Saving the Earth, One Cricket At A Time

A couple of months ago, I found myself inexplicably curious about food trends. Okay. Truth be told, there was a measure of explicability regarding my curiosity: I had recently discovered the yum factor of a handful foods which previously I had difficulty even pronouncing, such as quinoa, falafel, couscous, and chipotle...or is that chipoltay? (I still have no idea what to do with acai or sriracha, and regularly slaughter bruschetta, but if you so much as think the word sherBERT in my presence, you will be immediately and soundly slapped -- in an obviously passive voice.)

As a side note, cleverly disguised as a paragraph, a couple of years ago, I overheard some friends discussing ways to prepare something called keen-wah. In the following months, I heard about it more often and wondered what it was, and what accounted the sudden celebrity of this funky, unpronounceable little grain? So in a moment of weakness, I looked it up. Wikipedia describes quinoa as “a species of goosefoot...a grain crop grown primarily for its edible seeds. It is a pseudocereal rather than a true cereal.” Ahhhh! A "pseudocereal”! Okay, I totally get that -- like Cap'n Crunch's Sprinkled Donut Crunch or Post’s Poppin’ Pebbles (“Fizzes in your mouth with burstin’ berry flavor!”) Suddenly quinoa's meteoric rise to fame began to make sense.

One evening last January, I spent far too much time sipping a strong mug of milk chocolate Swiss Miss, because sometimes January requires comfort food, and learning about some pretty amazing food trends, as well as some downright batty foodies. I discovered the Good -- the rise of fats, savory waffles, and the “new” burger (I love the kind with a cooked egg, bacon, and maple syrup on it); the Bad -- seaweed, fermented foods, and savory ice creams; and the Unconscionably Weird -- parsnip cakes, cucumber sorbet, and beet flourless chocolate cake. And then I nearly choked on my mini marshmallows: “insect powered food”. Call your broker now and divest yourself of all your stock in Raid because there is a much more eco-friendly way to handle those household pests. And don’t even think about siccing Fluffy or Boots on them anymore; round ‘em all up yourself (the bugs, not the cats) and fire up the grill.

This from a chilling article in Time.com: “Insects are protein powerhouses; grasshoppers, for instance, have about the same protein content as a chicken breast. Full-bodied insects won’t appear in your Safeway this year; get ready for them to arrive in processed form, especially protein-packed power bars... [And expect] insects, processed as flour, to soon become a popular protein sources for bakery and cereal products. Full-bodied insects — tentacles and all? Further off, but coming.”

But in all seriousness, when you think about it, it makes total sense to make a switch: Per pound of usable beef, we use twenty-five pounds of feed and two thousand gallons of water! By contrast, a pound of cricket meat only requires two pounds of feed and a gallon of water. The other obvious solution here is to skip the crickets entirely and just eat the cricket feed instead. If I remember my pioneer history, I kind of think crickets feed on our crops. So to save the earth, we just go ahead and eat the quinoa or Sprinkled Donut Crunch after all. I'm ready to do my part.