Eat the Beetles!: An Exploration into Our Conflicted Relationship with Insects

by David Waltner-Toews

  This framing of our human conundrum is closer to Auden’s vision, with which I started this chapter, than to John Lennon’s beautiful but simple assertion that we should “imagine there’s no heaven.” This ecologically grounded understanding is not easily reconciled with the improbable and curmudgeonly Old Man painted by Michelangelo and rejected by Darwin, nor with the heaven rejected by Lennon. Michelangelo’s image of the old patriarch is not the only one available, however — and it’s probably the least scientifically and theologically interesting one. The fifth century BCE Atomists imagined a spatial model of a multiverse in which atoms scattered and regrouped into different formations. A couple of centuries later, the Stoics imagined a temporal universe, drying up and regrouping over time. In the fifteenth century CE, Nicholas of Cusa declared that the universe was without a center. Everything in the universe was in constant motion; because of this, no matter where you were, you yourself were at the center, with everything else moving around you. The universe, he argued, was almost infinite, just a little smaller than God, who was infinite. A century later, Giordano Bruno decided that, what the heck, the universe and the Creator were both infinite, which is a European version of Jainism. That little “what the heck” difference was noted by the church patriarchs. It was the difference that resulted in Cusa being made a cardinal and Bruno being burned at the stake. The narcissism of small differences between ideas, as much as between insect species, can have serious consequences. If these debates sound familiar, they are; except for the “God” part, the literature on modern physics is roiling with arguments over time, and space, and infinity, and how to reconcile them. As far as I can see, there is no definitive experiment or model in sight.

  In the December 2015 Holiday Special edition of the New Scientist, Mary-Jane Rubenstein, a professor of religion at Wesleyan University, wrote that “if humans are not particularly godlike, then God is not particularly humanoid. God doesn’t look like a patriarch in the sky: he looks like the universe.” Rubenstein characterizes Cusa’s and Bruno’s forms of pantheism as “even more theologically threatening than atheism, precisely because they change what it means to be God. Not an anthropic creator beyond the world, but the force of creation within it.” She adds that these ideas might cause us to “rethink what it is we mean by those godly terms like creation, power, renewal, and care. Is it possible that modern cosmology is asking us, not to abandon religion, but to think differently about what it is that gives life, what it is that’s sacred, where it is we come from — and where we’ll go?”

  Entomophagy challenges us to ask the same questions. This is not just about a more sustainable food supply, or “learning” from insects, or acknowledging the services they provide. The many people who want us to “learn” from insects are very selective about which insects are allowed to be teachers: honey bees, for instance, if we are promoting cooperation, or ants, if we want to learn about hard work or engineering feats. Assassin bugs and Ichneumonidae? Not so much. If we consider the evolution of arthropods, and our emergence in the midst of an ecologically complex planet, then I am not sure how we can “learn” from nature. Usually what this learning means is that we are projecting our prior beliefs onto carefully selected species. We are in nature, and we are nature, and what we learn is no different from what we learn when we are mindful of the trillions of cells that live on, live in, and compose our own bodies. Some look at evolution and see competition among molecules, organisms, or groups. If we zoom in and out a few times using our imaginative, telescopic eyes, we see all of that; but, more stunningly, what we see is that we are integral parts of a world of molecules and organisms and landscapes that are evolving in ways that are multilayered and entangled. Because we are inside nature, the larger patterns and narratives are — like Mandelbrot’s fractals124 — embedded in us. We are created by, and continually re-create, the universe in which we dwell.

  As Tim Flannery observed, the legacy in which we live is cooperative; nothing exists outside of relationships with other things. Where the nineteenth-century naturalists, rooted in the condescending, racist, patriarchal mentalities of the Empire, saw suffering and competition, a struggle to reproduce before dying, and an unfathomable or absent creative force, I see a world where every human life requires the taking of other lives, whether by eating them directly or by taking their food or claiming their habitats as our own. Where they saw no place for a fire, I find myself living in an emergent reality within which I have evolved, which I have helped, briefly, to shape, and to which I shall return. My obligation is to eat lightly, to cause as little harm as possible, but then also, in the end, like ants and termites and Ichneumonids, to return myself to the emergent biospheric community, so that others may eat, and live. Entomophagy is, for me, the naturalist’s version of communion. It is a way of celebrating that what I am eating will someday eat me.

