I must confess.  I don't read every single article that comes out about insect eating.  For one, they are getting too numerous!  And that's a GREAT thing!  But I cannot keep up with it all.  Secondly, I get a little tired of the typical story arc that starts with grossing out the reader and then telling them that some people out there are saying we should eat them to save the world.  But today a friend of mine sent me a picture of the most recent issue of Edible Cleveland​:

First off, I was excited to see insects as the cover story.  I was then immediately impressed with the photo that is not there to shock but rather to capture the eye with beauty.  And then finally, the little query "Edible?" at the bottom.  In our "biz" we have had many discussions about which words we should use to convey what we are studying, selling, promoting, etc.  We have already seen a shift away from technical-sounding "entomophagy" and now we all have been using "edible insects" much more.  I used this phrase in the title of my just-published book and I already am shifting away from it as well.  "Edible" does not properly reflect insect foods because "edible" sounds more like you can eat it.  Meaning it won't hurt you.  But the word does not do much to convey that insects provide nourishing, real, whole, natural, and tasty options.  So in that cover image, which one is a better representative of "edible?" Well a good case could be made that the gummy worms that are made of who-knows-what and offer no nutritional benefits should be called "edible" while the mealworms should be considered food.

All of that just from the cover!  So I was intrigued enough to take a look online and check out ​the story.  Well, there were TWO stories, so the surprises just kept coming!  

The first one, the main story, opened with:

Yes!  We gather to eat!  It's a social thing!  Let's celebrate that eating bugs brings people together!  Do you know how many public bug banquets are run in this country each year??  Well, me neither, but it's many!  I'd wager to guess that it averages to about one-per-state a year.  And this does not include the the number of times friends have ventured to try insects at a dinner party like the one they are describing here.

As the story went on they playfully talk about legs and eyes, but it is clear they are not going for shock or laughs.  That doesn't work in their crowd, why would it work for their readers?

And in the spirit of things continuing to get better and better, the theme of their dinner party was actually crustaceans, not insects.  So shrimp were on the menu alongside the crickets and mealworms they were serving therefore any critique one could make about wanting to avoid insects could easily be spun around to point out that it's hypocritical if you are a fan of the shrimp cocktail.  Having these together on the menu makes for great fodder while looking to Leviticus to try to understand the taboo that Westerner's have towards eating insects:

So if it's supposed to be the Old Testament that is driving our food choices, well then locusts, crickets, and grasshoppers should be everyday fare.  Since that doesn't answer it, they decided to look to science.  And where did they get their science???  Surprise!  My book!  Stop making me fall in love with you,  Edible Cleveland!  They discus chimpanzees, australopithecines, colonial settlers.. the whole shebang!  And even better, they flush it out with additional examples that I did not provide in the book. 

The article wraps up with discussing how insects are "abundant and Earth friendly" and closes with a toast:

It was the end of the article that directs the reader to a recap of their bug taco party online.  This second piece captures the fun of experiencing new things together with friends.  And the final surprise was that they got their insects from my good friends at Rocky Mountain Micro Ranch!

What a fun Friday afternoon.  Thank you, Edible Cleveland​!

I teach Introduction to Biological Anthropology which is a class on human evolution.  Most of my students take my class because it fulfills a science general education credit.  This means that most of my students are non-science majors and that my class seemed like the lesser of the science evils.  When they find out that the first section of the class in on genetics, they often begin to rethink their decision.  However, if I can make genetics make sense to them, then I might be able to get more of my students, students who represent the ethnic diversity of Detroit, into the sciences.  

I have students work in small groups.  They each get a copy of the instruction manual and the data notebook.  Students also get a coin, a six-sided die, and a 20-sided die.  Since I am a gamer, the d20 made sense to me.  I was also very happy to have an excuse to buy a bunch of dice at my local game store (I spent about $15 for 30 dice).  However, the activity can easily be modified to use a coin and d6 only.  

