Jiminy Cricket! Bugs for dinner?
When the salad I made for lunch today needed something more, I dumped the last of my daughter’s goldfish crackers on top of it.
When Laura-Lee Guitard’s leafy greens are lacking, she doesn’t follow my lead. She doesn’t even reach for the common crouton. Instead, Guitard opts for roasted crickets to give her spring mix more crunch.
They might be honey garlic-flavoured, maybe sour cream and chive. But always unmistakably those critters known more for singing us to sleep at night than souping up our salads.
“It’s just an earthy, nutty flavour,” Guitard says. “It’s a mild flavour and not overwhelming.”
How they taste might be subdued, but for many the thought of deliberately eating winged or crawly things is downright intimidating. Gross, even.
Guitard knows this. Not only does she include crickets and mealworms in her diet, she also sells them with the hope others might decide to wing it at dinner and try some in a stir-fry.
Guitard is the proprietor of The Bug Buggy, her six-month-old business venture at St. Catharines Farmers Market that she hopes will make eating bugs more mainstream in Niagara.
She isn’t trying to be a fly in the ointment by suggesting we consider swapping our usual protein powder for ground crickets in our smoothies. In fact, it’s no great leap to sell — or eat — insects. Environmentalists tout it as the protein of the future for steak-loving North Americans.
One kilogram of beef requires 22,000 litres of water and 10 kilograms of feed to produce. One kilogram of crickets, by contrast, needs less than one litre of water and only 1.7 kilograms of feed.
Add to that the world’s swelling population and increasing appetite for prime cuts, and there’s a potential environmental disaster in the making. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, current livestock production will need to double to feed the world by 2050.
That means more land and water are required to keep us sated.
Then there are the effects of animal waste on the environment, and the increase in greenhouse gasses exacerbating climate change. Insects don’t do that, apparently.
“I’d say within the next 100 years or so, you’re going to see a lot more bugs in a lot more products, and a lot less people grossed out by it,” Guitard says. “It’s just getting past the mindset.”
If anything, we’re 100 years behind the times for not controlling our gag reflex in the presence of pasta with mealworm bolognese.
Bugs make up nearly two-thirds of dietary protein in rural Africa. In Ghana, termites are a toothsome favourite for protein and fat. Snacking on roasted crickets, grasshoppers and certain worms is the Thai equivalent of eating peanuts when downing a tall, cold one.
And in South Korea, where Guitard first dabbled in entomophagy, the fancy word for eating bugs, they’re the cornerstone of many street vendors’ business plans.
Guitard recalls leaving an amusement park to find rows of vendors selling crickets they scooped by the ladle into frying pans and served in paper cones.
“I didn’t know if I was brave enough to do that but I said if they’re dead, I’ll give them a try.” She did, and they “tasted good.” Suddenly, selling edible insects became her business plan. No one else was doing it in Niagara. So she struck while the cast-iron frying pan was hot and began selling dryroasted whole crickets and mealworms, ground crickets to use as seasoning or a protein boost, bug-filled energy bars, pasta sauce and even dog treats, all sourced from Canadian producers.
She’s starting with her market stall but hopes to open a “one-stop entomophagy shop.”
So far, she’s found her niche with adventurous folk who will try anything; the well-travelled who are unfazed by snacking on crickets at home after devouring scorpion overseas; and the health-conscious types keen to cash in on all the protein, calcium, vitamin B12 and omega fatty acids crickets are said to contain.
Her crickets even appear on the menu of a local Mexican restaurant.
“Those are the ones who try it. I’ve had some interesting reactions. I’ve had one person say it ought to be illegal,” Guitard says.
To help people overcome their disgust, she uses a deliberately cute logo to promote her wares. She answers questions about the humane treatment of the bugs on Entamo Farms in Peterborough where her products are raised. And Guitard has plenty of recipes to share.
Her favourite way to eat them is fried, soaked in bulgogi sauce for 10 to 15 minutes first. But for the more squeamish, she suggests starting with cricket powder sprinkled atop a favourite dish.
“Some people have the mindset, ‘If I can’t see it, I’m OK with it,’” Guitard says. “Once you get over that hurdle, you find yourself open to something more adventurous.”