Got bugs?

Have you ever bitten into a chocolate bar and found a bug? If not, you probably weren’t looking closely. Current FDA regulations allow up to 10 bug parts per hundred grams of chocolate – and even more for peanut butter.

By some estimates, 80 percent of all animal biomass is bug parts. And because bugs are pretty much everywhere, a pure vegetarian diet is impossible. Everyone has eaten bugs, from the slug in your salad to the fly in your soup to the no-see-ums you inhale as you bike down a hill.

In many parts of the world, this is no big deal – people have intentionally eaten bugs for centuries, and continue to do so. But in the English-speaking world, bug eating is generally considered gross.

Ironically, shrimp, lobsters and other bugs of the sea are very popular among otherwise bug-averse crowds, despite the fact that they’re bottom feeders, while most insects that are popular as food are clean-living, leaf-munching vegans.

Many such herbivores, it turns out, are extremely efficient at converting plant matter into animal protein – much more efficient than normal livestock. If a bunch of crickets are fed a diet comparable to a cow’s, for example, the crickets can create between six and 20 times the amount of edible body tissue as the cattle. Gram for gram, crickets have more protein than any red meat, and a higher proportion of unsaturated fatty acids.

This is a big reason why advocates of entomophagy, or bug-eating, are writing books, teaching classes, conducting scientific research and otherwise greasing the wheels of the upcoming bug-eating revolution. The latest such work, titled Ecological Implications of Minilivestock, provides a compendium of papers on how eating small animals – including insects, frogs, snails and rodents – offers a way to feed the world.

Now, if only we can get around the gross part.

Indeed, many vocal advocates of entomophagy, at least in theory, still prefer other foods in practice. Sandra Bukkens, an independent nutrition consultant, told Science News, “insects are far more healthy than I expected,” though she admitted to being “not particularly keen” on eating them herself. Meanwhile Professor Gene DeFoliart, aka Mr. Entomophagy, who is host of food-insects.com, can’t seem to convince his own wife to eat them.

Those who do eat bugs do so for many reasons. To save the world, perhaps, because they taste good, in some cases, or when, unfortunately, there’s nothing else to eat. And sometimes people just eat bugs because they’re drunk.

In college, some of my classmates played a game called “Eat Bugs for Money,” as part of the annual end-of-year bash. At the start of each round, a bug would be displayed – anything from some larva to a full-grown three-inch Madagascar hissing cockroach.

“Who wants to eat this (cup of earthworms, non-venomous scorpion, etc.) for $20?” asked the master of ceremonies, and thus began the bidding. The only rules were the winner, usually a drunk boy, had to chew with his mouth open, and no bids under $1 were accepted.

As with many things that occur while drunk, after the fact you might wonder if the booze made you do it, or if the booze gave you permission to do what you wanted, deep down, to do all along.

I would squirm just trying to watch, entomophagical lightweight that I am, and the booze didn’t even help.

Since then, I’ve crossed paths with bug eaters on numerous occasions. Once, at a restaurant in Korea, I watched a plate of creepy-crawlies get served to some folks who nabbed the worms with chopsticks as they crawled off the plate and wiggled about the table. I had to bail, out of fear that, due to the language barrier, any attempts to make sure such a plate would not arrive at my table might backfire.

I don’t know why the thought of eating creepy-crawlies gives me the heebie-jeebies. But in Bangkok last year I decided it was time to get over it. It was late at night, and the street was crowded with young partiers.

More than 150 insect species are eaten in Thailand, and the street vendor who sold me my bug had about 10 different stainless steel bins of various insects, most of them deep-fried. I’d heard that deep fried grasshoppers are good with beer.

My bug, whatever it was, was deep-fried, and it tasted like a potato chip, or crispy fried chicken skin, or any other type of fried crispy thing. And like most any crispy-fried, salty thing, it did taste good with beer.

Public sentiment on entomophagy varies widely, with most bug eaters being rich and exotic or poor and desperate. In many African countries, the once traditional act of bug eating has become stigmatized as a starvation practice by the young and the wealthy. But elsewhere, including some countries with particularly refined culinary traditions, like Thailand, bugs are a delicacy. In Mexico, a plate of maguey worms at a fancy restaurant can cost $25. In Japan, people shell out for aquatic larvae called zazamushi, which are popular sautéed with soy sauce and sugar.

But since the majority of the world’s middle class remains hesitant to eat bugs, some clever Dutch scientists are seeking to make an end-run around the squeamish factor by delivering bug protein to the food supply another way.

In vats, they’re culturing ovary cells from various worms and larva. With these high-protein ovary cells, but no antennae, buggy eyes or other recognizable insect parts, the scientists hope to slip their bug protein into burgers, breads and other processed foods.

And why not? Modern consumers have demonstrated, repeatedly, their willingness to eat just about anything so long as it’s processed into oblivion and packaged nicely. Our love of the hot dog and other presentations of mystery meat are well known. So maybe bug powder can indeed save the world, one bugburger at a time. At the very least, maybe the FDA needs to loosen up its rules, and allow more bug protein in our chocolate bars. •