"A slew of countries in the developing world, the Far East, Asia, Australia, Central Africa - all these folks eat bugs," said Lemann. "A lot of this is what you're used to and getting people to try something new. The idea of adding this thing that it is unusual and typically thought of as a pest and not a meal is a tough hump to get over, but I think we are slowly getting people to realize it is OK."
Lemann, a program manager for the Audubon Insectarium in New Orleans - and creator of the museum's cooking demonstration center, "Bug Appetit" - will bring his creepy culinary delights to the Academy of Natural Sciences for this weekend's Bug Fest 2008. On Saturday and Sunday, at 12:15 p.m. and 3:15 p.m., he'll be chatting about munching everything from ants to waterbugs, and offering cooking demonstrations with some of his favorite treats, like big juicy dragonflies. (For more details about Bugfest see www.ansp.org/bugfest.)
We talked with Lemann to find out more about this, ahem, unusual culinary obsession, and to learn whether we, too, could possibly come to appreciate house pests, garden nuisances and annoying flying friends on our plates instead of our swatters.
Q. First question right off the bat: Is it safe to eat these things you are cooking?
A. It certainly seems to be safe. If you look at the history of the human consumption of insects past and present in various cultures, you very rarely have incidence of allergic reactions and that [would be] the main thing to worry about. The FDA [Food and Drug Administration] allows a certain number of bug parts in all sorts of foods that we eat all the time. So we've all ingested enough bugs that if we had allergies we would know about it. But there is evidence to suggest that if a person is allergic to shellfish, there may be iodine in the exoskeleton of the insects that could cause a reaction.
Q. How did you gain this unusual culinary talent?
