If you eat a 500 gram steak, you’re also eating about 7,700 litres of water. Most of that goes into watering the six square metres of corn or grain required to feed each half-kilo of cow. And sure, half a kilo of cow served with salad and fries is a tasty meal, but it’s also a grossly inefficient way of getting protein. And especially when you consider that Planet Earth gains an extra 83 million people every year—all of whom want to eat protein.
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But there’s a solution. Food scientists call it entomophagy, which is the practice of eating insects. They say that a bug-heavy diet could provide our swelling population with all the same proteins, fats, amino acids, vitamins, and minerals as traditional livestock, but without the strain on our natural resources.The United Nations has been instrumental in this push, forcing entomophagy into popular culture with the 2013 paper: Edible insects: future prospects for food and feed security. The paper was downloaded 2.4 million times in just 24 hours, and as you may recall, 2013 was a big year for people saying stuff like: “apparently hamburgers in the future will be made from locusts.”But now, five years later, that still isn’t happening. The world’s ecosystems are in worse shape while another half-billion people have been born. And still, no one’s eating bugs, which makes me wonder: is an insect diet really a solution?I decided to find out.
Preparation
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Monday
Needing help, I contacted Professor Arnold Van Huis, who is the world’s leading expert in entomophagy and co-author on that previously mentioned UN paper. I was honest with Arnold about my fear of bugs, and assured me that most people are more receptive to eating insects when they’re hidden. “There has been quite a number of studies on consumer attitudes and those studies point to a few things like burying the insects in things like bread, noodles, or pastas,” he told me over Skype.
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But the challenge, he admitted, was replacing all my vegan protein staples, like tofu and legumes, with bugs. “Don’t make it a snack,” he recommended. “The challenge is to turn it into staple foods.”Later that night I reheated my lunch and the larvae stir-fry wasn’t terrible. Their hard bodies added a “shallot” texture to the meal, but I could only eat half a bowl because I could see their eyes watching me. I also got paranoid about getting a leg stuck in my teeth and then went to bed feeling like a failure.
Tuesday
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That night I approached dinner in a spirit of competition. If a 12-year-old could eat bugs, why couldn’t I? So I beer-battered some tarantulas, and although the two fist-sized arachnids were the most intimidating of the bug haul, their bodies were leathery and chewy and undeniably gourmet.As a side note: none of my housemates could watch me eat the tarantulas, which was a little irritating. All of them eat meat on the regular, but they were disgusted by tarantulas. Why?
Wednesday
Maybe I needed a little hand-holding. So I hassled my boyfriend into eating cricket fritters with me, made from processed vegetables and crickets. And although the burgers were sloppy, watching him eat a critter-quarter-pounder made me feel safe. I managed to eat half the burger before he suddenly felt sick. Then I felt sick too.
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Not being able to eat all the food I prepared also upset me on a ethical vegan level. Before the diet I’d always polished off every plate—literally licking bowls and knives in restaurants because I figured it was better digested in my stomach than at a tip. But now I was pouring these $15 smoothies down the drain without a second thought. And as someone who loves animals and callously chastises anyone for eating meat, it made no sense.
Thursday
I skipped lunch, still full of confidence, and went straight for dinner. But that night I was making chapuline tortillas when I discovered a blonde hair sealed into the packaging. Already revolted, the chapulines—which were a very large and very intimidating species of brown grasshopper—now seemed dangerously unhygienic. So again, everything snowballed and I had another meltdown in the kitchen.Interestingly, Professor Arnold Van Hius had told me that bugs are an infinitely safer meal than livestock. Pigs are a lot closer to humans, he explained. “If they have pathogens that means their pathogens can be dangerous for humans.” So I reminded myself that grasshoppers are too taxonomically distant to present a pathogen threat and forced down the tortilla. But then I threw it up and continued to cry.
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Friday
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