­ion in the West, eat­ing insects is falling out of favor in devel­op­ing coun­tries as they are exposed to more West­ern ideas. That’s what the UN and other devel­op­ment experts are try­ing to combat.

Want to give it a try? The clos­est event listed in the arti­cle to Ohio is the Pur­due Bug Bowl in West Lafayette, Ind., on April 14–15, 2012. You can also check out more infor­ma­tion on the blog Insects Are Food at insectsarefood.com or Girl Meets Bug at girlmeetsbug.com.

I’ll be inter­ested to see if this trend hops along or crawls into a “fad-only” phase. Now get out there and catch some crickets!

Tues­day Trip­pier lives in Delaware, is a writer and mother of four with a spe­cial inter­est in green living.

Posted by Tuesday Trippier on Sep 12 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.