Eat the Beetles : Will Insect Cuisine Become the Latest Buzz?
Ron Taylor didn’t ask for fame then or now. The appearances on the Johnny Carson show, “To Tell the Truth” and the front-page headlines in the late ‘60s were not his idea.
He was simply a researcher in the UC Irvine entomology department when his long and unusual Odyssey began with a Rotarian who wanted him to say a few words on any topic at a club luncheon.
Searching for an interesting subject, Taylor latched onto a file he compiled in graduate school on eating bugs. Not exactly material for lunchtime conversation, but he used it. His purpose was, he insisted, quite serious and purely scientific.
He knew insects were an efficient and potentially inexpensive source of protein and he thought in big terms. They could be used by developing countries to eliminate hunger.
Enter a wily public relations man from UCI. Trying to generate publicity for the recently opened campus, he recognized an alluring story. He hustled a few reporters into Taylor’s office and before Taylor knew it, his comments were carried by the wire services. Johnny Carson called. Mike Douglas too.
“People are just fascinated by the idea,”
Taylor recalled. But not the same way he was. They wanted to know what mealworms and honeybees tasted like and how Taylor could stomach the idea of eating them.
Like a bug-eating kid on the playground, Taylor was teased--in his case, by the worldwide media. A publisher called to ask him about a book. No, not the sober equivalent of a textbook he had written. The funny one that lists recipes for the insect gourmet. He complied until he felt so used he had to hide from reporters and comedians.
“I was caught in professional tomfoolery. I could see I was quickly becoming the straight man for everyone and not getting anything out of it,” Taylor said. Tired of “propping up TV shows,” he refused to respond to further requests for interviews.
“It took me years to have fun with the subject,” he said.
About 30 years, to be exact.
Now a more experienced man at the age of 58, he realizes humor may help him ease the world’s opposition to an idea he won’t give up.
This time around, it’s David Letterman, along with the Wall Street Journal and other major newspapers, that are calling. The public relations person is a woman and she works for the Orange County Fair. Taylor will give bug cooking demonstrations at this year’s insect-themed fair in July.
“I think the subject will interest people,” said Jill Lloyd, who handles the fair’s publicity. “There may be some mixed reactions, but it will have educational value.”
After all this time, Taylor thinks listeners will be more receptive to the serious part of his message. “Most people have heard of the possibility because they have been exposed to kooks like me,” he said facetiously.
His argument goes like this:
The crawlers are cleaner than many of the animals humans regularly eat (delicacies such as lobster and crab are ocean bottom dwellers, he points out) and they supply an inordinate amount of protein for the amount of food they consume. Plus, they don’t taste bad. The mealworms’ flavor resembles freshly shelled peas and most other insects taste like Cajun shrimp, he said. If the bugs are prepared the right way, no one need acknowledge to themselves what is being eaten.
Taylor has overcome the psychological resistance to it in his own life. When he first learned about eating bugs in a college entomology class, he too remembers being “blown away” by the concept. He left the entomology class to spit out the first worm he tasted.
Since then he has sampled and enjoyed bugs from all over the world.
“My refrigerator is not stocked with them,” he said, primarily because with such low demand, they are expensive. Mealworms, for instance, run upward of $15 a pound. Insects in quantities necessary to cook are also a nuisance to get. On short notice, he turns to bait and pet shops for mealworms and crickets.
His cookbook, titled “Entertaining With Insects,” which he coauthored with a former student, Barbara J. Carter, focuses on the most readily available insects: mealworms, crickets and honeybees, and lists reliable wholesalers around the country. He said he’ll substitute the wax moth for the honeybee in the next edition--because they are larger than bees, the moths mean “fewer legs and wings” to confront in a meal.
The book, the interviews and the crusade are things he must work on in his spare time. Most of his energy is now directed at Orange County Health Care Agency’s HIV programs, which he oversees.
Since he left UCI in the early ‘70s, his other jobs have had elements as off-putting as eating insects. For nearly a decade, he served as lab director of the Los Angeles County’s coroner’s office. His specialty there was “tool marks in human flesh.”
In his first two weeks, he thought he had made a terrible mistake. But then, dramatically, he said he developed a defense “like a suit of armor” to deal with his near-constant contact with corpses.
He concentrated on solving the puzzle of how the person died and looked upon the bodies not as former “daughters or sons or parents, but as a statistic.” When he focused on the life they left behind, he became depressed.
Perhaps with a will like Taylor’s, the world will accept insects as desirable food. He realizes he will probably never convince the citizens of developed countries because they have an abundance of chicken, hogs and other high-protein food readily available. But developing countries with overarching populations--some of which already eat insects discreetly--might openly promote the practice.
“The theoretical potential is phenomenal,” he said.
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Profile: Ron Taylor
Age: 58
Residence: Yorba Linda
Children: Marc, 35, and Damon, 32
Education: Bachelor’s degree in biology from San Jose State University. Master’s degree and doctorate in entomology from University of Minnesota.
Career highlights: Manager of Orange County Health Care Agency’s STD/HIV programs since 1991; owner and operator of four holistic medical centers in California from 1981 to 1986; laboratory director of Los Angeles County’s coroner’s office from 1973 to 1981; professor of biology at Cal State San Bernardino from 1969 to 1973; research pathobiologist at UC Irvine from 1964 to 1969.
Quote: Many countries already eat insects, but none want to admit it, Taylor says. “I wrote to the equivalent of the department of agriculture in places [where the practice exists] and asked for information. But none wrote back because it’s seen as backward.”
Source: Ron Taylor; Researched by SARAH KLEIN / For The Times
Los Angeles Times
