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I am fascinated with entomophagy as of late, and so it was great fun to record this interview with Daniella Martin — author of Edible: An Adventure Into the World of Eating Insects and the Last Great Hope to Save the Planet and the host of Girl Meets Bug, the insect cooking/travel show!
In the interview, we discuss:
- How Daniella became “the bug girl"
- The great resources in Daniella’s book
- Farming insects is not part of indigenous culture
- Insect identification when foraging
- How to avoid parasites when eating insects
- Legs, intestines and exoskeletons — oh my!
- Insect farming
- Cultural taboos surrounding entomophagy
- Tastes of different insects
- Vegans, vegetarians and eating insects
- Long chain fatty acids in insects
- Where is the “insect trend” going?
- The best starter insects
- Freezing vs cooking
Crickets have the best PR. Tweet it!
Insects will soon be included amongst the ranks of edible plants and edible fungi. Tweet it!
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Episode Resources:
- Creepy Crawly Cuisine: The Gourmet Guide to Edible Insects by Julieta Ramos-Elorduy Ph.D.
- Dr. Mercola on Astaxanthin
- The Eat-a-Bug Cookbook, Revised: 40 Ways to Cook Crickets, Grasshoppers, Ants, Water Bugs, Spiders, Centipedes, and Their Kin by David George Gordon
- Marvin Harris, anthropologist
- Long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids: Patterns of occurrence in insects
- Differences in fatty acid composition between aquatic and terrestrial insects used as food in human nutrition.
- Exo
- Chapul
- Fluker Farms
- Jiminy Cricket! Bugs Could Be Next Food Craze
- Daniella on Facebook
My latest insect snacks:
Meet Daniella
Daniella Martin is author of the book Edible: An Adventure Into the World of Eating Insects and the Last Great Hope to Save the Planet and the host of Girl Meets Bug, the insect cooking/travel show. She also blogs about bugs for the Huffington Post.
She is passionate about teaching people that insects are fabulous food — in addition to being the most environmentally-efficient animal protein source on the planet! Her dream is to increase public awareness and acceptance of edible insects, with the ultimate goals of helping to solve world hunger, support indigenous people, and reduce pesticide use with this cheap, eco-friendly source of protein.
Daniella became fascinated with insect cuisine while conducting anthropological fieldwork in the Yucatan, Mexico. While living amongst the Maya and studying traditional indigenous food, medicine and culture, she learned that ancient peoples of this region used to supplement their diets with insects, partially because of the lack of large game. Intrigued, she began to research in earnest, and started her search for insects to try. To this date, she has eaten bees, crickets, cockroaches, fly pupae, wax worms, mealworms, silkworms, hornworms, bamboo worms, grasshoppers, walking sticks, katydids, scorpions, tailless whip scorpion, snails, stink bugs, tarantulas, cicadas, leaf-cutter ants, ant pupae, dung beetles, termites, wasps and wasp brood, butterfly caterpillars, dragonflies, and water bugs. So far, her favorites are wax worms, bees, wasps and fried bamboo worms.
You can find her at GirlMeetsBug.com and on Facebook and Twitter.
