Friday Follies: Green Bugs to Replace Red Meat On Your Plate?

Here’s some news that’s sure to make you explosively hurl your breakfast cereal reconsider your next steak dinner. A Dutch scientist, whose name shall forever live in infamy is Arnold van Huis, claims to have the answer. The question is, what do we do about the emerging global food crisis?

His answer doesn’t fit the usual profile of options to consider.

Dr. van Huis advocates changing our eating habits. Dramatically. Indeed, he says we need to eat bugs. Lots and lots of bugs. His reasoning?

“Children don’t have a problem with eating insects,” he told Reuters.

The problem for adults is psychological, he said, and “only tasting and experience can make them change their minds.”

Now there’s some words of wisdom from the scientific community. (I’m sure glad he isn’t a chemist; I shudder at what he’d suggest then.) The good professor goes on to note that insects have more protein than cattle, per bite. Think of super-sizing your steak while you munch the crunchy extra-legged critters. He also notes that they cost less to raise, consume less water and don’t have much of a carbon footprint. (Some leave lots of tiny footprints, though.)

Margot Callis, who runs the farm that provides van Huis and van Gurp with their, er, starting materials, notes: “It’s good food, of high nutritional value and very healthy for elderly people.” Just the possibility that I’ll be eating this sort of thing in my dotage is enough to ever prevent me from growing old!

Van Huis is not just a man of words; he’s taking action commensurate with his claims. He has teamed with chef Henk van Gurp (now there’s a name to conjure with) to produce a cookbook and “suitable recipes,” such as mealworm quiche, and chocolate pralines with buffalo worms. Arnold notes prophetically, “Once international leading chefs begin preparing this food, others will follow.”

Me, I don’t plan to be an industry leader in the consumption of this stuff. When I was a kid, a good joke was, “What’s worse than finding a worm in your apple?” Half a worm, of course. The conditioning that makes that a great punchline isn’t likely to be changed by a few academic experiments. My guess, I’m not alone in that feeling. I’ll leave such experimentation to the younger generations; after all, they already like the stuff, eh, Dr. van Huis?

Enjoy the (Creepy Crawly Crunchy) Heat!