  What I understand from the beetles — from all insects — and from their cooperative legacy, which dwells in us, in our DNA, and is the world in which we dwell, is that the force creating the once and future universe has no face. The creative force is not in the individual things (atoms, bacteria, plants, insects, mammals, people). The search for a particle where gravity dwells, or the organ that houses the mind (which René Descartes believed was the pineal gland), or the gut bacteria that influence our moods is, with regard to the question of the meaning of things, misplaced.

  The force and the fire dwell in the dynamic, tense, unfolding relationships and conversations among us. The “force that through the green fuse drives the flower,” in the inimitable words of Dylan Thomas, is comprised of trillions of rippling wavelets, dwells in the multichromatic appositional eye in which we are the lenses, and has many voices, discovering itself not by prescriptive pronouncement, but in conversation, speaking in tongues of magnetism and gravity to chemical molecules and wave-particles of light. The conversation looks like the aurora borealis, feels like biophilia, tastes like honey from the comb, asks of us that we eat and allows us the honor of in turn being eaten, so that the creating may continue, to an unknown end — which may perhaps not be a permanent ending but a contraction to a point and an explosion into a new universe.

  I am happy with this understanding. In a world that often seems dark and fragmented, it gives us something to celebrate, and to ponder — a vision of who we could be, and why, with the power to motivate us to care about each other and this planet. The nuclear physicist Leo Szilard has said that an optimist is someone who believes that the future is uncertain. I am that kind of optimist. We have a voice in determining the nature of the world ahead of us. To me that is a huge motivation from day to day: building on that cooperative legacy to create a world that is like the heaven we wish for — or, in the words of Gandhi, to “be the change” we seek.

  How, then, in our brief lives, can we nurture our best collective selves, as individuals within communities within the biosphere? Jeffrey Lockwood, reflecting on his research into the origins and disappearance of the devastating nineteenth-century locust plagues in America, said that for “the Rocky Mountain locust, the fertile river valleys of the mountainous West represented a sanctuary, a habitat where it could always find what it needed and persist in the face of adversity. We have such places too: churches, mosques, temples, and synagogues, along with hallowed groves, stone monoliths, and forested cathedrals. These sacred places comprise less than a millionth of the earth’s surface but host three-quarters of the human population each year, and they are vital to our well-being.”

  I think about this when I consider our foraging and farming options for entomophagy. I am uncomfortable with mosques, churches, and synagogues as sanctuaries, since they too easily become militarized forts, full of fear. But that may be my hang-up, or maybe a general caution that any sanctuary, even an environmentally protected zone, can also become a base for a local militia in a misguided war. I am more at home in the oft-declared, and as often forgotten, belief that the creative fire is presen
t everywhere, not in things or buildings, but in relationships among them. My sanctuary is looking out over a wide expanse of water, surrounded by little puff-clouds of bugs hovering just a few feet away, and the offshore breeze that prevents them from settling down and biting me.

  I hope that in considering insects as food, we create and nurture and protect sanctuaries where we can respect and care for insects and ourselves together. I hope that we can have fun and enjoy adventurous eating with friends and companions, that we can find ways to fearlessly express our care for each other, for our enemies, and the planet that birthed us and that we are now co-creating.

  IN MY LIFE.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I am deeply indebted to the Canada Council for the Arts for helping to fund the research for this book through a Grant for Professional Writers, and also to the Ontario Arts Council for a Writers’ Reserve Grant.

  The chapter on ethics grew out of a long conversation I had with philosopher Karen Houle. Her book Responsibility, Complexity, and Abortion: Toward a New Image of Ethical Thought introduced me to the complexities of ethical thinking in this age of uncertainty and competing ideologies. So it was natural that I should turn to her for advice on how to deal with insects and entomophagy. Thanks, Dr. Houle, for helping me to find ways to get my head around this subject, for taking my naive questions seriously, challenging me to see the world in different, disturbing, and wonderful ways, and pushing all the appropriate brain buttons. In the spirit of Dr. Houle’s ideas on complexity and ethics, I must say that, although the chapter would not have been written without her contributions, I take ownership of what I have written, including its misunderstandings and philosophically flawed arguments.

