Why eating bugs is good for your health and the environment

Posted by admin

July 12, 2012

What would it taste like to eat a cricket? That’s what I wondered recently while watching a mother bird feed its fat, hungry babies. As it happens, Chicago’s Brookfield Zoo has an insect chef serving crickets on the weekends this summer, so I had the chance to find out!

While at Brookfield’s Xtreme Bugs exhibit, I tasted crickets prepared two ways: toasted with Cajun spices (tastes like crunchy sunflower seeds) and in sweet banana-cricket pancakes. No legs and no antennae tickled my tongue – just crunchiness. I could not bring myself to eat the mealy bug larvae cookies. But talking with the chef who prepared the bug delicacies gave me confidence, as she is also a trained entomologist (insect scientist). With her expertise, I knew she would only serve up safe and tasty bug food to a wary public.

Raising animals, especially cattle, to fulfill the human demand for meat, is costly both financially and environmentally (as explained further in our latest EcoMyths article). According to a report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, “livestock now use 30 percent of the earth’s entire land surface” and are a major source of deforestation around the world. The livestock sector also produces significant levels of greenhouse gases, mostly from manure, including 65 percent of human-produced nitrous oxide, a much more damaging greenhouse gas than even CO2. So, could eating bugs replace some of our craving for meat? We think so.

Health

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