But they haven't _always_ been considered a delicacy: http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-09-06/heres-how-low-rent-lob...
Generally, we eat the innards, not the exoskeleton.
http://www.gourmettraveller.com.au/recipes/recipe-search/fea...
When a prawn tail has been shelled (but tail left on for presentation) and in tempura, I will eat the tail also.
My wife wanted no part of it, although she likes shrimp with the eyeballs and antenna and stuff already removed. Go figure.
How many of the ingredients do you currently understand? Just use the latin name of the insect and no-one would notice. Given the yield, I can imagine that we'll be eating a lot of insects in the future and in many parts of the world larvae/insects are not a problem at all.
Lots of potential naming zaniness here. Pretty sure food scientists and marketers have this down to a...science?
(No affiliation, they were a few desks over at a coworking space)
1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapulines 2 http://chapul.com/
That said, I was about to buy a box just to check them out, when I saw their crustacean allergy warning... I hadn't even thought of that, and I am most certainly allergic to all of the crustaceans that Americans normally eat, so I might well be allergic to other arthropods.
I dunno..
Boiled Lentils are around 9% protein - http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/foods/show/4783?qlookup=16070&ma...
Where according to this thesis project presentation grubs are 42% protein.
If you ignore the water, it's 29% protein. Alternatively, 25g/100kcal.
However, the people who don't eat lentils probably wouldn't touch ground insect meat either.
http://www.rainbowmealworms.net/blog/why-we-need-to-eat-bugs...
I used to have some other references that were a bit more scientific, but I can't seem to track those down.
You're supposed to cook lentils. Also, turns out lentils don't even contain that much phytic acid from the start.
Finally, your teeth rot? How? I suppose if you didn't cook the lentils, you might want to chew and ruminate them in your mouth for a few hours (tip: no, you don't), which might be long enough for the acid to have some effect on your teeth. But if you consume them like normal, and apply some basic dental hygiene, you're going to have to explain to me how this could really affect your teeth worse than most other foods (which are usually also slightly acidic).
I predict that techniques will be found to make good plant-based meat substitutes or other artificial meat before anyone figures out how to make us happy with eating insects.
Cockroaches are insects. Lobsters are not. There is a huge difference there.
Our culture will produce many food science innovations before we get around to engineering lobster sized cockroaches. (And even if we did, you are likely back to square 1 in terms of eating large, environmentally inefficient animals for protein.)
This is a great idea if you look at the math, but almost impossible to get over the emotional response. Maybe processing the grubs/flies into something less recognizable would help, but at some point you read the ingredients and you're back at square one.
Disgust seems to be one of the more irrational and risk averse emotions, which makes sense - guessing something is disgusting when it's not has little risk, but guessing something is not disgusting when it really is dangerous carries great risk.
Interesting problem especially when recoginzing what damage our current meat production is causing, plus the base inefficiencies of it.