  Special thanks to Christina Grammenos, my long-suffering and cheerfully diligent research assistant, who helped me track down many hundreds of books and papers, and then periodically summarized them for me when I was feeling swamped. Thanks to all the Facebook friends who riffed on Beatles’ titles for me: Michael Bryson, Ainslie Butler, Dominique Charron, Dora Dueck, Shane Kurenoff, Judith Rosen, and especially that Beatlephiliac Massimo Rossetti. So many great suggestions. I’m sorry I couldn’t use them all.

  Thanks to Daniella Martin, Jeffrey Lockwood, Scott Shaw, and Alan Yen for responding to my questions, and for inspiring and informing me. All of you have written in such a way that I was able to dive off my retirement cliff into the entomological pool with great enthusiasm, knowing that I might hit my head on a rock if I dove shallow, drown if I dove too deep, and get the bends if I came up too fast. To Charlotte Payne, for translating emails from Japanese to English; for her passionate, ground-breaking, insightful, and diligent research; and for her assistance in exploring and understanding entomophagy worldwide, but especially in Japan. Thanks to Yukiko Kurioka of Japan Uni Agency for the arrangements she made to facilitate my explorations in Japan and to ensure I did not get lost. Thanks to the farmers, academics, and ento-entrepreneurs in Canada, France, Laos, Japan, and Australia who took the time to talk with me; Jack David, Crissy Calhoun, and Laura Pastore at ECW for taking me on and challenging me to find the right words; and Kathy, for tolerating my warped enthusiasms.

  Finally, I’d like to thank Mary Eleanor Bender, without whose prodding forty-five years ago I would never have tackled the topics in the final chapter. In the fall of 1970, at Goshen College, a small liberal arts college in Indiana, I would get up at eight in the morning to hear Mary Bender’s lectures. The course was twentieth-century fiction. Tiny, single, elderly (I thought then, but probably in her fifties), she leaned over the podium and spoke quietly to us of Sartre, Camus, Ionesco, Kafka, Dos Passos, Woolf, Mansfield, Joyce, Robbe-Grillet — all those writers who helped define the twentieth-century European way of framing and grappling with the troubles of the world. I was riveted. And then, at the end of the course, she looked up from her podium at us — at me — and said, “They have defined the problem. Now it is up to you to find the solution.” Her words became my life’s vocation and passion. Professor Mary Eleanor, thank you. Sorry all this is a bit late to get a course credit.

  LETTING HER UNDER YOUR SKIN.

  RESTAURANTS, BUSINESSES, AND RECIPES

  The entomophagy landscape continues to change rapidly and sometimes unpredictably, so I list below just a few key websites and books that will direct you to further sources on restaurants, businesses, and recipes.

  GENERAL SOURCES OF INFORMATION

  This website is an excellent overall resource for current information:

  http://www.scoop.it/t/entomophagy-edible-insects-and-the-future-of-food

  The documentary Bugs on the Menu gives an excellent overview, and the follow-up Twitter feeds have some good ideas for recipes. See http://bugsonthemenu.com/intro and https://twitter.com/BugsontheMenu

  WHERE TO BUY BUGS FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION

  Daniella Martin’s website

  (https://edibug.wordpress.com/where-to-get-bugs/)

  C-FU (These guys are new but look interesting!)

  (http://cfufoods.com/#home)

  Entomo Farms (http://entomofarms.com/)

  Fédération Française des Producteurs Importateurs et Distributeurs d’Insectes (http://www.ffpidi.org/)

  FEEDS FOR ANIMALS

  General information

  (http://4ento.com/2015/03/12/top-10-insect-feed-companies/)

  Enterra Feed (Canada) (www.enterrafeed.com)

  Ynsect (France) (http://www.ynsect.com/)

  AgriProtein (South Africa) (http://www.agriprotein.com/)

  Restaurants that serve insects seem to come and go like seasonal swarms. I have noted within the text several that I visited while doing research on this book and which seem to be navigating the fickle shoals of cultural food preferences, such as Vij’s, Public, Billy Kwong, Archipelago. Rather than direct readers to phantoms or miss some really good new ones, I urge you to ask around your neighborhoods and cities and check out new venues on the web. The best bugs are probably close to home!