Below you can find pdfs of the handouts.  The instruction manual will walk you through the whole activity, and the data sheet is what students use to record their findings.  If you had seen an earlier version of this activity, the below files contain edits that greatly streamline the process.  

For more info, I published this activity in the American Biology Teacher: 
"Modeling Genetic Complexity in the Classroom"
Julie J. Lesnik
The American Biology Teacher, Vol. 80 No. 2, February 2018; (pp. 140-142) DOI: 10.1525/abt.2018.80.2.140
Feel free to contact me here if you would like a pdf of the paper.

Coming up quick on February 18th, anthropologists everywhere will be celebrating World Anthropology Day. This day serves as an opportunity for anthropologists to celebrate and participate in their discipline with the public around them. ​

I will be celebrating the day by handing out cupcakes made with cricket powder on Wayne State Campus, and 
​​ENTOMO FARMS WANTS TO GIVE YOU FREE SAMPLES TO USE IN YOUR OWN EVENT!
Just contact me here and I will put you in touch with them to get your own whole or powdered crickets and mealworms!  Act fast so that we can get them shipped to you in plenty of time.

About one half of the world’s countries have cultures that utilize insects in their diets, resulting in over 2,000 known edible insect species.  Of the countries that do not eat insects, the vast majority is in the northern hemisphere, and thus is mostly European or strongly European-influenced.  Therefore, it is Western culture that is the outlier when it comes to insect consumption.  The reasons behind our bias against insects are vast and complex, as they are part of a cultural phenomenon that has been being shaped since Columbus first "discovered" America.  Edible insects were stigmatized by explorers; couple that with a northern environment where insects are not an abundant and readily available resource like they are in tropical areas of the world, and it is not difficult to see why they would fall out of favor.

With that knowledge, though, we can look at insects as the valuable food resource that they are.  Crickets are gaining some popularity in the US and Europe, being incorporated into protein bars, protein shakes, as well as all sorts of snack foods.  The momentum for crickets seems to come from people already having a positive opinion of crickets compared to other insects, maybe because of Jiminy Cricket in Pinocchio, or because they are considered lucky in some East Asian cultures.  However, crickets are not the most popular edible insect in the world.  That achievement belongs to beetle larvae.  If you wanted to partake in the beetle larvae trend, then I suggest trying some mealworms!  Not only are food-grade mealworms available here, but they are also a lot less intimidating than something like a palm weevil larva.

Many people are worried about how our current food system is going to sustain the global population as it approaches 10 billion people by the year 2050.  The worry is not necessarily one of having enough food, we throw millions of pounds of food away every day here in the United States.  The worry is that that system is going to have an upper limit for how long we can use it, because over-producing is going to continue to strip our environmental resources.  Sustainable food sources are going to be important when that happens, so wevmight as well start now.

Besides how bad meat-eating is for our environment, there is also the animal welfare bit that turns many eaters into vegetarians or vegans.  However, humans are omnivores and it takes considerable conscious effort to make sure that we get all the nutrients we need from an entirely plant-based diet.  Being able to make those choices is a privilege of both education and money.  Insects like crickets, who live in dark-cramped spaces naturally and are killed at commercial farms via torpor-inducing freezing, offer an interesting caveat to the ethical dilemma.  Their pain and suffering is minimal.  Additionally, it is known and controlled, unlike industrial harvesting of crops, where pesticides kill all sorts of insects and small animals get killed in farm equipment.  If you are not producing all of your food yourself, there is no perfect answer to the perfect ethical diet.  Insects, however, provide an appealing option for making high-volume food production better all around.

There are many other resources available on my blog that may be of interest, from lecture slides, recommended documentary, interviews with me, and a short youtube video produced by Wayne State.  I hope that you will find these resources helpful!  

I was invited to speak in a symposium on edible insects at the Institute of Food Technologists conference in Chicago on July 13.  Food Navigator did a report on our session and interviewed all of the participants.  You can watch the video below or check out their full post here.  

