Taking a good look at the future of food

How does a maggot sausage dog and a big bowl of insect ice cream sound?

I’m not too sure about the maggot sausage. Maggot seem like something that would eat sausage, not something you would make into sausage.

According to a recent CNN article that popped up on my phone’s news feed. An Australian research scientist believes eating insects could be the solution to a looming food protein crisis.

I guess it makes sense because John the Baptist was supposed to be living on a diet of honey and locusts when he was in the wilderness. It is also possible that the manna that appeared each morning for the Israelites in the desert might have been tamarind lice or even a gourmet locust.

The Old Testament gave instruction in Leviticus on which insects were acceptable to eat and which ones were unclean. Joint-legged insects like grasshoppers, locusts, crickets and katydids were OK and most other flying insects were unclean.

TV survival expert Bear Gryllis loves nothing better than a juicy grub when he’s been without food for a day or two. I’m not sure I’ve seen him eat maggots, though.

Back in junior high it was a fad for some time that some of the boys were bringing insects to school in little baggies that they had specially prepared. Chocolate covered ants and grasshoppers that had been baked, dried or pan fried. I turned down that opportunity to expand my palate at the risk of being jeered.

The premise of the CNN article was that beef and chicken weren’t sustainable and I guess they were advocating the consumption of wild insects as well as other protein like rabbit or kangaroo meat. Seems like our experience with the American Bison would prove that eating wild protein may not pan out. We would just eat until something becomes extinct.

The article goes on to say that, while eating insects is no big deal in some parts of the world, for Americans it could be a hard sell. The solution he believes is putting these alternative protein sources in a processed item that resembles something we’re OK with eating.

Yeah, that might be the only way you’ll get me to eat earth worms.

A little extra research on eating bugs led me to these interesting facts:

• Crickets are half the fat and a third more protein than beef

• Cicadas taste like asparagus

• Scorpions and dragonflies taste like soft-shell crab

Those facts do get my attention because I like soft-shell crab and asparagus and who wouldn’t want less fat and more protein in a crunchy snack with a soft center?

Karl Terry writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at:

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