Ologies with Alie Ward - Smologies #12: EATING BUGS with Julie Lesnik

Episode Date: June 1, 2022

Bugs are cool! But are they lunch? Entomophagy Anthropologist Dr. Julie Lesnik is an expert on bug eating and enthusiastically explains how much more sustainable – and tasty? -- it is than other types of animal proteins. We talk about the human past, present and future of ingesting insects, from grasshopper tacos to ant omelettes, cricket wedding cakes, humane bug slaughter, water conservation, arthropod allergies, and the cultural biases that are literally killing us. Also: termite farts? Yes. More Smologies episodesFull length Entomophagy Anthropology (EATING BUGS) episode hereDr. Julie Lesnik's websiteA donation went to Little HerdsTo try crickets: EatChirps.com, use code Ologies10 for 10% off Chirp ChipsAly Moore's Bugible.com and EatBugsEvents.comMore links at www.alieward.comBecome a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a monthOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, pins, totes!Follow @Ologies on Twitter or InstagramFollow @AlieWard on Twitter or InstagramSound editing by Steven Ray Morris and  Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio Productions & Jarrett Sleeper of Mind Jam Media Extra help from Noel Dilworth, Susan Hale, Kelly Dwyer, Emily White, & Erin TalbertSmologies theme song by Harold Malcolm

Hi there. This is your internet uncle dad to say that this is an episode of Smologies, which is when we take a long, weird, not for kids episode and we whittle it into something that is classroom safe and filthless for Smologites. So it's shorter, hence it's called Smologies. So grownups, if you want something a little spicier and much more thorough, the full length episode link is right in the show notes, you can go straight to that. But if you want something short and safe, onward. Here we go. Oh hey, it's that lady who wants to sample three gelatos, but can only bear to make the gelato person give her two samples and then just buys the flavor that she always gets.

Alleyboard. Back with another episode of Allergies. Okay, so speaking of eating, actually, you're about to change the way you look at food and the future. So finally, the power to change the planet. It's in your hands, dog. And it's in your smoothies and it's in your mouths. Get ready for some bug science, some human history, and some dare I say hope, entomophagy anthropology. Let's just get the heck into it. So entomon in Greek means insect, phage means to eat. And anthropology, of course, is the study of human peoples. So I'm so stoked about this episode. And thisologist, perhaps the leading expert on planet Earth, about this topic. She got her bachelor's at Northern Illinois University in anthropology.

She got a master's and a PhD in anthropology at University of Michigan. And she's an assistant professor of anthropology at Wayne State University in Detroit. She wrote the literal book about humans eating bugs. It's titled Edible Insects and Human Evolution. I first saw a video of hers where she referred to eating insects as just eating very tiny animals. And I was just charmed and I needed to make her my friend. And we had a lovely time chatting about gateway bugs, grasshopper tacos, abandoning learned cultural fears, unctuous scorpions, termite farts, food security concerns. So open up and say ants for entomophagy anthropologist Dr. Julie Lesnick. So I started studying tools, tools first. So I went, I was an archaeologist as an undergrad.

I worked in Europe just because that's where field schools that I could get onto were. And then in a going into graduate school, I had this very like philosophical existential moment of like, I kind of wanted to relate humans back to that biological being that we are as opposed to the sort of like elevated God that we pretend we are sometimes. And so that was really the driving question for me going into grad school. Then it just became available to me to study these bone tools that are from South Africa that were demonstrated to have been used to dig into termite mounds. So researchers had done experiments on sort of their own bone fragments to match the to find the best match for the wear pattern on these ancient tools that are about 1.7 million

years old. And their conclusion was termite mounds. So this came out right before I started grad school. So Julie had that chance to go to South Africa and she was looking at tools used to dig into termite mounds. And then because of her love of animals, it got her interested in chimpanzee behavior around termite mounds. She's like, what is happening with primates and termites? Primates, termites. Let's get into it. I like to imagine her standing on termite mound in khaki shorts and dusty field boots and then sprinting into a library maybe. And what kind of tools do chimps use? They typically, do they just dip a stick in there kind of like it's a corn dog batter or what? Right. Chimps, they, it's amazing that actually how refined the tools are.

