Creep, crawly, crunchy: Can insects feed the future?

Insect-eating, or entomophagy, is practiced in many areas of the world. Why not in the U.S.? Since 2012, start-up companies here have started to turn attention to products made with edible insects such as crickets, grasshoppers and mealworms. Today, at Penn State, we set the table to discuss why we don't use more insects in our diets and how we may be able to go about getting insects on the menu. The discussion, which I moderated, is archived online.

Here are some highlights:

Merits:

-"There are 2,000 species of insects being consumed normally. They are edible and delicious." Florence Dunkel

-"We are all [already] eating insects because they are part of our food supply and are being allowed in at a certain rate." Dorothy Blair

-"Why should we eat them? They are extremely nutritious." Dorothy Blair

-"A fundamental difference between insects and other livestock we raise it that they [insects] are very easy to raise." Bob Anderson

-"Novelty seekers are definitely seeking new products [like insects]." Alyssa Chilton

The barriers we see to more widespread entomophagy:

-"We are an oversanitized, insect-phobic culture and that is the major barrier that we have here." Bob Anderson

-" 'Insects?' 'Insects!' 'Those bars are made of insects?' 'No way!' " Alyssa Chilton, describing a student's aversion to eating insects

How we go forward:

-"Get food scientists on board to develop new products, flavors and textures." Alyssa Chilton

-"I don't use the word insect, I use the word "land shrimp" because they are "land shrimp." I don't call them by their name because we don't eat deer, we eat venison ; we don't eat sheep, we eat lamb." Florence Dunkel

-"Regulations get developed for any number of reasons. I think [with the insect industry] there will be a culturally curious people who will start to eat insects, or we will need to eat insects because of limited food supply, and then it will go full circle: there will be a demand for insects and then government will come in [to implement regulations]." Bob Anderson

What is it like to eat insects?

-"She brought me a bag of [what looked like] lobsters, fried up lobsters. I mean, they looked like lobsters, tiny little lobsters. They were red locusts. They were red and even brighter red after cooking. They looked just like lobsters and they tasted like soft-shell crab." Florence Dunkel