Eating bugs has been around for thousands of years, and a St. Louis bug expert is reassuring the public that it’s okay to cook some of the noisy flying parts of cicadas.
Senior entomologist Tad Jankowski estimates that roughly two billion people eat insects as part of their daily diet.
“Many of the animals and foods that we eat as delicacies could be said to be insects,” he says. “Crabs, shrimp, and lobsters are very closely related to things like cicadas, and to me the most logical next step is to consider whether things like cicadas might be worth eating.”
Jankowski, who has previously held cooking demonstrations teaching people how to eat cicadas, said the U.S. is in the minority when it comes to regularly incorporating insects into the diet.
“If we can use this as a tool to get people to think about their own thoughts, maybe they’ll try eating a cicada now,” he says, “or maybe in the future they’ll try eating a cricket or something else. The idea is to expose people to a new food, a new novelty, and maybe change their perception a little bit. That’s really what we’re aiming for.”
The benefits of eating insects include their high nutritional value and relatively low environmental impact.
“If you look specifically at the nutritional facts label for cicadas, they actually have slightly more protein per pound than pork or eggs, and significantly less fat. They’re also rich in vitamins and nutrients like calcium and iron,” he said.
But people who are allergic to shellfish are also likely allergic to cicadas and crickets, he said.
Jankowski hopes Missourians will be more open-minded about trying new foods and changing the way they think about food.
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