Sunday, June 2, 2024
YOU HAVE TO BREAK EGGS TO MAKE A CICADA OMLETE
A ONCE IN 17 YEAR
OPPORTUNITY
TO
TAKE A BITE
OUT OF
CLIMATE CHANGE &
NOISE POLLUTION
GRIST
REPORTS :
Cicadas à la carte?
Here’s why it’s so hard to get Americans to eat bugs
Lobbyists, conspiracy theories, and your "ick" factor stand in the way
By
AYURELLA HO
Edible insects could decarbonize America's food system. But lobbyists,
conspiracy theories, and your "ick" factor stand in the way.
When Cortni Borgerson thinks about the
trillion or so periodical cicadas
emerging from underground, she sees more than clumsily flying insects
flitting from tree to tree in search of a mate. She sees lunch.
Some may find that idea revolting, a belief often, if unknowingly, steeped
in colonialism and the notion that eating insects is "
uncivilized
." But
Borgerson, an anthropologist at Montclair State University, is a big fan
of dining on bugs of all kinds, but finds cicadas particularly appetizing.
"It's one of the best American insects," she says.
Their texture, she says, is something like peeled shrimp, and their taste
akin to what you'd experience
"if a chicken nugget and a sunflower seed had a baby
"Some insects have an incredible opportunity, and a potential, to reduc
e our carbon footprint in a delicious, but sustainable, way," she says.
Roughly 30 percent of the world's population considers insects a delicacy
A
study
published earlier this year found that over 3,000 ethnic groups
across 128 countries eat 2,205 species of Insecta,
Julie Lesnik, an anthropologist at Wayne State University who
studies the
Western bias toward eating things like
beetles, calls the "ick" response
many Americans have toward the idea a cultural byproduct of
colonization
.
"Disgust is felt very viscerally and biologically," she says. "So to tell
somebody their aversion to insects is cultural and not physiologically
programmed is a difficult thing to wrap your head around, because
you can feel your stomach turn, you can feel the gag reflex come up
if you are disgusted by the idea of eating insects. But disgust is one of
the few learned emotions. So we are disgusted by the things our culture
tells us to be disgusted by."
Such a reaction also can be a sign of internalized prejudice, she says
. Indigenous peoples throughout North America once
consumed a variety
of insects
, a practice European colonists deemed "uncivilized" — a way to "other" nonwhite communities and cultural practices.
"Is it racist? Yes, simply put," Lesnik says.
Newer Post
Older Post
Home