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Loading...Bugs on the Menu at San Francisco Food Truck
Care for a moth larvae taco? How about a nice big scoop of toffee mealworm ice cream? San Francisco — legendary birthplace of the Popsicle, storied source of world-famous sourdough — may be on the leading edge of a new food trend: insect-based cuisine.
Don Bugito, a food truck devoted to serving what chef and owner Monica Martinez calls “pre-Hispanic” cuisine, dished up its first bug-based bites in August at the annual San Francisco Street Food Festival. If you think only the most adventurous of San Francisco’s foodies would be willing to taste moth larvae wrapped in a corn tortilla, you’d be wrong: by the end of the festival, Martinez’s creepy crawly concoctions had sold out.
In the wake of Don Bugito’s successful August debut, Martinez was invited to host an October dinner at the Headlands Center for the Arts. Titled “Edible Insects and Other Rare Delicacies: An Insect and Mezcal Pairing Dinner,” the menu for the evening featured lake fly egg tortitas and oven toasted American cricket with fresh jicama. (A menu note assures locavores that the crickets were cultivated in California.)
Martinez is set to begin full-time operation of the Don Bugito food truck this month.
Martinez isn’t the only chef serving up bugs in the Bay Area. San Francisco is also home to MiniLivestock, an entomophagy promotion project founded by Rosanna Yau, a Bay-Area designer. And Daniella Martin, entomophagy blogger and host of the GirlMeetsBug YouTube channel, also hails from the region.
Why the sudden spike in American interest in insect-based cuisine? From an anthropological perspective, it might make more sense to ask why Americans don’t traditionally eat bugs. Fried crickets are a common snack in Cambodia. Roasted ants are eaten in Columbia. The indigenous people of Australia consider wood moth larvae — locally called ‘”witchetty grubs” — a staple food.
In fact, worldwide, insects are a fairly common food source; it is mainly in Europe, Canada and the United States — places that maintain a strong cultural taboo against eating bugs — that people react to the idea of munching on mealworms with total disgust.
But it may be in the planet’s best interest for wealthy westerners to get over centuries of cultural conditioning and give entomophagy a try. Promoters of entomophagy claim that insects, packed with protein and minerals, are an eco-friendly alternative to meat, and evidence from a study conducted in January by researchers at Wageningen University in the Netherlands lends credence to that claim. According to study scientists, edible insects like crickets and locusts produce significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions per kilogram than traditional livestock like cattle or pigs — up to 100 times less!
As the world population surpasses seven billion, and a growing global middle class demands more protein on their plates, entomophagy might turn out to be much more than just a foodie trend — it could be a vital step toward a more sustainable food future.
(That doesn’t mean this American food writer will be rushing out to taste crickets, though. Hey, I’m a vegetarian.)
Related Care2 Content:
Read more: eat insects, environment, insects, real food, sustainable food
Photo of mealworms by Peter Halasz, from Wikimedia Commons. Used under Creative Commons license.
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may
not reflect those of
Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.
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Ignorante!
should bear baiting be illegal? I mean wtf? Should bear hunting be illegal HELL YES. Thank God in India…
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+ add your ownAs of late I know of no one wanting to eat heartworms that kill dogs!
no thanks! sounds totally gross to me. i have no desire to eat animals of any size...
yuck yuck yuck, no thanks x.x
C'est incroyable comment on arrive à manipuler les esprits et cela l'est encore plus lorsque l'on constate que de nombreux gogos sont prêts à essayer le n'importe quoi. Peut être un jour on fera croire aux gens que la chair humaine est comestible est pleine de protéines; dans ce monde de fous, je m'attends à tout.Il se peut que les insectes soient une source de protéines, mais n'avons nous pas évoluer depuis l'époque des cavernes, n'avons nous pas à notre disposition d'autres ressources .Les insectes sont indispensables, à quand le tour des mouches, des moustiques et autres, on arrête plus le progrès.Pour ma part, cela ne m'ouvre pas du tout l'appétit et me ferait plutôt vomir que d'avoir des vers ou autres dans mon estomac.
hey people. did you know some drinking water contains copepods? little bitty microscopic crustations? tell all your vegan friends about it.
I understand why you would eat bugs, but honestly, I don't think I could stomach them.
Personally, I'll pass. I have heard of roasted insects being ground up into flour and used for baking. That might be less gross.
What's the sodium content in the recipes? (Doesn't really matter since I won't be eating them.)
Protein is protein, and technically a lot of regular food we all like is just a really large "bug" like shrimps, crab, and lobster.
If you like eating bugs, hay whatever, but...
YOU STILL NEED TO COOK BUGS
Bugs do carry parasites both on them, and in them.
Just because it's a bug does not automatically make it safe.
Cook it.
I think some people don't like the idea of eating insects because it is "primitive" and "backward", even "it is what people do who are poor and have nothing"
or are animal rights wackjobs would would be happy to loose their children to parasitic worms. or would let their dog die from heartworms.... all of that.
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