I'm Going to Eat Some Worms

When I was in junior high school, the school musical was Oliver. Food - glorious food! The above video shows the orphans singing and dreaming about having enough food to eat and about having tasty food.  They were tired of porridge and probably suffering from malnutrition, but we were able to have fun and sing and dance and just have a blast.  My sister was one of the singing orphans.  She was a tiny, skinny slip of a girl, so she fit in very well.

My sister also liked to eat bugs.  I don't think she ate all bugs, but she did put chocolate on ants to eat them. I'm not sure if it was to gross other people out or just because she liked the taste of ants. I do know that my sister is a ridiculously picky eater.  She turns her nose up at all sorts of wonderful foods, but would probably sit down with a bowl of chocolate covered ants if I sent them to her.  However, the place I usually see chocolate covered bugs for sale is ThinkGeek, and I'm just not willing to spend $19 just to send my sister a gag gift of chocolate covered protein.

I wonder if she knows that she regularly eats bugs?  I know that I have washed my veggies well and discovered a bug in them while cooking, and I'll admit that I am one of the first people to freak out when such a thing happens.  However, processed food also contains bugs, and the FDA is happy to explain why and how this happens.  They created a system of "action levels" to decide what level of insects, rodent hair, etc., might be in the foods we consume, and they had a good reason to do so.  It's simply impossible to create "perfect" food. Instead, their goal is to manage the levels of what's in our food to ensure that we're getting the least nasty option.

For example, they don't look at pesticides as a way to keep bugs out of our food.  No, pesticides exist to keep growing foods from being eaten and destroyed by bugs. They assume that our food will have bugs in it from a variety of different methods - infestations, contamination, just by virtue of the damned things getting in even when we work to keep them out.  Heck, we've been battling moths in my apartment for months, and now the stupid buggers are just clinging around the kitchen trying to make baby moths RIGHT IN FRONT OF OUR EYES.  It's just mean.  It's not like I am standing in front of the moths with a second individual trying to make baby people in front of their eyes!
 Anyway, I'm off track, and I'm bitter that the moths won't go away.  We aren't interested in having chemicals brought into our home, so we're just sort of hoping they'll disappear.  So far, we're losing the battle.

So we're always eating an allowable amount of things that are generally considered unsavory within the American diet.  What we don't think about is why bugs should be in our diet.  Current food production uses far more resources than it gives back. It's expensive, and it's a really shitty use of our resources.  The environmental impact of cow farming is massive and stinky.  Elizbeth Grossman notes in Yale Environment 360 article that, "According to the EPA, a 2,000-cow dairy generates more than 240,000 pounds of manure daily or nearly 90 million pounds a year. The USDA estimates that the manure from 200 milking cows produces as much nitrogen as sewage from a community of 5,000 to 10,000 people."  Insects are a great source of protein and other nutrients, and they don't create nearly as much sewage!

Try some of the delicious and edible bugs available in the US!

The above photo contains a link to a great resource for bugs, but if you don't think you can handle looking your bug in the eye while you eat it, try out something like this:  milled whole cricket powder. How's that for a great way to enjoy a nice, high protein muffin?

All of this sounds great, but I'm going to be honest - while I don't eat meat very often, I haven't purposely added bugs to my diet, and I don't intend to.  I have the standard American fear of eating bugs.  I can accept that there's certain amounts of bugs in my processed food, but I just can't pick up that chocolate covered grasshopper and pop it in my mouth. This is the one thing that my sister can be more adventurous about than I am. 

That being said, I still love to sing about it!

Have you purposely chosen to include bugs in your diet?  Tell me about it!