GOT BUGS?

The big rage now is to eat insects as part of your diet for many reasons....help with global warming, healther diet with less fat and more digestable proteins, ability to gross out your freinds and compete in Fear Factor, or just to be able to survive in the Wild with the added nuance of drinking your own pee (but that will be a different post)

Curious if anyone has conquered the fear of eating insects since I hear it's just a mental thing since there are a lot of cultures that use insects as a large part of the there food source.

Below is a good starting recipe that will help to break the seal on eating insects and would be an excellent family project

Mealworm Chocolate Chip Cookies

1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup oats
1/2 cup chocolate chips
1/4 cup mealworm flour


Cream butter well, then mix in sugar, egg, vanilla flour, salt, baking soda, chocolate chips, oats, and mealworm flour. Drop batter by the teaspoonful on a greased cookie sheet. Bake for 10 minutes at 375 degrees farenheit. This recipe doesn't have much in the way of palpable insect content, but is an excellent way to introduce others (or yourself!) to entomophagy. Even many rather squeamish people will try mealworm cookies, since the cookie format doesn't look "gross" to most people, and since it is rather difficult to actually taste the mealworms, though they enrich the cookie with a somewhat nutty flavor and extra protein.

To make insect flour:
Spread your cleaned insects out on a lightly greased cookie sheet. Set your oven 200 degrees and dry insects for approximately 1-3 hours. When the insects are done, they should be fairly brittle and crush easily. Take your dried insects and put them into a blender or coffee grinder, and grind them till they are about consistency of wheat germ. Use in practically any recipe! Try sprinkling insect flour on salads, add it to soups, your favorite bread recipe, on a boat, with a goat, etc.

Let's do our part for the environment...save a cow, eat a cricket

So I've got to ask... have you conquered your fear? Now, I'm a foodie. I love to eat, I love to cook and I will try absolutely anything at least once (but that doesn't necessarily mean I'll hold it down). Any experience with varieties of insects and how they vary in taste? Have you tried the recipe provided?

I can't believe I'm sitting here thinking about eating a bug.

crunch, crunch, nom, nom

The answer to this question is no....I had two occasions where I inadvertantly had ate bugs
1. I was eating a jelly filled Tastycake (East Coast peeps would know Tastycakes) when I was more then halfway through it when I realized it was covered with ants
2. Eating rice a few months back and realized that it was infested with moth larvae....this was a little bit more difficult to notice other then the two small black dots on many of what I thought was rice

The issue I still am facing is the mental aspect.......plus mealworm powder is not readily available to buy or I would be curious to try it

I think if it didn't look like a bug when I ate it (maybe shaped into a cookie or added as an ingredient in meatloaf), then it would be a little easier to mentally deal with....like the time my mother served us rabbit and told us it was chicken...then I could gradually work up to crickets and german cockroaches

In Japan I've tried grasshoppers and wasps, but both were so heavily flavoured I'd have no idea what the insect itself tasted like. Probably chicken?

When I went to China we visited a silk factory. There was a big boiling pot with all the cocoons soaking, ready to be slipped off their owners. Our taxi driver/guide just scooped one of the desilked pupae up and started munching on it. I can understand eating insects, but under those conditions... No way!

From my flickr:

My friend Ro had a craving and led us down a dark alley where a tall tranny was cooking up insects in the wok. She had a push cart with about a dozen different kind of bugs to choose from, including purple scorpians. I tried some small things which tasted like earth. This huge water bug wasn't going in my mouth but Ro crunched away on several.

Eww.
I ended up eating a pupae in a silk factory (think it was in Burma)- the person leading the group of us around gave one to me and the guide. He ate it no problem and gave me this "it's okay, please do it" ansy look, so I got pressured into it. It was okay.

How come the thought of eating shrimp, crab, and lobster is nice, but the thought of eating a spider is disgusting?

same thing happened to me!
didnt notice the ants at all... was more than half way through, when my brother pointed out the ants
i would have eaten the whole damn thing without knowing i was eating ants!
i wonder if i have eaten insects other than ants and just didn't notice

Oh you have.
I remember reading this article about allowable filth in food with the highest filthy food being Fig Newtons. It listed revolting contents inside of them like a high% of insect parts/heads/ etc. Couldn't eat those things for years after I read that. *shudders*

i love me some fig newtons....

I used to eat ants in primary school during recess and lunch to impress the ladies.

Doesn't work as well these days.

I've eaten a lot of unusual (by American standards) animals. Kangaroo, emu, ostrich, crocodile, alligator, horse, and whale. Unless civilization collapsed and I had no choice, I could never see myself ever eating insects.

I generally don't like shellfish. I will eat the occasional squid or shrimp, but that's about it. I think psychologically, it's the idea of eating an entire animal, not just the muscle tissue, that deters me.

You guys enjoy your mealworm cookies. ;p

Yeah, crickets and scorpions and ants are all cool, but tonight we went to pick up crickets for our gecko and they had a big tub of mealworms out at the lizard store...

My wife's exact words were "Gross, what if they got in your UNDERWEAR?". Somehow I don't think those cookies will be getting made in our apartment any time soon!

Did you like the Emu and Kangaroo?

Kangaroo hasn't really taken off domestically. But I've eaten it a few times

Dude your a man now you should've moved up to moths or something.

I liked both. The kangaroo reminded me of roast beef. They were both part of a sampler platter at a restaurant at The Rocks in Sydney.

Damn I love being vegan.

This is a pretty interesting article:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/artic ... 36,00.html
check out the photo sidebars as well. My brother's an entomologist, so he's eaten a lot of this stuff; he says it's not something he'd want to have to live on, but overall not bad. For me, the nutritional info is what's most fascinating.

i use to feed moths to my geko
and when i got drunk id eat them to