(bright music) - They can be creepy, crawly, but also delicious.

I'm Sheril Kirshenbaum and on this episode of "Serving Up Science" we're putting the meal in mealworms and exploring why edible insects are growing in popularity in the United States as a source of protein and nutrition.

Now, I know what some of you might be thinking.

Bugs?

Ugh.

If you found one crawling on your dish at a restaurant, you'd send it back, right?

Not so fast, because it turns out that insects are actually packed with nutrition.

In fact, some bugs contain more protein per gram than traditional meat sources like beef or chicken.

Over the evolution of the human diet, insects were a very important part of our meals and have been consumed for thousands of years.

Hunters and gatherers ate insects to survive and today in cultures around the world, mealworms, crickets, flies, larvae, grasshoppers, and more continue to be a food staple.

In fact, there are over 2,000 species identified as edible insects worldwide.

It's estimated that insects are currently regularly consumed by about two billion people.

That's around 1/4 quarter of the world's population.

In parts of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, eating insects is common.

However, many people in Western countries are hesitant to try them due to cultural customs.

So, if you're living in one of those nations where there's still a hesitation to eating insects, or you might say a "yuck factor", it might be time to reconsider.

First, let's start with nutrition.

House crickets, a common edible choice, are rich in protein, fat, vitamins, minerals, and calories.

They're higher in iron, zinc, calcium, riboflavin, and essential amino acids like lysine and leucine.

They're also a good source of polyunsaturated fatty acids like omega-3 and omega-6.

Yellow mealworms contain as much if not more protein by mass as poultry or beef and are high in vitamin C content.

And those are just two examples.

Raising insects for food requires far fewer resources than traditional livestock farming.

They grow in smaller spaces, require less feed, and produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions.

Plus, many species can be fed in organic waste material like compost or food scraps, which helps reduce waste and improve sustainability.

It's no wonder that the world's edible insect market is anticipated to grow at an annual rate of 20 to 30% over the next decade.

Now, I know you might be asking yourself, does it taste good?

Well, joining me in the kitchen today is Chef Junior Merino, an acclaimed chef known for his expertise in cooking with insects.

(bright music) Welcome, chef.

- Thank you.

It's a pleasure being here.

- What can you tell us about all of these delicious entrees and insects in front of us?

- We brought a bunch of different things that we do at the restaurant, so we have the tlayuda with the grasshoppers.

We have here the tacos, which is a set of three tacos, you can choose actually different insects to go on each taco.

Then here we have also all of them by themselves so that people can see them.

- We should try them.

- Yes, please.

- I'm very excited to try them.

- We have the grasshoppers which are the chili lime and this one is the chapulines, which it only grows in in the corn fields in Mexico so they're really nice and big.

(grasshopper crunching) Tastes more like barbecue.

- It does tastes like barbecue, though.

It's got a kick too.

- Yeah.

- Those are good.

- These ones are the chicatanas.

These ones are very strong.

Chicatanas are the black ants.

They only come out on the first rain season or the first time that it rains a lot.

The water goes into into their homes and then they come out.

They have wings, they can fly, but they're so heavy that they come down and that's when they get picked up and then they get roasted.

(ant crunching) - Hmm.

- My wife calls it a mesquite barbecue.

- It has that woody kind of taste to it.

- Now, escamoles is the eggs of the ants.

They're extremely hard to harvest because they're underground.

Once they harvest all the eggs, in our case we freeze dry 'em and then we toss them.

So this is not the way you would get 'em in Mexico.

In Mexico, you get 'em fresh, they get roasted, you usually saute with a little bit of butter, garlic and onion, and then it goes onto a taco.

- It's so interesting they're the eggs 'cause they almost look like seasoned nuts.

They look delicious.

- Yeah, they're actually really good.

- [Sheril] So these are like the caviar of the ant world.

- Yeah, so these are extremely expensive in Mexico.

- I did not expect that flavor.

It's almost like a mild cheesy flavor.

- Exactly, yes.

These are the jumiles, which are the, my wife calls them the stink bugs.

- Oh really?

- Yeah.

She says that's what they are, but they taste kinda like fennel and also a little bit citrusy.

- These surprise me because when I hear stink bugs, I think of the giant stink bugs that I often see around my ceilings.

And these are just teeny tiny little critters.

- This ones actually grow in the wood, under the barks of the wood.

These ones taste more like fennel, a little bit citrusy, mint, cinnamon.

A touch of sweetness in there.

- I like that.

I could see that being like a really nice avocado spread.

- Oh yeah, or on a salad.

These are the gusanos de Maguey.

These ones are very popular in Oaxaca and also in Jalisco because, you know, Jalisco being the place for tequila.

When they get a lot of gusanos in the plant, they cannot use it for tequila, because usually these guys eat the plant, and so they make money on the gusanos, on the larvae, which is really good.

- A little chewier than I expected.

- Yes.

And in Mexico they're a lot chewier.

- Hmm.

- Tell me a little bit more about the insects on the rim of this margarita.

- The insects on the rim, in Oaxaca, a lot of people have this type of salt, something similar.

It's really refreshing, it goes perfect with the flavor of the gusano salt, and it has also a little bit of orange powder on the rim, the chili and the salt.

- Ah, okay.

This is gonna be a fun episode.

(Sheril slurps) It's like a perfect pair.

It's salty but it's delicious.

What's your experience with starting to use these insects in some of your dishes?

- It was actually part of my childhood.

The most popular ones in my family are gotta be these two guys right here which is the grasshoppers.

We used to eat 'em as a snack.

They actually, they're very rich in protein and this was the main source of protein for the Aztecs pre-arrival of the Spaniards.

- And what has some of the reception been of offering these kinds of, you know, interesting delicacies at the restaurant with people in the US?

- A lot of people, they love the idea.

They try 'em and after they try 'em, they're like, "Wow, this is amazing."

Because it's like, if you grew up eating this, it's nothing weird about it.

But if it's the first time you are hearing about it or you are eating them, a lot of people start making faces because they have never had 'em.

Here we have 'em on different things that we serve them at the restaurant.

It's a choice, it's not that we only sell insects at the restaurant.

It's a choice to showcase pre-Hispanic cuisine at the restaurant, which would be the real traditional or ancestral cuisine of Mexico.

This is the esquites.

We roast the corn, we mix it with aioli.

We put a little bit of chipotle and queso Cotija.

Queso Cotija is a cheese.

It's kind of similar to Parmesan cheese.

- I don't know how to eat this delicately.

(snack crunching) Okay.

Hmm, hmm, that's really good.

- [Junior] Yeah.

- [Producer] What's your favorite one, Sheril?

- Oh, well, out of everything I've sampled, I think that my favorite is probably these little ant eggs which sounds so funny to say 'cause I would have no idea this was an egg, but really tasty.

It falls apart in your mouth in a good way.

It's almost like a rice puff but even more delicate.

And I also really like those stink bugs as well, but everything I tried was great.

And the grasshoppers are made with garlic.

I don't even like garlic most of the time and they're delicious, I could see snacking on a whole bag of them.

Thank you so much for joining me in the kitchen to share these insect-inspired recipes.

Salud.

- Buen provecho.

(Sheril slurps) (bright music)