  WHERE TO LOOK. RECIPES

  Recipes for insects in European and North American cuisine are an emerging phenomenon, and there are more being published every day. Some of these can be found in the complete bibliography on my website (www.davidwaltnertoews.wordpress.com).

  Here are a few recent books with recipes for preparing insects:

  Martin, Daniella. 2014. Edible: An Adventure into the World of Eating Insects and the Last Great Hope to Save The Planet. Boston: New Harvest, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

  Nelson, Michelle. 2015. The Urban Homesteading Cookbook: Forage, Farm, Ferment and Feast for a Better World. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre.

  van Huis, Arnold, Henk van Gurp, and Marcel Dicke. 2014. The Insect Cookbook: Food for a Sustainable Planet. Translated by Françoise Takken-Kaminker and Diane Blumenfeld-Schaap. New York: Columbia University Press.

  There are also many sources on the web for insect-based recipes. Here are a few:

  Bug Vivant (http://bugvivant.com/edible-insect-recipes/)

  Cicada Invasion (http://cicadainvasion.blogspot.ca/2011/04/if-you-cant-beat-em-eat-em-cicada.html)

  Entomo Farms (http://entomofarms.com/recipes/)

  Girl Meets Bug (https://edibug.wordpress.com/recipes/)

  Insects are Food (http://www.insectsarefood.com/recipes.html)

  The Telegraph (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/foodanddrinknews/10401191/Top-11-bug-recipes.html)

  Time magazine (http://time.com/3830167/eating-bugs-insects-recipes/)

  BUG, BUG ME DO.

  SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

  My research for this book included reading through all or part of more than 600 scholarly and popular books, papers, and websites. You can find a more complete list of references on my website (www.davidwaltnertoews.wordpress.com). The list below only includes sources from which I have taken direct quotes or which in my opinion are particularly noteworthy. They are in
alphabetical order, by author’s last name.

  Arabena, Kerry-Ann. 2009. “Indigenous to the Universe: A Discourse on Indigeneity, Citizenship and Ecological Relationships” Thesis, Canberra: Australian National University. Available from: https://digitalcollections.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/9264

  Bajželj, B., K.S. Richards, J.M. Allwood, P. Smith, J.S. Dennis, E. Curmi, and C.A. Gilligan. 2014. “Importance of Food-Demand Management for Climate Mitigation.” Nature Climate Change 4(10):924–929.

  Barron, Andrew B., and Colin Klein. 2016. “What insects can tell us about the origins of consciousness,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113(18):4900–4808.

  Belluco, Simone, Carmen Losasso, Michela Maggioletti, Michela, Cristiana C. Alonzi, Maurizio G. Paoletti, and Antonia Ricci. 2013. “Edible Insects in a Food Safety and Nutritional Perspective: A Critical Review.” Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety 12(3):296–313.

  Berenbaum, May Roberta. 1995. Bugs in the System: Insects and Their Impact on Human Affairs. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

  Berenbaum, May Roberta. 2000. Buzzwords: A Scientist Muses on Sex, Bugs, and Rock ’n’ Roll. Washington, DC: Joseph Henry.

  Berenbaum, May Roberta. 2009. “Insect Biodiversity – Millions and Millions.” Pp. 575–582 in Insect Biodiversity: Science and Society, edited by R.G. Foottit and P.H. Adler. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.

  Bodenheimer, Friederich Simon. 1951. Insects as Human Food: A Chapter of the Ecology of Man. The Hague: W. Junk.

  Brown, Valerie A., John A. Harris, and Jacqueline Y. Russell, eds. 2010. Tackling Wicked Problems through the Transdisciplinary Imagination. London: Earthscan.