Edible Invertebrates

    If you ask a person whether they like eating invertebrates, you'll almost always get a resounding "NO!". However, if you ask them if they like eating seafood, ninty-nine percent of the time you'll get the completely opposite response. "Of course!", "I love shrimp...and lobster, and crabs..", "Calamari rocks my world"...etc. But...they are the same question! Almost all seafood that people eat and love are in the invertebrates, but most people don't like to think of them that way.

Looks yummy, huh? Image from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Plateau_van_zeevruchten.jpg

       Most seafood, which includes things like lobsters, oysters, crabs, shrimp, snails and other groups, comes from the sea. But there are freshwater invertebrates (crawfish, mussels) that are also included in the group. Overall, though, what most Americans consider "food" in the invertebrates category comes from the aquatic world where we normally don't really "see" them or interact with them. Oysters come from a "murky bay", or lobster "from the bottom of the ocean". We really don't know what they are doing or why. Just that they are tasty when we fish them out.
       Terrestrial invertebrates, on the other hand, we interact with on a more regular basis. We stomp on them on the sidewalk, we swat them when they land on our wall, we curse them when they eat our plants. We see what they are doing, and we know what they are eating. Our terrestrial ecosystem is the same one shared with them, and therefore we know more about them. And people don't really like to eat things that they know more about, especially when its one of the largest terrestrial arthropod groups, the insects.
      Insects share many of the same characteristics as their larger kin, the Crustacea, which is again one of the favorite types of seafood for people. They have a hard, jointed exoskeleton, and a muscular thorax (or head-thorax in crustacea, called a cephalothorax) and abdomen ("tail" in shrimp). Both groups share the same muscles, or "meat", but the biggest difference in edibility is how much meat there is relative to how much exoskeleton (how much work you have to do to get past the hard shells to get to the meat). Insects have a relatively high amount of shell to meat ratio, but they taste very similar to seafood. Yes, over the years I've eaten lots of different insects, and they can taste great!
       Because insects are so numerous compared to seafood invertebrates (whose populations are declining due to habitat loss, over fishing, etc.), there has been a push to change the way people see insects. Other countries and cultures have been eating insects for centuries, but it hasn't really taken off in America or European countries. Denmark has been on the fore-front of this issue, though, and several other European countries have been pushing for insects to be used instead of meat for protein sources. Even here in the United States, we have started to see some offerings of insect fares in popular culture!

Some wares found at the Pop store in OKC. Yes, I've had the Crick-ettes!

     Will Americans catch the love for terrestrial invertebrates the way we have with seafood? I'm not so sure, but I think we're headed in the right direction. Hopefully when I ask the next person whether they like eating invertebrates, soon it will be a big "YES!!".