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Think sautéed katydid sounds like a delicious dish?
David Gracer does, and he’s spreading the word about edible insects to nature centers, museums, and schools through his company, Sunrise Land Shrimp and its Web site (slshrimp.com).
Gracer, whose Providence-based firm is just two years old, has given 16 educational tastings since February. On October 25, during the annual Food for Thought benefit for the Genesis Center, he served up insect cuisine alongside some of the most prominent chefs in the city.
Entomophagy, the practice of eating insects as food, may seem outlandish to even adventurous diners. Gracer argues, though, that insects aren’t that far removed from other foodstuffs we consider totally normal. They belong to the same morphological grouping as crustaceans: both are arthropods, with exoskeletons and segmented bodies. According to this logic, then, insects are the crustaceans of dry land — hence his company’s name, Sunrise Land Shrimp.
As a result of his exposure at the Genesis Center event, Gracer has had “preliminary conversations” with a few local restaurants about adding bugs to their menus. Sunrise Land Shrimp already imports and distributes several varieties of insects to private clients.
Gracer, 42, who teaches writing and literature at the Community College of Rhode Island, got turned on to entomophagy in 1999, when he received flavored mealworms as a birthday present. In 2002, he attended a presentation at Roger Williams Zoo by David George Gordon, a biologist and leading enthusiast in the field. This May, Gordon and Gracer will compete in a head-to-head insect cook-off in Richmond, Virginia.
Entomophagy is fairly common outside the US, especially in Mexico, China, Thailand, and various parts of Africa; a March article in New Scientist estimated that 80 percent of the world’s population consumes insects as food.
So why the Western taboo?
“It was the industrial revolution and the information age that took people away from agriculture and created this separation from the natural world, which stimulated insect phobias,” says Gracer. Before this divide, he says, insects were on the menu at some of the most elegant restaurants in Paris at the beginning of the 19th-century.
By getting people to confront their squeamishness, Gracer wants them to turn to insects as a sustainable, environmentally friendly resource. On his blog (bugsfordinner.blogspot.com), he calls entomophagy an “elegant solution to so many of the food issues humanity is facing,” since insects are naturally mass-produced, unlike traditional livestock, which is farmed at enormous costs to the environment and to animal rights. Insects are also more nutritional than your average protein source, according to research at the University of Wisconsin, with an amino acid and vitamin content similar to that of soy.
“[This project] is a marriage of a lot of elements in my life, including . . . enthusiasm to try new food, great interest in entomology, and a desire to do something both environmentally beneficial and a lot of fun,” Gracer says, “because, for me, traditional activism isn’t fun. Doing something performative, that asks people to experience food and nature in a different way — that’s fun.”
Responses to his project and to his cuisine have varied, he says, with nature center audiences and environmental groups more likely to give it a shot than the general public. Even if people don’t love the taste, he views a neutral reaction as a step in the right direction.
As for the flavor, Gracer says katydid, his favorite local insect, has “a light salad flavor, almost like an avocado.” Palm grub, a globally celebrated species he sampled in Florida, tastes “magnificent, like bacon soup with a sweet cream cheese finish.”
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