Recently a friend order a bag of edible grasshoppers and the nutritional content is surprisingly good! Doesn’t really taste like anything and I feel if you’re comfortable with stuff like shrimps and lobsters than insects should be fine.
Great for the environment BUT it seems to be ridiculously expensive right now. So I’m wondering - would you ever seriously consider insects as a nutrition source?
Absolutely. The ick factor only comes from how they are presented.
If I had to hack a steak out of a still steaming cow, I’d probably not be interested in eating it. If it’s trimmed and seared to perfection, I’m diving in.
Same with insects. If it’s a bowl full of spiders, or a bunch of half-smashed junebugs on a slice of bread, I’m out.
I will eat whatever is tasty and/or fits my nutritional needs. Within that, I will weigh things like cost, sustainability and convenience, but they’re not my only considerations. If there were insect-based dishes which tasted good and had good nutritional value, I’d eat it like I eat everything else.
As an example, I was eating a cookie that I get at work once in a while and realized after months of eating them that they are gluten free. I don’t really care that they’re gluten free, I just like them and they work as a snack. Insects would have to be like that if were to eat them–I shouldn’t be choosing them or avoiding them because they’re insects.
Yes. I’d need to deep dive into how the insects are handled and processed into whatever food I’m eating, though. Not necessarily for moral reasons, though it’s always nice to know when something is handled humanely. My main hesitance revolves around associating bugs with filth. I’d want to feel confident that a protein bar made from grasshoppers is just as clean/safe as a peanut butter bar.
I’ve had a few things like salt & pepper grasshoppers, chilli crickets etc. Not offensive at all. They must have been all fried or something because they were as crunchy as pork scratchings.
I imagine if you had whole load, shelled and ground into paste, they’d probably make an alright meat substitute if seasoned properly.
I think I saw in a film once, a bunch of folk in a dystopian future found out their protein bar rations were made out of ground up bugs and folk went nuts over it.. food is food. It was processed enough so they couldn’t tell so i guess it wasn’t that big of an issue
Been there, done that. Not that bad when prepared but I don’t think I’m ready for raw. What may seem ridiculous to us is common in many other cultures and I’ve shared in some of those customs in my travels. Just found out about black ant salt last night and now I’m trying to source some!
I’ve had many different types of bugs flavored in numerous ways. I prefer savory over sweet but I like having variety in my protein choices. Grasshoppers, ants, mole crickets, silkworms, crickets, sago worms, all eaten whole and dehydrated. I don’t think I want to try any larger bugs than that though, at least on my own dime. But if I were offered a tarantula or scorpion, seasoned right? Sure.
The problem is grasshoppers are insects so they might have a large amount of insecticide in them. This should scare people off. The US uses a lot of insecticide to protect her crops.
It’s not so good for the environment. Locust (a type of grasshopper) is a pest. Breeding pest doesn’t sound like a good idea.
Here’s the real issue: its nutrition value is not significantly better when compared to the problems they have above, including entomophobia. The benefit isn’t big enough, so I wouldn’t say yes.
I’d love more access to insect flours and baked products. Depending on the price, taste, and how the texture is for baked goods, I’d consider switching over from grain flours/regularly supplementing them.
Whole bugs, I don’t think so. I’m just not there yet.
I love prawns/ seafood, but can’t overcome the gross factor when it comes to thinking of eating insects. And there’s no logic to it, as so many of the things I eat are also gross (offal, for example). It’s just a yuck factor in my head, and I don’t see any need to overcome it at this stage.
Definitely. As long as they’re ground up I guess? I believe Locust powder is already a thing and is a notable source of protein.
I think I’m put off more by the presentation and textured associated with insects.
I’d have no problem eating them if I was starving or had no other food source, but insect protein I feel like was captured perfectly in Snowpiercer. A means to feed the masses cheaply and sustainably while the upper classes enjoy their real meat. So morally I would never support it.
No. More power to you, if you want to but we simply don’t have great evidence one way or another re: long term health effects of using insects as a primary, or even supplemental, source of protein. Not sure what regulations are in place regarding how they’re cultivated, what their food source is, what their living conditions are like, how they are processed, where they are coming from, what’s the potential environmental impact of mass scale insect agriculture… many questions. Here’s one example of a question I’d have: could certain insects have carcinogenic effects if eaten in large amounts over a sustained amount of time? Possibly, not sure we’ll have good data on that anytime soon… as imperfect as they are, I’ll stick with the current protein options we have.
Yes, but probably on only two conditions. A) There is absolutely NOTHING else available (imagine being locked in a cell of some sort). Or B) some sadist has decided that that was the only condition upon which s/he would spare the life of a loved one. Heck, I’d probably do it to spare the life of a stranger, especially if it was a child.
Please tell me it would be crickets or grasshoppers, though. I had an aunt who loved grasshoppers, so I could see that. Just don’t let it be cockroaches, spiders or silverfish /shudder.
Pretty much 2 billion people around the world have insects in their normal diet. Enough to know that it is a decent option for a protein source. Insects are really cheap to farm. Probably you were buying some imported packaged product hence the expense.
Yes, I eat grasshoppers, ants and worms already. They are just snacks you eat with mezcal sometimes. But I’m sure we could come up with interesting ways to eat them. I’ve tried replacing panko with grasshopper before with mixed success on fried food.
