Smologies #12: EATING BUGS with Julie Lesnik

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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 Somologies, so grown ups. 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

Jeez. So I started studying 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 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

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 one point seven 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? Primites, termites, Let's get into it. I like to imagine her standing on termite mound in khaki shorts and dusty field boots

They typically do They just dip a stick in there, kind of like it's a corn dog batter or what. Right.

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 be 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 attached to it.

Oh my god, like a feather dust, yes, 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 areas.

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 yes, and 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, countries that have zero insect consumption, and so yeah, so it's Western.

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 you know, at least the Neanderthals, who you know were well established in Europe, It's like, okay, that's the placeoscene, 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 chillin' on branches, like hello, I am a tiny crounchy 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? 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 drying in the numbers that are.

Going to make the change. Okay.

So I and there's been a lot of people saying this since day one, with all of this 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 make it unhealthy, yeah, just to get it on board.

And because kirks, 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. Hm hmm. Yeah, your old dad worn right here has eaten grasshopper tacos graciously prepared by lepidopterologist Phil Torus, plus whole menu of other bugs which we'll get to later. Just admit it.

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 supposed to animals.

I love that you referred to them as tiny animals. You're like, yeah, they are just they're just animals. They're just very tiny animals. But if you were to try to sketch out the difference between eating one hundred grams of insects versus one hundred grams of meat in the different environmentally, like what are we talking?

Oh my gosh. So I always like my I use this. Maybe this is my Detroiter in me. Actually I think he's 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 toitch against insects, and they're very similar to like the fuel efficiency of different vehicles on the road.

So like cows are yours.

There are very large trucks that are just eating resources and you're not, like the turnover on that is awful. And then pigs might be your suv, and then you know, 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 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 bufetes, 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 you know the people are working on, but just in general, just in them, their physiology is biological beings is more efficient than any of the other livestock we eat. Is there any flume flam 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? Yeah, oh man.

I mean I've had crookeds 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. They're my favorite because I've had them the freshest besides live 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 gonna run into the same greenhouse gas issues that.

We do with cows. Why are they so farty.

It's because of digesting just cellulose dents. 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

But it was a nice crunched 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, federl 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 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 lemon, yeah, and ants the defense mechanisms.

If they have the formic acid defense mechanism, then you get that real tangy, lemony kind.

Of effect from them. But they're eggs.

Eskimoles 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 ant 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, half a centimeter in diameter, but they fry them up and it turns into like

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 nuts there's just a lot of tiny eggs. Yeah, you can 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,

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Okay, let's let those questions fly.

Jordan worm, he wants to know highest protein insect, biggest bang for the bucket in terms of eating the creepy crawleys.

Jordan, let's calm knock, yeah, stay away from the sea words.

Uh So, anything in its more adult phase is probably gonna have more protein, and anything in its younger phase, like a caterpillar or a beetle larvae, is gonna have more fat. Oh so, crickets are gonna be more protein rich, more likely than your mealworms, and meal worms are gonna be more fat.

So from buttery to meaty.

Exactly, just like us as we get sinewy, right exactly.

Rosaria a Nira wants to know what are the best bug recipes.

Oh, 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 garcamela 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, yeah, a good crunch. Yeah, it was a great crunch. It's like a bunch of little soft

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 Entimo 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 in cassette consumption around the world, where it might

That's the problem. Sophie Couzino 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? And 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 gonna want to be careful

We eat any spiders while we sleep, I don't know.

I may, I'm yes, I'm sure, but like, probably not the quantity that people think, Like, I don't think as many as the scare tactics say that we do.

But I could do a whole ten 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 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 to 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. Yeah, but you put them in a freeze and basically they go into a natural state of hibernation. They go into a tour poor and then you eat them in there and then

Which when you compare that to mammals and chickens, yeah, or 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, Like if I think that's I love, Like if I can't shower for the week because I'm camping, like that, that's where I'm happiest. So so many microbe friends, so many micro friends. Yeah, and then if we're all not showering, we don't all realize we smell, so it, you know, just acclimate, the acclimate, the herd.

Yeah.

What is the best thing about your job? What do you love so much? Or about entomophagy as repelat right? The best thing I love?

My favorite thing that's.

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, 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. Like I hit all of these issues that to me are so important with just this little topic of eating bugs, very tiny animals. You're really great at what you do. This is one of my favorite interviews. Yeah, thank you so much.

I'm now I'm slightly hungry for cricket, right, I am, yes so much. Oh you're welcome. Okay. So you can find doctor Julie Lesnik at intomoanthro dot org. More links, of course always in the show notes and at aliward dot com. Ologies is on Twitter and Instagram at ologies I'm at ali Wards with one L on both. For ologies merch like hats and toats and shirts and pins