why we should eat insects

   I have not done it very much, but I am an advocate of eating insects. The first time was in my Entomology class in college, almost 20 years ago. My professor, Dr. Letourneau, sautéed some butter and garlic at the front of the classroom, dropped in a container of mealworms (which are actually beetle larvae, not worms at all), and served them with slices of baguette. It was good. Butter and garlic can make anything taste good. I also ate escamoles, an ant egg delicacy from Central Mexico.

Liometopum occidentale, one of two ant species whose eggs are harvested for escamoles (Image credit: Michael Branstetter 2007, AntWeb.org)

   
   During a work trip to Querétaro, Mexico my colleague introduced me to escamoles at a fancy Italian restaurant – they were not on the menu and I had no idea how much they cost. The ant eggs were cooked in spices and served alongside corn tortillas and guacamole and made into little tacos. Biting into the taco was superb, the texture worked and the flavor was unlike anything I had eaten before. There was a subtle popping with each chew, and the flavor of the eggs resembled that of buttery pine nuts. I have also had brownies with whole crickets embedded in the top. Is there more of a grossness factor when you can see and recognize the entire insect as it goes in your mouth? Yes, it made my stomach flutter. But the escamoles did not affect me at all, and the mealworms only a little.    

   Insects are traditional foods (and often delicacies) that are eaten regularly in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. The same cannot be said for the United States. Finding insects in the store or at a restaurant is rare. But it doesn't have to stay this way; Americans have overcome culturally-based food obstacles in the past. Let us consider the history of lobster in the United States. There was a time when New Englanders fertilized their gardens with lobsters, and eating them indicated things were not going well for you financially. So what are the barriers preventing this from happening with insects? I haven’t collected any data but I think it is safe to say that many Americans think it is just plain gross. How appealing does eating a whole cricket, or mealworm, sound to you? I don’t disagree. And I don’t think you and I are alone, which is why companies have started marketing insects in unrecognizable forms. Cricket flour, dry roasted crickets ground up into a fine powder; and mealworm tofu. We can also overcome this obstacle by thinking about eating insects and lobsters from an evolutionary perspective. Insects and lobsters are in the same evolutionary lineage called Arthropoda - they are very closely related. So much so that insects could be considered a terrestrial version of lobsters, crabs, and shrimp. So, biologically speaking, eating insects is no different than eating lobster.

   Why am I talking about eating insects? What does this have to do with scientific discoveries? Since I study insects I spend a lot of time thinking and reading about them in different contexts. One of those contexts is eating them, and it is impossible to overstate the benefits. As established by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), consideration of insects as a critical food source is essential because they are 1) highly nutritious, 2) an important component of traditional diets in food insecure regions, and 3) environmentally sustainable relative to alternative protein sources such as beef. In addition, eating insect pests can reduce pesticide use with added economic incentives. Researchers in Mexico have developed a strategy to harvest a Mexican grasshopper pest from crops using mechanical methods (rather than pesticides) that would result in a gross income of US$350 million annually if the crickets are subsequently sold for human consumption.

   Because all of these factors can positively impact the health of our planet and its population for the long term, my plan is to come up with some good recipes and integrate insects into my diet. So I bought some cricket flour. I used it to make pizza dough. And as much as I want to tell you how successful my first try was, I can’t. Let me explain. I like to cook; and while I am no culinary genius, there is some culinary talent in my family. I have a basic understanding of flavors and flavor combinations.

Cricket flour (I am not sponsored by this company in any way and am not advocating for purchase of this particular flour)

    
   The cricket flour was brown and had an earthy, soil-like aroma. It tasted a lot like soil as well. I have read some articles describing cricket flour as nutty - I didn’t get nutty, just earthy. Since earthy falls in the savory category, I decided to make a savory dish rather than something sweet as many people suggest. I chose pizza dough.

Cricket flour pizza dough

    
   I followed the recipe of a simple pizza dough from my favorite food blog, Smitten Kitchen. It seemed small so I doubled it. Instead of adding three cups white flour I added two cups white flour, ¾ cup cricket flour, and ¼ cup whole-wheat pastry flour. To counteract the earthy, bitter flavor of the cricket flour I topped the pizza with caramelized onions. One half had olive oil, caramelized onions, and Trader Joe’s honey goat cheese; the other half had red pizza sauce, caramelized onions, and cheddar cheese. 

Left: goat cheese and caramelized onions. Right: red sauce, caramelized onions and cheddar cheese.

   
   My husband (J) and I were the judges of the cricket flour pizza dough experiment. I am not a picky eater, the only thing I will not eat is raw celery. J is even less of a picky eater and will ravenously eat almost anything.

  After my whole introduction about how healthy and sustainable it is to eat insects, you can imagine my disappointment when I did not like the cricket flour pizza dough. My initial optimism was very high. For the first couple of chews I didn’t notice a difference, especially for the half with red sauce and cheddar cheese. But as I kept chewing and swallowing, the aftertaste set it in. So earthy, too earthy. The honey goat cheese side was even more difficult, it didn’t have any sauce to overwhelm the earthy flavor. I kept trying to clear my mind and have another bite. I really wanted to love it. I wanted to be able to sit down and write about how great it was and advocate for it like nobody’s business, but my disappointment was real.

I couldn't bring myself to eat the crusts

   
   J liked it and helped himself to seconds. Maybe his disconnection with the preparation process made it easier for him? The other upside was the nutritional improvement. In one slice of pizza, the cricket flour pizza dough had 8.4 grams of protein compared to 1.6 if I had made it with all white flour. It also had 60% of the suggested daily amount of vitamin B₁₂, of which white flour has none.

   Don’t worry, I am not giving up. In the spirit of George de Mestral, and all of the other curious experimenters out there, I will keep trying. I will compare different cricket flours, and I have more recipe ideas. I will also experiment with other insect food products, like the mealworm tofu. This is not the end of insect eating for me - I have only just begun - and I will continue to be an entomophagy advocate.