-- Shares Facebook Twitter Reddit Email Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Edible insects could decarbonize America's food system. But lobbyists, conspiracy theories, and your "ick" factor stand in the way.
When Cortni Borgerson thinks about the trillion or so periodical cicadas emerging from underground, she sees more than clumsily flying insects flitting from tree to tree in search of a mate. She sees lunch. Some may find that idea revolting, a belief often, if unknowingly, steeped in colonialism and the notion that eating insects is " uncivilized .
" But Borgerson, an anthropologist at Montclair State University, is among those eager to change that perception. She's a big fan of dining on bugs of all kinds, but finds cicadas particularly appetizing. "It's one of the best American insects," she says.
Their texture, she says, is something like peeled shrimp, and their taste akin to what you'd experience "if a chicken nugget and a sunflower seed had a baby." She recommends first timers cook them like any other meat and try them in tacos. Borgerson's not alone in her fascination with edible insects.
In the lead up to this spring's dual-brood emergence, a flurry of cicada recipes , sweet treats and culinary odes have sung the bulky bugs' praises. The interest is part of a growing social movement in favor of alternative proteins among consumers increasingly demanding a more sustainable food sys.