So some chimps will use like a long blade of grass or a stick that they strip of leaves with their teeth. And just like there are regional cooking trends, like how an iced oat milk lavender vanilla latte might be easier to come by in LA than maybe Oklahoma. Different chimp populations have different strategies and perhaps preferences. But some run it through their premolars, so it shreds and then that one blade of grass turns into a lot of basic hair, basically hairs, which increases the surface area, which means more termites can attach to it. Oh my God, like a feather dust kind of, right? Yeah. And so yeah, the more, so it's like a mini broom. And so what people do is they dig a hole into the mound and dip a whole broom in and it might

just be from the vegetation like grab handfuls of grass. And so it increases the surface area. So you just get all these termites out in one big dip. And so that's basically what the chimps are doing when they're running that grass through their teeth and fraying it. So they're increasing the surface area. So there are more people on earth who eat bugs than who don't, right? So or maybe not. Yes and no, like it's so hard. It's hard to calculate the numbers. But a lot of people eat bugs. More countries have cultures that eat insects than countries that have zero insect consumption. And so yeah, so it's western. It's a very western idea to not eat bugs. And so that was kind of where my research took a turn and I wasn't expecting this. I wanted

to understand that more. And the first thing I thought was, well, if western is stemmed in Europe, and I was thinking kind of human evolution and the first hominids in Europe, or at least the Neanderthals who were well established in Europe. It's like, okay, that's the Pleistocene. That's the Ice Age. They probably weren't eating bugs. And so if we trace our ancestry in Europe all the way back to Neanderthals, the very first occupants were not eating bugs. Ooh, I have never thought about this. This is exciting. Were they not eating bugs because it was too chilly for bugs? Or why weren't they? Both, I think in for the majority of the time, they wouldn't have been available. It is much more tropical resource and kind of as you leave to higher latitudes,

insect consumption reduces. Oh my God. Yes. So it's colder, fewer bugs chilling on branches, like, hello, I am a tiny, crunchy hot dog for you. So people eat fewer bugs, that gets passed down for generations. So simple. This is so simple, but it blew my mind. You know, when it comes to getting Americans in the westernized world to be on board with crickets, do you think that with climate change being such a pickle to put it mildly, do you think that's what's going to push people over to try things? I, you know, I'd hope so. But actually, I think it's not that it's not drawing some people in, but it's just not drawing in the numbers that are going to make the change. Okay. And so I, and, and there's been a lot of people saying this since day one with all of this

and it, and I absolutely believe it is to be true is that what needs to happen is they just need to be so delicious that people need it. Like they need to try that whatever cricket thing. And that requires having chefs and food scientists and everybody on board to experiment and come up with these amazing delicious things. Like popcorn crickets or something. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Like, make it unhealthy. Yeah. Just to get it on board. And give me, because crickets, they do have their own unique flavor. I mean, for the most part, most animal proteins, we just cover it up with seasoning and flavor anyways, but there is a flavor in crickets that's unfamiliar. And so finding that deep fried thing that gets everybody on board and gets you more familiar with that flavor. And then

you're more willing to use that flavor in other areas of your life. Some other bugs that might make an appearance on menus of the future. Beetles, caterpillars, bees, dead, of course, locusts, grasshoppers, stink bugs, and perhaps even flies. Those that feed on cheese taste like cheese. Hmm. Yeah. Your old dad word right here has eaten grasshopper tacos graciously prepared by lepidopterologist Phil Torres, plus a whole menu of other bugs, which we'll get to later. Just admit it. You're intrigued. And in terms of the environmental impact, if that is motivating, you say, maybe you're trying to cut down on your red meat consumption, your factory farming, and you want to go, as you said, in one of your talks to eating tiny animals,

as opposed to bigger animals. I love that you referred to them as tiny animals, because you're like, yeah, they are just animals. They're just very tiny animals. But if you were to try to sketch out the difference between eating 100 grams of insects versus 100 grams of meat in the different environmentally, what are we talking? Oh my gosh. Maybe this is my Detroit-er in me. Actually, I think it was my husband who's from Detroit, who gave me this metaphor originally, is thinking about the scale of the different livestock, so cows to pigs to chickens to insects, and they're very similar to the fuel efficiency of different vehicles on the road. So cows are your very large trucks that are just eating up resources, and the turnover

on that is awful. And then pigs might be your SUV, and then chickens might be your sedan, and then crickets are your smart car. And so it is. Everything scales with size. So the smaller you get, the more efficient those animals are at converting the feed you give them to converting that to energy and nutrients for us. But if we start to dress in tuxes and just belly up to all you can eat cricket buffets, will it stay sustainable? When we scale up crickets to the level of producing chickens, how efficient are they going to be? And that is an important question we need to ask, and the people are working on. But just in general, just in them, their physiology as biological beings is more efficient than any of the other livestock we eat. Is there any flimflam

about eating bugs that you would want to debunk first and foremost? Disease vectors is one. People always think that they carry diseases, and they don't unless they're exposed to them. When I offer insects to people or the insects I eat are produced at facilities just for human consumption. So those facilities are clean to the standards of anything, whether you are processing cheese or vegetables or meat, you know, there's a certain standard of cleanliness that we have to have in our food production facilities. And so as long as you get your insects from there, you don't have the contaminants. So what insects have you personally eaten? And how are they? They are man. I mean, I've had crickets and mealworms the most because that's what's

