The future of our grub might have more legs than you think
Insects are a high-protein food source, according to veterinarian and epidemiologist’s new book
As someone who grows Monarch butterflies, loathes earwigs, respects bees and is allergic to wasp stings, I have a conflicted relationship with insects. So do most of us.
But listen up, foodies: insects are a potentially major food source, writes David Waltner-Toews in Eat the Beetles! — and a high-protein, low-fat, tasty one, at that.
Waltner-Toews is delighted insects are hopping up on menus globally. He recounts his personal tastings of palm weevil larvae in Paris (they taste like figs), lime-fried crickets in Laos, caramel mealworms and chocolate-covered locusts in London.
And for anyone who’s squeamish, or even screamish, he asks: is a plate of insects any weirder grub than a plate of chicken wings?
But Eat the Beetles! isn’t a cookbook. Waltner-Toews, a Kitchener, Ont., veterinarian and epidemiologist who studies ecosystem approaches to health and disease, focuses on a bigger picture: our planet’s once-in-a-millennium chance to create a well-managed, sustainable insect-based food system — and not screw it up, as we’ve done with our resource-grabbing beef industry or disease- plagued chicken production.
Entomophagy — the practice of eating insects — isn’t new. Such critters form part of the traditional diets of two billion people. But it’s largely unregulated. Waltner-Toews raises some critical issues: sustainability (runaway demand in Africa for mopane worms is threatening the moths’ population); food safety (raw insects need careful food handling); and inequality (globally, women and children are the primary insect foragers, while the more lucrative wholesale trade remains the preserve of men).
The author, who is the founding president of Veterinarians Without Borders, also looks at how to humanely harvest insects.
Waltner-Toews ( The Origin of Feces, The Chickens Fight Back) punctuates this serious subject with his quirky humour. He riffs on beetles/Beatles puns with corny chapter headings such as “Cricket to Ride” and “Can’t Buy Me Bugs,” and sometimes veers off in literary, linguistic or musical directions.
He revels in insect trivia. (Congrats to the tiny lesser water boatman, whose “singing penis” can generate 90 decibels.)
The book offers more questions than answers. But for backyard cricket foragers, high-tech-entrepreneurs or regular food shoppers and restaurant patrons, Eat the Beetles! is an essential part of a growing buzz. Marcia Kaye is a frequent contributor to these pages.