One of the things that has been interesting me as I have worked towards producing more and more of my own food (through gardening, raising chickens, wild foraging, brewing beer, fermenting vegetables, and just generally cooking, etc.) is how many thing we tend not to eat. Look, it isn’t that there is not quite a diverse availability of food stuffs around. Go to any supermarket or visit any decent sized city, and you will have a very diverse offering of different things to eat. What I mean, is that there is a lot of things that are perfectly edible that we, for a variety of reasons, choose not to eat. I know this in large part because of my wild foraging interests. There are tons of plants and mushrooms that are both perfectly safe and edible and delicious too, and many of the them will literally grow as weeds in our own yards. Now, I realize that, some reasons for why we don’t eat this or that are based on things like tradition (never had, won’t start now), not being historically available (kind of irrelevant in our major globalized world. Whether this is good or not is another matter for debate), or simple unawareness. But, with food prices on the rise, and other concerns about how to feed a growing world populations, it is probably high time that we all try to broaden our palettes a bit more.
So, in reading this blog post, and as you can already guess from this post’s title, I am going to suggest that we eat more bugs. I’m sure a bunch of you have gagged just at the thought of it, but, look, it really is logical. As the linked post points out 1) they’re really nutritious, 2) widely available, and 3) you’re already doing it anyways (mmm-mmm, that chocolate you had after lunch just got way more tasty didn’t it?).
What I am really curious about, is why as a nation we are, for the most part, so opposed to the idea of eating things like insects. A lot of people already eat shrimp and lobster, which, while not insects themselves, are very close cousins (and if you dig in the ground you’ll likely find some pillbugs, which are ground living crustaceans). Likewise with clams and oysters, which are not too distantly related to your common garden slugs and snails. And while I know the idea of eating bugs might seem gross to many people, I am challenged to find a real reason why (I think it is an illogical culturally construed gut-reaction. This isn’t to say it isn’t a real reaction, but more so, to suggest that it is not a rule that we need to adhere to).
So, maybe think about it some more, and try eating some tasty and nutritious bugs. Here is a good long list of edible insects. I can’t speak for many of them, but I have ate grasshoppers, crickets, and ants and lived to tell the tale (and actually found the crickets quite enjoyable).