farmed here in the US. I've had a lot of termites, which are my favorite. But so one of my favorite because I've had them the freshest besides life from the mound. I've had them like straight from the mound, boiled for a minute, salted, consumed, and they tasted just like popcorn. It was delicious. But I always like to put this little like asterisk caveat is that termites are kind of like mini cows and they produce a lot of methane. And so for as delicious as termites are, I really do not ever want to see them scaled and produced on a large like scaled production for human consumption, because we're just going to run into the same greenhouse gas issues that we do with cows. Why are they so farty? It's because of digesting just cellulose dense. Yeah. So it's like the when

you break down really dense cellulose matter, whether it's wood or grass, that's what cows are doing. And so it just takes so many levels of digestion and the symbiotic relationships with the bacteria that breaks it down. So it's really the bacteria and the guts that are, you know, creating the gases. So yeah, they have a very similar diet to cows. And so they produce a very similar byproduct. Yeah. So maybe those would be at the bottom of your bug list. Yeah. So it's like they're delicious, but like get them in a marketplace when you're traveling. And I had, surprisingly, I had a June bug and June bugs and June bugs are creepy because they like hit you in the head and they're basically like a little flying helmet. Like they're just solid,

right? But it was a nice crunch to eat. Actually, it was a very pleasant crunch. You eat the shell. Yeah, they were whole. Yeah. Okay. It's like a soft shell crab. Yeah. Yeah. It's like a spider roll. Yeah. What about like silkworms or I'm trying to think the things I've eaten? Silkworm is delicious. I've had it mostly in like soups. And what I like in that too is if you have bubble tea, like to me, the whole like silkworms in the bottom of my soup is like getting the bubble in my bubble tea like through the straw. So that's to me what silkworm larva is like. I hear ants. Some ants can taste like lemons. Yeah. And that's the defense mechanisms. If they have the formic acid defense mechanism, they get a real tangy, lemony kind of effect from them.

But they're eggs. Escamoles is like a delicacy in Mexico, which are ant eggs. And ant eggs are eaten probably everywhere ants are. So I know in Southeast Asia, they eat eggs as well. And they're eggs. Like it's crazy. I've only seen it in a video, but they have like a whole like frying pan of these ant eggs. And so the ant eggs themselves are only, you know, a half a centimeter in diameter, but they fry them up and it turns into like one big omelet. Like it looks amazingly delicious. And I've had them in a dip. I've had, you know, and they're just kind of savory and interesting texture and they're delicious. I mean, the ant eggs are really one of my favorite things. But the fact that they're eggs, like they cook a lot like eggs, like kind of blew my mind.

So nice. There's just a lot of teeny tiny eggs. Yeah, if you cook enough of them, you have an omelet. Can I ask you some Patreon questions? Yeah. Okay. But before we devour those questions, we try not to bug you with just a little ad break, which makes it possible for us to donate to a charity for every Smologies episode. And this week, we're tossing some money at Austin, Texas based nonprofit, littleherds.org. And Little Herds educates and empowers communities, both locally and globally, to support and promote the use of insects for food and as feed as an environmentally sound and economically viable source of nutrition. And since the COVID-19 pandemic, Little Herds has shifted their focus from helping people eat insects to helping people eat and

combating food insecurity. So they are great. They are at littleherds.org. There's a link in the show notes. Thank you, sponsors. Okay, let's let those questions fly. Jordan Wormie wants to know, highest protein insect, biggest bang for the buck in terms of eating the creepy crawlies? Jordan, let's call them knocking crawlies. Stay away from the C words. So anything in its more adult phase is probably going to have more protein. And anything in its younger phase, like a caterpillar or a beetle larva is going to have more fat. So crickets are going to be more protein rich, more likely than your mealworms. And mealworms are going to have more fat. So from buttery to meaty. Exactly. Just like us. As we get sinewy as we get older.

