By The Campfire

June 27, 2008

We’re all going to be living on bugs in a few years; you know that, don’t you? Roaches, scorpions, grubs, crickets, worms, crispy, crawly crunchies, they are the answer to the coming food shortage – and that shortage is coming. Read around, you’ll see. I’m trying to wrap my head around that insectful situation now.

“Can I get the horsefly onion soup to go, please?”

It’s technically called Entomophagy. Sounds sort of scientific, doesn’t it? Eat a handful of sautéed ants and you feel like applying for that rocket job at NASA.

Mealworms make a meal. Grubs as grub. They are not pests when served with some chanti and fava beans. In the future, the Terminix guy will use a fork and wear a chef’s uniform. Bug spray will be replaced with salad dressing. A termite infestation will be an all-you-can-eat buffet. Grab a spoon, crawl under the house. Joke while you can, in a few years, insects will be what’s for dinner.

“Hey, what are you guys doing this weekend? Wanna come over for some barbecued scarab beetles? Bring the beer.”

I missed the Broad Appetite Food Festival here in Richmond a while back. I wanted to go, had it on the calendar, but I was in Haiti, where people are eating dirt. People in Richmond that day, according to Time, were eating bugs.

If you are freaked-out by bugs, don’t be. Most of the world eats them – and loves them like pork rinds. Flip the remote to the Travel Channel and watch Andrew Zimmern eat every six-legged thing that can be woked.

“Pass the garlic grass hoppers when you get a chance there, pal.”

The cost of raising bugs is much less than cows and pigs according to people who know. Just keeping a large animal’s body temperature normal requires tremendous amounts of food. Bugs are the inconvenient truth about a balanced meal. They are energy efficient and turn huge percentages of what they eat into edible mass, namely: Protein.

“This is the best scorpion soufflé I have ever had.”

Here’s the truth, like it or not, German Cockroaches are farmable, edible and convert over 4 times the food they eat into body substance versus a cow. I can see billboard with cows painting misspelled words, “Eat mor roches.”

When I was in college, I could have survived on the little bastards living under the sink. They were well-fed too – pizza, sandwiches, cereal and milk left in bowls, we had a farm going in that joint.

“Larry, you gonna eat the rest of that tomato hornworm?”

Bugs are low fat, low cholesterol, high protein and there are no vet bills. They are environmentally friendly to raise and require little work. Leave a crumb on the counter and insects will show up by the millions. Try that with cows. Get on the Bug Watcher’s diet and you’ll be thin and trim in no time – and save the world while you’re crunching through spiced exoskeleton.

I woke one night on a campout to find a roach the size of a hotdog weiner sleeping in a stale bun someone had left out on a table. All I needed was some mustard and he’d have been a midnight snack if I could have stomached the thought and fought off the 42 million ants that were carrying him along like the queen.

“Sorry sir, we’re all out of moths. Can I suggest a nice weevil instead?”

Things will change. They’ll have to. Livestock is responsible for nearly 20% of the greenhouse gases. Bugs? Zero. Food is running out around the world as we use it for biofuel. Insects are endlessly plentiful and if cooked right, tasty and safer than most things we eat at a drive thru.

With corn and soybeans going in our automobile tanks, what will we feed the livestock? Bugs are nutritious no matter who’s chewing. Maybe you’re saying, “eww!” right now, but I promise you in ten years, you will be opening a bag of Whacky Worms from the snack aisle down at Larvae Land.

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