I could see bugs like crickets being used as the base for textured protein products.
I guess the real issue is that bug parts are currently part of the food safety score per the FDA. Seeing as how all crickets are bugs, I’d be curious to know how they would detect foreign bugs in a partially/wholly processed batch. It’s easy enough to detect such things in non-bug products. Without genetic analysis, how would it be determined that only the bugs you were expecting are in your cricket flour?
I HATE shellfish for that exact reason.. I think the only way I’d ever touch bugs as a good product is if they were powdered and part of a shake product, or something of the sort. Or maybe part of bread ingredients. Even then, the idea makes me shudder..
I’ve had a couple of cricket flour protein bars. They were pretty good, better than some other brands of bars I’ve tried even. I also bought a bag of chili crickets that I can’t bring myself to eat cause I have texture issues (I don’t like “normal” stuff that people are totally fine with such as shrimp, big chunks of fat, etc).
I am vegan so I sure wouldn’t seek them out, but I’m aware that they’re already present in some of the food I eat. My concern would be the impact on my health - humans revile insects and associate them with disease for good reason, I imagine.
Sure. But I want them to taste good.
I’m all for more sustainable versions of foods I love, whether that be meat-substitutes or bug-meal, but I want it to taste as good and be as healthy or healthier if I’m going to make the swap for the majority of meals. Insects have the health bit down, but their taste still needs work.
There are plenty of plant-based sources of pure nutrition (like Huel and Soylent), so just getting calories in a reasonable way isn’t worth making the switch as there are easy options. If I’m going to make the switch for my actual meals, I want it to be tasty.
i tried them and they all tasted amazing, especially the self caught grasshoppers.
then i bought an “insect starter kit” with freeze dried mealworms and so on for 50€ and found out that i’m severely allergic to them :(
really sad since i planned to raise some myself with kitchen scraps.
they are nutrictionally very healthy, taste good, are relatively environmentally friendly and propably don’t feel pain.so they could be a good addition to most diets, maybe even for some vegetarians.
Mmmmmm… the General Store at Jellystone sells dried & seasoned ants and crickets and the only thing stopping me from gobbling them ALL up was the price. Super prohibitive. Verry Delicious though, with a variety of flavorings, sweet to savory.
People so violently refusing to eat them as if it makes them some gigachad is pathetic. It’s bizarre how terrified some people are of the idea and the sheer visceral disgust people have over it is beyond me. Particularly I’ve seen temper tantrum crybaby level reactions over it. It’s particularly present in some of the communities I tend to browse. The bravery isn’t rejecting them. The bravery is eating them. These people think they’re warriors against the nebulous new world order boogeyman for screaming and crying over them. To be chad is to eat the bug. To resist is to eat the bug. You are weak.
Absolutely would and have already, I’ve ate crickets, but ultimately I wound up finding them gross just in terms of taste. Those were whole roasted crickets. Couldn’t eat barely any, they’re like a slightly bitter completely tasteless boring stale chip and I still couldn’t really stomach them all with the flavorings I got. Matter of fact I got a bug pack and apart from crickets I had some other bugs and most of them were outright disgusting in my opinion. One felt like tasting vomit.
I’d absolutely eat cricket protein bars and consider insect protein powder if it were cheaper and eat them very regularly, ant protein powder sounds appealing to me, but at the moment as you said it’s not economic at all for what you get because insect farming hasn’t really come far much yet.
I did intense research into this many months ago when I was exploring the compatibility of and reasoning in insect consumption with veganism, entoveganism, and they’re extremely beneficial so it’d absolutely benefit to include in. Reason for that being, well, the whole animal in multiples. You know how organs are super nutritious? Yeah.
Some bold claims, possibly dubious since they come from insect protein promoting companies, include insects in one package having simultaneously more iron than spinach and more Omega-3s than fatty fish that struck me, and being high quality protein by weight as well. Plus it’s a meat product with fiber. Also, apparently solid amounts of calcium.
Powder anything and it’s easy in a shake. Honestly as a strength athlete with a high metabolism, most days I wish I could drink the majority of my nutrition and calories. I need about 3200-3700 calories a day, and after the first 2200 or so, I get really tired of eating.
I’ve eaten whole roasted crickets before and they were ok tasting but not preferable to like, hot chips. Unless they’re fried or roasted to a crisp I feel like most insect texture would be awful. But if it was ground up into a flour or paste and made into something else I probably wouldn’t care at all.
Ate grasshoppers fried in butter and sriracha at a restaurant once, was good asf.
Would i make them myself though? I hardly doubt it.
Oh and i’ve accidentally had proteinbars with protein from grasshoppers, was OKish
Yup, as long as they aren’t bug shaped. I am weird like this with seafood too. I love crab and lobster, so long as they aren’t crab and lobster shaped. Then I start thinking and start getting nauseous.
I thought about it since I already grow dubia roaches for my gecko and I felt like maybe I could do a roach flour of some sort maybe but turns out my shellfish allergy makes it so I’m actually allergic to insects too so that would be a bad idea.
If I was dying yes. If they are other choices then he’ll no. I’m a chef and can cook amazing food that gives you excellent nutrition. Eating bud for your nutrition over regular food is a slap in the face to my profession