Paleo Magazine Podcast Episode 29 2014 Page 1

Podcast Episode 29

2014

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Host: Welcome to PMR, Paleo Magazine Radio, where we bring you Paleo , exercise, and lifestyle perspectives from both the experts and the everyday. PMR is brought to you by Paleo Magazine, the first and only print magazine dedicated to the Paleo lifestyle, and is hosted by Tony Federico.

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Tony Federico: Creepy, crawling, squirmy, delicious—most of us are horrified at the prospect of eating bugs. But should we be? Bugs are a sustainable source of high- quality , and they've been part of the human since day one. Maybe they should be a part of the Paleo diet? I'm Tony Federico. And in today's episode of Paleo Magazine Radio, we're talking about eating insects.

Today's guests are experts on the topic, and we'll kick off the show with an interview with Joseph Moore. Joseph researched the subject for Paleo Magazine's December/January, 2013 issue in an appropriately titled piece called, "Eating Bugs."

Our second guest, David George Gordon, a/k/a The Bug Chef, is the author of The Eat-A-Bug Cookbook, which has just recently been re-released. David has been promoting , or insect eating, for over a decade, and has been featured on Late Night With Conan O'Brien, ABC's Nightline, The New Paleo Magazine Podcast Episode 29 2014 Page 2

York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. He has quite the repertoire of recipes that might just convince you to give cricket kabobs a try.

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Tony Federico: I'm here with Joseph Moore. Joseph wrote an article in the latest issue of Paleo Magazine, the December/January issue. The article was titled, "Eating Bugs." Joseph, welcome to the show.

Joseph Moore: Thanks for having me.

Tony Federico: All right, man. So let's just get right to it. You know, the Paleo diet, as everyone knows, it's meat, it's vegetables, it's nuts, it's produce, fruit. But, there seems to be a big, key thing that hunter/gatherers, modern and prehistoric, that they all eat. And feel free to fill us in. What is this thing that we're missing in our modern Paleo diet?

Joseph Moore: Well, the United Nations just released a 200-page report back in May essentially stating we're going to go from six billion to nine billion people in the next twentyish, thirtyish years. And to support those three billion new mouths to feed, if we were going to continue eating the way we are eating now, we would have to have new farmland added to the farming systems equal to the United States and China combined. And that's just not possible. So what they're suggesting is, is that we start looking at other avenues, and they turn out to be other avenues that we used to all eat anyway, which are insects. Paleo Magazine Podcast Episode 29 2014 Page 3

Tony Federico: All right. So eating insects, that might freak some people out. What are we talking about? Are we talking about crickets, roaches, bugs, worms, or is it the entire Kingdom Insecta?

Joseph Moore: These numbers, when I was doing my research, kind of shocked me. Out of the 1.4 million known species on this planet of all life forms, one million of those 1.4 million are insects. That amounts to somewhere – they estimate around 71% of all known life. It's pretty crazy. Of those, you know, millions of species, there are 1,900 that are edible. And, like you said, yes, there's crickets, there's worms, there's locusts. Not everything is edible, but there are a lot of things that are.

Tony Federico: So let's look at that. What are some of the insect eating traditions that you came across in your research?

Joseph Moore: Well, one of my favorite stories was in Mexico, most people out there listening probably have seen – a lot of people think it's tequila with the worm in the bottom. It's actually mezcal, which is similar to tequila. It's kind of like the scotch of tequilas. It's got a smoky flavor to it. But that worm is in the bottle. And in the fields where they grow the agave that becomes the mezcal, those worms, you know, they'll grow in the hundreds of thousands of populations. And people down there love to eat them. They're kind of a delicacy. And during the peak of the growing season when those worms are growing at their fastest and they're at their most prolific, the agave farmers have to hire armed guards to patrol their fields to keep people from poaching the worms.

{Laughter} Paleo Magazine Podcast Episode 29 2014 Page 4

Tony Federico: And so, these worms, are they worms proper, you know, like an earthworm? Or is this a larva of some sort, maybe a beetle larva?

Joseph Moore: You know, I didn't get that far into my research. I'm not quite sure about that. They do look a lot like a mealworm, so they probably are some form of larva.

Tony Federico: So if we kind of fast-forward a little bit into our modern day experience, you know, obviously insects, we associate them with decay. They're considered pests. So there seems to be a lot of psychological apprehension around insect eating. Do you see that as a – like a stopping point? Do you see that as a barrier for Americans really embracing insect eating? And how do you maybe see we could get around that?

Joseph Moore: It's definitely a challenge. People in western cultures like ours, we're among the only cultures on the planet that really think of insects that way today. It's pretty much America, Canada, parts of western Europe, and then the more urbanized parts of Australia where people think eating bugs is abhorrent. But pretty much everywhere else in the world, there's two billion plus people estimated—that's about a third of the world's current population—that are already eating them. And not just eating them like casually here and there as a snack, but like eating them as a staple.

