Worming Their Way Into Meal

Don’t gasp. That bug floating in the soup is the entree.

It is, anyway, if Ron Taylor served up the dish.

The former UC Irvine entomologist, who gained fame as the Bug Chef for his cookbooks and public appearances promoting the benefits of insect-eating, held a cooking demonstration Saturday at the Fullerton Arboretum, serving his “worm oatmeal cookies” and “insect trail mix” to a largely grossed-out crowd of youngsters and their parents.

Taylor’s main ingredients for the day were super mealworms and wax moth larvae, slithering handfuls of which were scooped into plastic containers and displayed for the audience to inspect. “We’re going to eat those?” said one boy incredulously as he peeked into the bowl.

The wax moth larvae are Taylor’s favorite--very tasty, he says--and within minutes they were sizzling on a frying pan.

“They swell and burst just like popcorn,” he said.

Taylor placed the microphone near the pan so the audience could hear.

“EEEuuwww,” they groaned.

“Yummy,” Taylor responded.

Taylor, 60, uses his Bug Chef shtick to get lots of laughs--like his joke recipes for lice-a-roni and roach-roast--but his message is a serious one: Insects not only taste good, but they are protein-rich and a potential source of food for undernourished populations worldwide.

“There is tremendous potential for meeting the world’s food needs,” he said, citing insects’ reproductive capacities. “The whole point is that insects are edible, they are nutritious and they are an ideal source of protein.”

Taylor became interested in insect-eating as a graduate student at the University of Minnesota. Years later, when he was a researcher at UC Irvine, a savvy public relations person for the then-new school recognized the publicity potential of having a bug-eating expert on campus and began inviting reporters over to meet him.

Taylor’s insect-eating was soon the stuff of headlines. He was a guest on television shows, including “The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson.” He’s even published two cookbooks, one of which--”Entertaining With Insects”--he said sells more copies now than when it first came out in 1976.

Now a program manager for the Orange County Health Department, Taylor still makes television appearances and gives demonstrations locally. His appearance Saturday was part of the arboretum’s Arborfest activities.

Throughout the demonstration, Taylor tried to sway the skeptical audience to his point of view.

He pointed out that most people probably eat insects on a daily basis anyway. Traces of insects are found in many food products, he said, including rice, apple cider and canned goods. In fact, Taylor said, the Food and Drug Administration permits a maximum of 68 fruit flies, 34 fruit fly eggs and two maggots in an ordinary can of tomato sauce.

“You already eat insects,” he told the crowd, which was hardly pleased with the information.

Though insects have yet to make it on restaurant menus in the United States, Taylor said they are a common food worldwide. In Mexico, for instance, he said there are 300 species of insect served in dishes. And in Thailand, cockroaches are eaten by the bagful.

A lot of the foods people consider delicious, he said, are actually close relatives of the insect. And some, he said, are hardly healthy eaters themselves.

“Lobsters eat dead flesh on the bottom of the ocean,” he said. “It is probably the foulest-eating animal on this Earth. And yet the same people who eat lobster won’t eat insects. I don’t get it.”

By the end of the demonstration, the wax moth larvae had been de-greased and emptied into a bowl of trail mix. A pinch of garlic salt and a few dashes of Tabasco sauce later, and they were ready for serving. About 130 of the worm oatmeal cookies, which had been baked beforehand, were also served.

Despite all of the groans of disgust during the demonstration, almost all of the estimated 150 people who attended lined up for a taste. The reviews, however, were decidedly mixed. Adults, in general, didn’t mind the taste of the crunchy insects. But many children, after looking over the cookies embedded with scaly worms, wouldn’t even take a bite.

“It tastes good,” said David Hillinger of Anaheim after sampling the trail mix, which his 7-year-old son, Shea, refused to try. “It tastes like most fried food. Sort of like a cross between a popcorn or a nut.”

But 5-year-old Tirzah McFarland was in no mood to try bug eating. “Gross,” she said as she watched her mother, Lisa McFarland, eat a worm she picked off a cookie. “I hate bugs.”