I’ve never had an aversion to strange food. If anything, I relish the opportunity to seek it out. Live Octopus? Check. Balut (a developing duck embryo still in its shell)? Check that one off too… even if it wasn’t one of my better decisions. But far from putting these various “delicacies” in my mouth for the sake of being disgusting (although I would’ve done quite well on Fear Factor), I’m always hopeful that each one is (ugly) delicious. And even when they’re not, I often find that the bark is usually much worse than the bite. Case in point - edible bugs.

I could give you all sorts of stats on why bugs should be considered the food of the future. With over 2,000 edible species discovered, bugs are already commonplace in many parts of the world that don’t have a McDonald’s or Taco Bell on ever corner. From a nutritional standpoint, bugs contain more protein (pound for pound) than traditional choices like beef and poultry. They also contain as much fiber, vitamins, and minerals as most of the grains, fruits and vegetables we eat today. And due to their size, less space is needed to farm this particular food source which means less greenhouse gas emission, less water pollution, and less economic burden for their care & maintenance. I could go on with all the benefits, but I suspect it wouldn’t make you any more willing to give any of these multi-legged creatures a try. It’s a hard thing to swallow (literally), so that’s why I’ve decided to give them a try on your behalf.

To conduct this noble experiment, I ordered my creepy crawlers from a company based in Maine called EntoMarket. As you would imagine, there are only a handful of companies out there that currently sell edible bugs to the public (I’ve listed some of them below under “resources”) and EntoMarket seemed to have one of the widest arrays to chose from with reasonable prices. Each of my purchases were less than $10 (expect for my pack of Manchurian Scorpions which cost $25), so the dent to my wallet was negligible which is a nice bonus. I wanted to try a variety of bugs to see what kind of difference a species might have in taste or consistency so I basically ordered everything they had in stock ranging from BBQ flavored mealworms to curry crickets to giant june bugs (you can see the entire order in my package opening video below). Most of my purchase were ready-made snacks so I brought them into work with me to see if anyone would partake. Only a brave few did, but what we quickly learned (as is the case with many of the bizarre delectables I’ve tried) was that the bugs were so over-seasoned with their particular flavorings that this was all you could taste instead of the bug itself.

Undeterred, I took my box of bugs home and tried to see if I could incorporate them into some cooking (pictures below). Yet again, what stood out the most was the seasoning that each pack of bugs was doused in. In the end, all they really added to any dish was a nice little crunch akin to a handful of crumbled potato chips (of that same flavor). I completely understand that the seasoning is meant to ease you past the gateway into this brave new world of edible bugs, but next time I think I’m going to try my luck with an unfiltered batch in order to get to the meat of the matter. Pun intended.