Bee larvae taste like bacon, and other reasons to eat more insects
Melbourne Museum serves chocolate covered fly pupae to encourage patrons to swap four legs for six when it comes to protein
Thursday night was Smart Bar night as the Melbourne Museum hosted an adults only evening.
It was a chance for about 600 punters to sip beers, chill to DJs, listen to talks from scientists and nibble on some chocolate covered fly pupae.
Hold on. What?
Patrick Honan is the Manager of Live Exhibits at Melbourne Museum. He explains the strange choice of appetizer is part of a worldwide push 'to get people eating more insects'.
"Chocolate coated insects are a good way to introduce the concept to the western palate," says Patrick.
Patrick says insects are high in protein, zinc and potassium and low in fat, and are environmentally friendly because they don't take as much feed or land to produce as other forms of protein.
While many Australians may find the idea of eating insects repulsive, Patrick Honan says that is cultural.
"People have been eating insects for hundreds of thousands of years in many other countries and still do today," he says.
"Australia is often behind the rest of the world with these trends," says Patrick. "In Europe there's factories pumping out millions of insects a day for human consumption."
Farming insects uses the same techniques to rear as other meat, and the industry is subject to the same regulations as other food producers.
There are also options for producing your own.
"In Europe you can now buy little domestic insect producers for the kitchen that will produce large numbers of black soldier fly maggots to incorporate in things like stir fries," says Patrick.
Some Australian insects make for particularly good eating, such as green tree ants which are found in Far North Queensland.
"In places like Thailand the average family would eat almost 50 kilos of green tree ants a year," says Patrick.
"Bogong moths, which are quite common around Melbourne at the moment, they are about 60 per cent protein which is far higher than any other animal protein that you'll get," he says.
"That's why the Aborigines used to gather in large numbers to feast on the bogong moths at certain times of the year."
While eating insects still has novelty value in Australia, in some countries they are an established part of the local cuisine, with traditional recipes designed specifically for local insects.
"In other countries like Thailand the insects at markets actually cost more than meat because they're so highly prized and in Mexico, for example, caterpillars cost about fourteen times per kilo the price of beef," says Patrick.
Depending on the insect they can be eaten raw, fried, dried and ground and used as a high protein flour or mixed with chilli paste to become a base for traditional dishes
So what do they taste like?
"Insects generally have a very nutty flavour," says Patrick, although with 'literally tens of thousands to choose from there's a whole palate of flavours out there'.
"The most commonly sold ones are crickets and they're a bit like tofu in that they don't really have a flavour of their own but they absorb the flavours of what else they're in [the pot] with," says Patrick
"Fresh water species might taste like shrimp, some of them taste like lobster," he says. "Bee larvae tend to taste like bacon."
Some insects take on the flavours of what they are themselves feeding on.
"Wasp larvae live inside the nest and the adults bring them food," says Patrick. "Where you get blackberries the wasp adults will be bringing blackberries to the larvae, the larvae turn purple and if you eat those they have a distinctive fruity flavour."
The chocolates served by the Melbourne Museum contain fly pupae - the stage of life between the fly maggot and the fly adult.
The experience is much like eating any other chocolate, albeit with a little extra crunch.
While novelty foods like this are great for getting people used to the idea of eating insects, there are much better ways to incorporate insects into your diet.
"I think the best way to utilise insects in cooking is to actually follow traditional recipes," says Patrick Honan.