Mealworm quiche, grasshopper springrolls and cuisine made from other creepy crawlies is the answer to the global food crisis, shrinking land and water resources and climate-changing carbon emissions, Dutch scientist Arnold van Huis says.
The professor at Wageningen University in the Netherlands said insects have more protein than cattle per bite, cost less to raise, consume less water and don’t have much of a carbon footprint. He even has plans for a cookbook to make bug food a more appetizing prospect for mature palates.
“Children don’t have a problem with eating insects, but adults with developed eating habits do, and only tasting and experience can make them change their minds,” Van Huis said.
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Van Huis has organized lectures, food tastings and cookery classes with a master chef who demonstrates how to prepare a range of recipes using bugs, worms and grasshoppers, all bred – or raised – at a Dutch insect farm for consumption.
Chef Henk van Gurp, who created recipes for mealworm quiche and chocolate pralines with buffalo worms, sees no reason to disguise the ingredients, and sprinkles mealworms on top of the quiche filling and onto the chocolate buffalo worms as protein.
“I try to make my food in a way that people can see what they eat,” he told Reuters.
Van Huis says Europeans should consider insects an alternative source of protein because they can contain up to 90 per cent protein, compared with 40-70 per cent for beef.
Insects are already bred as food for birds, lizards and monkeys at a farm near the university, and now the owners see a chance to sell bugs for human consumption.
Duyugu Tatar, a 24-year old IT consultant who attended a recent lecture and food tasting at the university, was less effusive about the mealworm quiche.
“The taste was not that awful, but the idea of eating them horrified me. It was crispy. The taste was not like normal food. Not like meat, vegetable, or fruit. Maybe something like cornflakes,” she said.
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“Thetastewasnotthat awful,buttheideaof eatingthemhorrified me.Itwascrispy.”
– DUYUGU TATAR, HAVING TASTED MEALWORM QUICHE
