Earthworms - © 2013 photo-dictionary.com

Edible Bugs: Menu Madness or Future Staple?

You’ve seen it on the craziest of the crazy FOOD Network shows: Insects have shown up as eating or cooking challenge ingredients. But there are those in the culinary world who say bugs will form a major part of our diets in future, once familiar items like Beef, Pork and Chicken are priced out of reach…

Fried Crickets - © 2013 inhabitat.comFried Crickets… Pests today, Popcorn tomorrow?

I know it sounds nutty, but there are people in the world today who regularly eat insects and other loosely-related fauna as part of their usual diets.

Take South America… Some primitive tribes in the Amazon jungle consider big, juicy worms they find there a treat.

Take Asia… Please. Central Asians eat dried Meal Worms and Scorpions toasted over an open fire. Don’t forget toasted Grasshoppers and Locusts…

These primitive people have known for thousands of years what we are only now just coming to understand: Insects are a great source of protein and literally tons of them can be produced very quickly (compared to Cows or Chickens or Pigs) at very low cost. But there may well be other advantages to eating insects that the more-conventional advocates of the trend have suggested.

Turn the tables…

It’s about time we turned the tables on the pestilent hordes that have caused us, as humans, so much pain and suffering in the past.

The locusts come every seven years and eat all our crops. Let’s be waiting at the bottom of the garden with big nets – or even huge vacuum cleaners – to harvest them when they’re done harvesting us. Toast them! Flake them! Grind them into high-protein flour! Revenge can be as sweet as a light, fluffy, Creme-filled Locust-flour Doughnut!

A new food classification?

And where do you place insects on the great Animal-Vegetable continuum?

Many vegetarians say they define their dietary restrictions with the statement that they, “won’t eat anything with a face.” Okay. Do insects have faces, as such? Perhaps, yes, in the case of Grasshoppers and such. But what about Worms and such?

Would an Earthworm or Night Crawler Burger be vegetarian? Maybe. Vegan? Probably not. Maybe.

But for now…

Think about what your future might look like if insects become the only food source we of the financially-damned 99 per cent can afford…

Ready to sit down to a bowl full of Crispy Puffed Fly Larva cereal for breakfast?

Looking forward to your lunchtime sandwich of Soy Protein Pseudo Meat with Green Algae Tapanade on yummy Whole-Shell Earwig Flour Bread?

Save room for that special Earthworm Meat-Like-Loaf Mom has in the oven for supper!

Then fire up the streaming video and kick back with a six pack of cold ones and a big bowl of hot, crunchy Popped Crickets smothered in melted Buttery-Flavoured Vegetable Oil Margarine and Salt.

The end to a perfect day?

~ Maggie J.