Right, exactly. Rosaria Anira wants to know, what are the best bug recipes? Ooh, I think that the best thing to do with bugs, for me to start, is to put them in a taco. Because in your taco, you have all the things you already love and are super familiar with. So your salsa and your guacamole and your sour cream. And so you just toast up your crickets with some chili powder, a little bit of lime, and you put them in there. And it's a wonderful place to start. I've had them. Yeah, I had them. It was a great crunch. It's like a bunch of little soft shell crabs. Yeah, it was great. Thank you, Phil Torres, for that. And for adding cricket powder to your Norwegian wedding cake, which was, I can attest, so good. It was dense, chewy, nutty. I very much

regret not stuffing more of it into my purse. Lauren Eckert wants to know, given recent studies showing that insect populations are in massive decline in some areas, do you think insect protein is still a sustainable option moving forward? I love that question. And yes, I do think it is because if you're focused on eating the insects that are farmed for human consumption, so the cricket populations at Entomo Farms in Toronto, who's producing them, that's not at all affecting kind of global ecology and insect loss. So for us here in the United States, eating the farmed insects is not a problem. Increasing insect consumption around the world, where it might increase wild harvesting, can potentially be problematic. But I don't think that's not going

to be the reason why insects go into decline. It's more of the climate and the climate that change that we're inducing and or at least contributing to, that's the problem. Sophie Cousinot wants to know, a friend of mine is super allergic to all shellfish and claims this means they're probably also allergic to insects. Does that make sense? Are they just trying to find an excuse not to try eating bugs? I think a lot of people had that question. That's a really great question. And truthfully, we always say if you have a severe shellfish reaction, you're going to want to be careful around insects. However, I am not sure it's ever triggered at least that same severe like anaphylactic response in somebody who had a shellfish allergy. The thing is,

is people might have specific insect allergies. So if you're just a person who's allergic to everything, you might not want to try them. Because to me, there's less concern of allergies because we do consume insect parts regularly. There are insect parts in all of our processed foods. Do we eat any spiders while we sleep? I don't know. I'm sure, but probably not the quantity that people think. I don't think as many as the scare tactics say that we do. I could do a whole 10-minute aside about the research I just did about swallowing spider statistics and the conspiracy theories behind it, but it boils down to it's a myth. Spiders are terrified of you. They do not crawl in your mouth.

You should be so lucky because a free snack. Come on, man. Oh, Greer Nelson has a question. How are the bugs that are sold as edibles killed? Oh, that's a great question. So the insects will be fasted for a while. So they aren't fed. So they then clear out whatever was in their intestinal system. So you get a clean bug. And then most commonly, they are then frozen. So you put them into a freezing chamber freezer, I think we call them. But you put them in a freezer and basically they go into a natural state of hibernation. They go into a torpor and then you keep them in there and then they will ultimately die. So that is pretty much the most common way that they are slaughtered right now.

Which when you compare that to mammals and chickens, do you like the fieldwork aspect? I do. And that's kind of what got me into this is I always tell people that I'm happiest when I'm dirty. If I can't shower for the week because I'm camping, that's where I'm happiest. So many microbe friends. So many microbe friends. And then if we're all not showering, we don't all realize we smell. So it, you know, just acclimate the herd. What is the best thing about your job? What do you love so much? Or about entomophagy anthropology? The best thing I love, my favorite thing about what I do about entomophagy anthropology

is the fact that I get to teach it. I love talking about it. I love teaching my students, I love giving public talks. But I love being able to do so much science outreach and science communication on both human evolution and on food sustainability and across cultural issues and biases. I hit all of these issues that to me are so important with just this little topic of eating bugs. Tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, very tiny animals. You're really great at what you do. This is one of my favorite interviews. Yay, thank you so much. I'm now I'm slightly hungry for cricket. Right. I am.

Okay, so you can find Dr. Julie Lesnick at entomoanthro.org. More links, of course, always in the show notes and at alleyward.com. Ologies is on Twitter and Instagram at Ologies. I'm at alleyward with 1L on both. For Ologies merch, like hats and totes and shirts and pins and beanies, you can go to ologiesmerch.com. You can also tag your photos of you in your merch with Ologies merch on Instagram. And then I creep those pictures and I repost them. Thank you to everyone who makes these small ologies episodes possible, including Zeke Rodriguez-Thomas, Mercedes-Maitland and Jared Sleeper of Mind Jam Media. And to keep this short and sweet, there's more credits in the show notes and more episodes

of small ologies are at alleyward.com slash small ologies. There's a link to that in the show notes. All free, all kid-friendly, pass it on. And before I go, I always give you a piece of wordly advice. And this week it is, if there's a chore you don't want to do, set a timer and see how fast you can do it. And then the next time you do it, you'll know how fast it is going to take to get done. It's a lot faster than we think usually. And you can try to beat your last time and hint this works for grown-ups too. A few weeks ago, Jared and I both walked past a basket of clean laundry for a week, just kept walking past it because we didn't want to fold it. And then we decided to time it and it took us six minutes to fold it. So we spent a week.

A week has 10,080 minutes. We spent a week dreading a six-minute task. So maybe next time, it'll only take us five minutes and 45 seconds. Who knows? But until next time, Smoligites, ask smart people whatever questions you like. Okay, bye-bye.