Edible Insect Experts on… Culture
Brooklyn Bugs 2017 featured fifteen edible insect experts and proponents speaking on a range of relevant topics. They represent a diversity of backgrounds, expertise, and involvement with the field. The following is the second in a series of topic-specific articles woven from the threads that ran through their individual talks. The Edible Insect Experts on… culture.
What makes a culture?
This complex question has inspired entire fields of study. At a basic level, cultures are collections of things shared between people. Those things can be patterns of thought or patterns of fabric. They can be preferred actions or common mores. They can be art for the eyes or music for the ears.
Or food for the tongue.
“Food is something that’s so cultural, so emotional to us,” explained Aly Moore, founder of Bugible and Eat Bugs Events. Musician Paul Miller (DJ Spooky) agreed. “You can start thinking about food as part of our cultural landscape.”
This idea is easily relatable for anyone who has moved away and started longing for familiar, once ubiquitous flavors. But while the food of our own culture is an intimately familiar reminder of home, it goes both ways.
“I’ve traveled to 75 countries and everywhere I go, food is the key,” noted Jenny Buccos, creator of ProjectExplorer. “It’s the gateway to get into culture.” This is a sentiment echoed by many travelers, myself included.
If something can be as American as apple pie, why not as Swedish as meatballs? What about as Korean as silkworms, or as Oaxacan as chapulines?
Juan Manuel Gutierrez spoke of his experiences in Oaxaca, Mexico but his words apply to civilizations around the world. “People and societies define their identity by consuming these insects. It’s about culture, tradition, identity.” His company, Merci Mercado, is focused on preserving the cultural traditions around harvesting insects, in addition to the quality of the product. “That is what we mean when we talk about social sustainability.”
Robyn Shapiro of Seek Food shared her optimism that these actions can have consequences beyond just the people farming and harvesting insects. “Hopefully, with what we’re doing here in North America to raise the profile of eating insects, it can act as a source of pride in these traditional cuisines.”
One consequence of our recent rapid globalization is the international trend toward cultural Westernization. In many parts of the world where entomophagy is traditionally practiced, younger generations are increasingly turning away from an acceptance of insects on their plates.
Educator Dave Gracer has coined a term for this phenomenon: “Acquired food source rejection.”
Little Herds founder Robert Nathan Allen echoed Shapiro’s sentiment. “It’s great to have that cultural pride in these traditions that may have been put by the wayside or forgotten or relegated to rural or older generations. But really, we’re the ones that were silly for losing touch with this in the first place.”
As acquired food source rejection proliferates, we risk losing the wealth of cultural history wrapped up in edible insects. But expanding global awareness in traditional and heritage foods offers hope. “We’ve got thousands of species of insects from around the world with different recipe traditions attached to them that we can draw inspiration from,” Allen added.
La Newyorkina founder Fany Gerson views this as a method for connection across cultural lines. “These amazing ingredients are being embraced by chefs and by people that didn’t grow up in the regions where these things are part of the culture.” Perhaps the increasing excitement and incorporation of insects in Western cuisine can balance or counter exported habits and acquired food source rejection.
Anecdotally, it has already started to. With the opening of Insects in the Backyard, a fine-dining establishment in Bangkok centered around putting insects on the table, local cultural traditions and pride don’t seem to be going away anytime soon.
As the cultural exchange of edible insects unfolds, however, Shapiro offered a caution from her own experience: “Just because people are comfortable eating one insect doesn’t mean they’re comfortable eating all insects.” In America, much of the discussion around eating insects focuses on the practice as a whole, without noting a difference between species. We speak of ‘eating insects’ without further refinement into ‘eating crickets’ versus ‘eating ants.’ But to cultures that traditionally eat specific species of insects, that difference matters. Viewed from an American standpoint, it’s like saying ‘eating animals’ without a notion that ‘eating cows’ and ‘eating fish’ are distinct.
Food — the heritage behind it, the traditions around it — tells a story of a culture. Just as every ingredient adds flavor to a dish, so too does it add detail and nuance to the story.
At the end of the day, as Gracer muses, “Entomophagy is really all about stories. It’s about the stories we tell ourselves.”
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