SHOULD HUMANS EAT BUGS?

But why?

In other parts of the world, people have been merrily munching on insects, arachnids, and their kin for thousands of years. In South Africa, the local favorite is the mopane worm, a four-inch-long caterpillar stewed in a tangy tomato sauce. In Thailand, it's giant water bugs, steamed and served á la carte. In rural Brazil, the menu might include roasted termites or winged ants. Indonesian diners eagerly queue up for curried dragonfly, a delicacy they've named Sky Prawn.

But here? You won't find cricket stir-fry on the menu of the Olive Garden or Denny's. Nor are fried ant eggs--the equivalent of caviar in Mexico City's finest restaurants--served at Sardi's or Wolfgang Puck's. Hunt high and low, but I'll bet you won't see pponaegi, lightly seasoned Korean silkworms, among the canned goods at your neighborhood grocery chain.

Yes, it's true. Compared to the rest of the world's cultures, we are bug-deprived … and most of us don't even know what we're missing.

The benefits of bug-eating

Take grasshoppers, for example. Nutritional studies have established that these members of the insect order Orthoptera are more nutritious than so-called conventional meats, with six times the protein of cod or lean ground beef.

Similar studies have shown crickets to be equally healthful. One cup of these half-inch-long delicacies contains 250 calories and only six grams of fat. And women, take note: Crickets are also loaded with calcium. A steady diet of these morsels could slow the onset of osteoporosis.

One hundred grams of silkworm larvae provide 100 percent of the daily requirements for copper, zinc, iron, thiamin, and riboflavin. A single honey bee larva may contain 15 times the recommended daily allowance of vitamins A and D. You can actually overdose on these vitamins by eating too many larval bees.

Need another reason to include insects and other land-dwelling arthropods on our bills of fare? Then consider this: Entomophagy, the practice of eating insects, is much more Earth-friendly than is our reliance on chicken, pork, and beef.

Insect efficiency

It's all about what food scientists call Efficiency of Conversion of Ingested Food (ECI) ratings. These measures are derived by comparing the weight that an animal gains after eating a quantity of food.

Chickens, which produce 38 to 40 pounds of meat from 100 pounds of feed, earn an ECI rating of around 38 or 40. By comparison, beef cattle and sheep get ECI values of 10 and 5.3 respectively.

In other words, 90 percent of a steer's diet and 95 percent of a sheep's diet is wasted, at least from a meat-eater's perspective. No wonder we need to devote such vast tracts of land and deep reservoirs of water to these animals' cultivation.

Now let's look at some ECI values for insects: 19 to 31 for silkworm, 16 to 37 for the pale Western cutworm, and up to 44 for German cockroaches.

No, I'm not suggesting that we all need to eat cockroaches in order to save the planet. I'm just trying to point out how metabolically thrifty certain insects are--and how much food and water we could conserve.

Still not convinced? Then think about how many tons of pesticide we could save by hand-harvesting the competition instead of launching a chemical assault on their ranks. For centuries, Japanese farmers have been catching the grasshoppers that might otherwise nibble on their rice plants.

This way, the farmers can rely on two cash crops from their paddies--the fresh, pesticide-free rice and "rice hoppers" in teriyaki sauce, long considered a delicacy in parts of Japan.


"Be bold," advises Florence Dunkel. To which I add, "Bug appétit."