If you imagine eating insects, well, you might already be gagging. All those creepy, crawly legs? The hard exoskeleton? To gooey inside? Yeah, no thanks.
But actually, not everyone around the world feels that way.
It's primarily in Western cultures that eating bugs is considered gross — even though eating shellfish, lobsters, and snails is considered okay — but in other areas of the world, snacking on a grasshopper or a mealworm is totally normal. And people think they're delicious! (Still, in other areas, they'd rather stick to food that just looks like a bug.)
Some people feel that with the human population exploding and the planet's resources under heavy strain, eating bugs might be a way to combat food shortages and hunger. But many people aren't quite sold on that.
Would you eat a bug? Even if it didn't look like a bug? See if these dishes from around the world change your mind — or reinforce your anti-bug stance.
(h/t: Lost At E Minor)
In various parts of the world, bugs are eaten as snacks. These deep-fried insects are being sold as street food in Bangkok, Thailand. The selection includes locusts, bamboo worms, crickets, scorpions, and giant water beetles.
In Oaxaca, Mexico, grasshoppers are commonly eaten as a snack. Called chapulines, they're collected during the summer, cleaned, and toasted on a clay griddle with garlic, lime juice, and salt. They can also be found sold as snacks in stadiums.
In Jinan, China, street vendors sell fried larvae on skewers. While the outside is tough and chewy, the inside is described as having a consistency like tofu.
In Sardinia, a cheese called casu marzu (literally "rotten cheese") is known for containing live maggots. Thousands of them. These maggots can jump about six inches in the air when disturbed, too. Some people remove the maggots before eating the cheese. Others prefer to leave them in.
Some people would like to see insects become a more mainstream selection — and some cooks, like the people at Bug Vivant, even offer recipes, like these chapulines tostadas. You may be surprised to learn that humans can actually eat quite a large number of insects. They just usually don't want to.
Basically, any protein in Mexican cuisine (beef, pork, chicken, etc.) can be replaced with grasshoppers.
For those of you who understand the logical benefits of eating bugs but still can't bring yourselves to put all those LEGS in your mouth, there's something for you, too. Cricket flour is a flour made from toasted and pulverized crickets. It's insect, but it doesn't look that way, and it packs extra protein, too!
If you never told them, you could literally feed your guests crickets and they would never know. Heck, maybe someone's done that to you already!
This video talks about the advantages, and possibly the reality, of human consumption of insects. It's something to think about!
How adventurous are you really with your eating?
Please SHARE if you find these nutritious — and sometimes delicious — creepy, crawly recipes fascinating!
