by Cameron Boros ’25
December 17, 2024
The opinions expressed here are strictly those of the writer and do not reflect the views of University School of Nashville or the Peabody Press.
Bugs. Yes, bugs. They’re everywhere, in the soil, in the school, in your hair, even in your mouth. But can bugs… be food?
This is the question I set out to answer, and in my journey I journeyed even further into the questions and maybe even learned something that I can tell you. So without further ado, bugs, as food.
It is clear that we have a world in crisis. People are dying. People are hungry. In fact 35% of the world population experiences food insecurity. People are so hungry that this 35% of people think about eating the other 65% seven percent of the time.1 Watch out. In fact, whole countries get hungry sometimes. It has been said that 78% of wars are caused by the big country trying to eat the smaller one.2 Ironically, 38% of Earth’s land is used for agriculture. What the hell? Why is so much of our land used for food and we’re still hungry? If we’re making so much food why don’t we just eat it all?
The short answer is systemic inequality, corruption, corporate greed, food waste and infrastructure issues. The long answer is cows. These things are so fat and smelly and nasty all the time and they eat all of our food. Why can’t we just kill them all? But that’s the problem. The cows and the chickens and the pigs and the sheep and all of the other cute little animals that we’re constantly killing and turning into sandwiches and suitcases. We’re giving them the food so they can grow fat so we can kill and eat them. Don’t you think this is a little wasteful?
However, it is true that we cannot merely eat the rice, wheat and gruel we feed to our livestock. People need a variety of different nutrients to function, including protein, which meat is rich in.
It seems that a small group of conservationists, scientists and, of course, George Soros3 have banded together to propose and implement a solution to this pressing issue: The bugs. People have been eating bugs since probably forever. In fact, 359-299 Million years ago during the Carboniferous period, bugs reached enormous lengths, so it is quite possible that bugs were eating people.4 In fact, many cultures still do enjoy the yummy crunch of a cricket, the glee of a grasshopper, or the joy of a dragonfly. Some bars in Thailand serve crickets, Peruvians Amazonian communities have been consuming insects for generations and it is not too uncommon to find skewered scorpions in China. In fact, the West is alone in its disinterest for these staple food sources. Some attribute this to the lack of larger insects that could function as potential food sources in Western Europe. Regardless of the cause of our antipathy for entomophagy, Western culture is now dominant in a large portion of the world due to some unknown, likely benevolent reason. Now we must deal with the fruits, or cows of our labor. A technocratic society that insists upon the idea that nature exists to serve our every endless desire, that the constant exhaustion of resources is not a sign of a greedy consumptionist ideology, but a natural symptom of the development of a society. One in which neverending growth is the doctrine of the past, present and future, and all that lies on the horizon is the inevitable harvesting of all talent and resources to feed the gluttonous appetite of the few.
But what was I talking about? Bugs. There are about 300 pounds of bugs for every pound of human on the Earth, and that’s after the eight spiders you eat a year.5
Yet for many, the negative cognitive association with entomophagy can dissuade many from trying the bugs, therefore not creating enough supply due to lack of demand. Our insatiable appetites for meats such as beef and chicken have cemented themselves in diets around the world while also growing the economies of developing countries like Argentina and Brazil which are responsible for beef production. This means that for those wishing to increase bug consumption in Western nations, not only would cultural stigmas have to be combated, but large powerful corporations would have to be bested, as well as satisfying the taste buds and wallets of consumers. This is a tall order for anything or anyone, especially people who try to sell bugs for people to eat.
Gross.
Yet this hasn’t stopped adventurous chefs and assorted weirdos from attempting to make it happen. For example, the documentary Bugs follows a group of Danish chefs as they travel the world trying different bug-based dishes and trying to cook sustainable bug-based meals. Or at least that’s what I think happened, I didn’t watch it. Additionally, many restaurants around the United States serve insectoid menus, some people have lauded the taste of well cooked bug meals, and there is clearly a variety of different textures and flavors for people to try.
Insects are rich in vitamin B12, iron, zinc, fiber, essential amino acids, omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, and antioxidants. Crickets are about 58-65% protein by weight, while beef is about 22-26%. They have also shown to be profitable and sustainable in some regions such as East Africa.
So are bugs the future? Is it possible for there to be a day where I can smile at people, cricket lodged firmly in between my teeth without scaring them? Will the children of the future turn over rocks and logs not out of curiosity, but out of hunger? Will the protein bars of the future contain mealworms and clumps of gray mushy larvae? Is this the world the left wants? Will people return home from their jobs in their high speed rail, only to arrive in their living pods and to be greeted with their spouses, who say to them “I’m glad you’re home honey, I made your favorite, a cricket brick with a glass of soylent, and an estrogen pill as a treat.” Will we all be interlinked into the mainframe of subservient thought? Will we always eat the bugs?
This is the world on the horizon, and I for one, will not accept it. I personally believe in the American dream, in the promise of anyone to commute three hours a day to work nine hours a day for the man, to own a Ford 4×4 and be able to yell slurs at school board meetings. I believe in freedom, the freedom to consume the microplastic riddled, pesticide stained, testosterone decreasing foodstuffs of my choice. I believe in the freedom to think whatever billionaire funded corporate media tells me to think, and to emerge myself into whatever content some unforeseen algorithm decides will generate profit from me. I don’t believe in eating bugs, I don’t believe in things changing, I don’t believe in living in pods and I DON’T believe in the future. Yeah. Yeah. That’s how YOU sound when you don’t want to eat the bugs. Bugs are the future, if we don’t consume insects at a rapid rate, the world will simply implode. So what are you waiting for? Embrace the world on the horizon. Swallow your fears and all of their fuzzy little legs and eat the bugs. Eat the bugs. Eat the bugs. Eat the bugs.