Culture and cultural history are so important.  For instance take the case of crickets. Trying to promote crickets as food in the United States comes with all sorts of psychological barriers, mostly those that trigger disgust.  However, if you think about trying to do the same in China, a country where insects are consumed regularly, especially in southern provinces, the cricket is a symbol of luck, and with that comes an entirely different set of mechanisms that would suggest they be avoided as food.  

These different cultural conceptions of food are why I really want anthropologists to get more involved with entomophagy.  I am currently working hard to put together a proposal to bring anthropologists with interest in insects as food from around the world together to engage is some deep theoretical debates about why people make the food choices they do.  If I am able to get this workshop funded, then maybe these anthropologists will consider sharing their work at the Eating Innovation Conference in May of 2016.

I was interviewed for this piece that came out in Huffington Post today.  I was very happy with the quotes the reporter chose because I feel it is the best reflection of the importance anthropology that I have seen in entomophagy media.  My personal research is related to human evolution, so when I think about why we are not keen to eat insects in the US and Canada, I think about the fact that the majority of the continent was covered in ice when people first arrived here tens of thousands of years ago.  This concept is reflected in the article, and it is the aspect about my work that tends to capture people's attention the most.  However, I was excited when the reporter asked me about cultures around the world that have already accomplished what we are trying to accomplish here with the entomophagy movement.  

I know you know, but now there are official dates and now it is taking over my life, so I feel like there should be a blog here dedicated to it!

On May 26-28, 2016, a little more than a year from now, I will be hosting the Eating Innovation Detroit conference dedicated to exploring the culture of insects as food and feed.  Daily programming will occur on Wayne State University’s campus, and nightly events will happen across the city.  

What have I accomplished so far?

• Dates are confirmed!  Mark your calendars!
• Space on campus is reserved.  Check out our spaces here and here.
• I have an active website, Facebook page, and twitter account
• I have two grant proposals in the works to be submitted this summer that, if funded, will allow me to fund travel for international scholars from developing countries
• I have created different sponsorship levels that I will use to fundraise from university departments and other organizations
  
• I am working to secure a keynote speaker that I am pretty excited about but can't say anything yet
• Anthropology students are participating in a cricket flour back-off on April 7th of this year, which is helping me to build some relationships around the city, including Detroit FoodLab and Detroit Farm and Garden.  I am confident that we will do something cool together for 2016 as well
• I've been brainstorming a lot of program ideas including poster sessions, panel discussions, organized symposia, and maybe even pecha kucha

There is much still to do, like reserving a block of rooms at a hotel and figuring out shuttles and other transportation options, but it's coming along.  I will keep everyone updated here on the blog about how it's all going!  

Last week, I was visiting the Department of Entomology at the University of Georgia.  I was honored to have been invited to participate in their graduate seminar speaker series.  I had a blast spending a couple of days talking about bugs! 

In addition to giving my talk on entomophagy and evolution and the general discussions I had with faculty and students, I was interviewed by Nancy Miorelli of "Ask an Entomologist."  This blog and its corresponding social media presence are amazingly well-read!  I am very impressed by what Nancy and her collaborator are up to.  I was honored that they dedicated a week to "entomophagy" and included not only my interview, but also a rundown of my seminar talk.  Make sure to go check it out!

Additionally, Nancy drew this amazing picture of me pondering the role of insects in the diet over the course of human evolution.  This is my new favorite thing ever! 

So check out 

Edit:   This past weekend I was part of the scientific programming at ConFusion, a regional science fiction convention.  The program director named my talk "Gotta eat 'em all!" allowing me to use my little grasshopper clipart in this fun way:

At the Eating Innovation conference last month in Montreal, I presented my reconstructions of insects in the hominid diet across all of the hallmark stages of our evolution.  For instance, it is likely that Homo erectus was foraging for resources in their environment similar to how we see foragers do so today. Therefore, insects were probably utilized in their diets the same as well.  I have uploaded a pdf of my entire presentation below. 

Click below to download the pdf of the entire presentation.