Want Cheap, Eco-Friendly, Healthy Fare? Try Eating Bugs

This Saturday, diners will gather at The Brooklyn Kitchen to savor an $85, four-course, prix-fixe dinner. As the New York Daily News reports, they won't sample pork loin or kobe beef or grilled salmon or any of the usual foodie fare. Rather, they'll eat an assortment of dishes featuring bugs (yes, as in insects), such as sauteed mealworms with yucca in a garlic and chipotle sauce.

The Brooklyn Kitchen isn't alone in serving up insects. According to the Wall Street Journal, across America, a small class of consumers are starting to embrace entomophagy, or bug-eating. In 1998, David George Gordon published the Eat-a-Bug Cookbook, which contains recipes on how to prepare various kinds of creepy crawlers. Rhode Island's David Gracer owns a company that sells processed, edible crickets. Actress Salma Hayek recently appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman and described her penchant for ant eggs and grasshoppers. And as I recently wrote on Change.org, Arnold van Huis, a consultant to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), recently touted bugs as a nutritious and environmentally friendly meal.

Of course, other countries embraced insects as food long ago, with folks in Latin America and Asia regularly snacking on locusts and even scorpions. And they may be onto something: Bugs are not only high in protein — they're low in fat, carry extremely low carbon footprints, and are cheap to produce. They possess all the traits necessary to become the next sustainable superfood.

Meat's impact on the environment is well-documented, with livestock production creating about 18 percent of the globe's greenhouse gas emissions. Even fruits and veggies typically take a lot of resources — like water, fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, and mechanized farm equipment — to produce. Bugs are naturally plentiful, and raising them as a food source would only require minimal resources. Plus, some insects like locusts are notorious agricultural pests. Eating them would reduce the need for environmentally degrading chemical pesticides.

Not only do bugs tread lightly (or in some cases, fly lightly), they're a cheap and nutritious food source. Bugs boast high amounts of protein and low amounts of fat. Perhaps America's obesity epidemic wouldn't be at such massive proportions (literally) if more folks took up entomophagy.

Granted, most consumers would need to get over that ick factor associated with crunching on caterpillars. Just thinking about a cricket leg brushing up against my tongue triggers my gag reflex. But if bugs boast the sustainable foodie traits experts claim they do, I'm willing to take a bite in the name of saving the planet and eating healthy. Plus, cover anything in garlic and chipotle sauce, and it's dinner to me.

Photo credit: gmorisey@sbcglobal.net via Flickr