Tony Federico: From a sustainability perspective, you know, we really have an opportunity here to definitely supplement our diet, maybe even replace some of our diet. Nutritionally, what is an insect giving us?

Joseph Moore: Pound-for-pound, I know that crickets are a larger percentage – so like just example, if you had on the table in front of you one pound of cricket meat and one pound of, you know, grass-fed beef, I can't find in my notes here the Paleo Magazine Podcast Episode 29 2014 Page 5

numbers, but I want to say that the beef is something like 40, 45% actual protein. The crickets are like 70%.

Tony Federico: So you're getting a lot more protein. Crickets might be the next big supplement?

{Laughter}

Joseph Moore: Yes. Somebody will get rich making cricket protein powder, strawberry flavored or whatever. {Laughter}

Tony Federico: You know, I believe there's actually a cricket that either is available or is going to be available, called the Exo bar.

{Laughter}

Joseph Moore: That's great.

Tony Federico: So I think somebody is at least getting a kick-starter going to try to push that forward. So crickets, bugs in general, typically high in protein. I'm imagining that since you're eating the entire insect, you know, you're not having a filet mignon of cricket, you know, you're just kind of popping the whole thing in your mouth, you're probably getting a lot of other things as well. Is there anything that you came across that suggests that the whole animal, the nose to tail, eating of insects imparts any other benefits that we might miss out from, you know, just consuming lean meats to exclusion?

Joseph Moore: Yes. The problem is this is kind of a new field of study because so many people find this abhorrent. In my research, I was trying to find that, you Paleo Magazine Podcast Episode 29 2014 Page 6

know, are there trace elements of, you know, I don't know, trace or A or whatever. And I really couldn't find much about that. Some researcher out there needs to cut new ground in that area, I guess. {Laughter}

Tony Federico: You're eating the insect offal or you're eating the skeleton. And, you know, I'm sure there's definitely things that are beneficial about that, going beyond just its macronutrient profile. So, you know, the next thing is, if we know that from an environmental and sustainable perspective that eating insects is a good option, from a nutritional perspective it makes sense, how can we overcome some of the apprehensions that we have? You know, how are some ways that we can sneak this valuable source of protein that makes sense into our diets?

Joseph Moore: That's the challenge, isn't it? I mean, in the 200-page UN report, that's the one thing I kept looking for, is – because I obviously had to read the whole thing to write this article. And I kept looking for where is the recommendation? You know, how do we change hearts and minds, because that's the challenge here. And all I can think is – and I mentioned this in the article a little bit, too – there was a challenge during World War II, the government was sending a lot of the American meat supply to the warfront, and people at home to feed their families were left with meat shortages and things like that. So the government tried to encourage people to use liver and kidneys and things that Paleo people I'm sure already – they're already excited to eat now. But back 70 years ago, it was abhorrent. It was – nobody wanted to put that on their table. So the government started sending out these fliers to homes with new recipes that basically hid the organ meats. Like – so meatloaf with liver for 60% of the meat was cut with some other, you know, ground up beef or something like that. Or steak and pie, things that hid the organs so that Paleo Magazine Podcast Episode 29 2014 Page 7

no one knew it was organs; they just knew they were eating meat of some kind, and they were happy with it.

Suddenly, you know, within a decade after that, organ meats became one of the most popular meats, and liver and onions – you know, I'm in my mid- thirties right now. My parents' generation, liver and onions was a staple on the plate. And they never served it to me and my brother because they hated it so much, but that's a different story.

But, yes, I mean, you've got to figure out some way to make these more palatable. Australia, for example, they're actually trying to rebrand the locust. They're trying to officially change the locust's name to the sky prawn.

Tony Federico: I love me some sky prawn.

Joseph Moore: Oh, yes. I haven't had the chance to try locust yet, but I'm willing if I can ever find it.

Tony Federico: So you did try some insects. I was reading through your piece and it looks like you went to a sushi restaurant that features an insect-based sushi. Can you tell us a little bit about that and what that was like, actually popping one of those suckers in your mouth?

Joseph Moore: Yes. Sushi Mazi is a place here in Portland. And I looked all over the place to try to find some place where I could get a hold of some – I actually wanted to cook some at home, but I couldn't find that here easily. So I found – Marc is the owner, Marc Suwansathien, really, really nice guy, and was happy to talk about it. And he told us a lot about the crickets in his country, he's a native of Thailand, I guess. He said here in America, you go to the mall and you get Paleo Magazine Podcast Episode 29 2014 Page 8

like a bag of french fries or a bag of popcorn or something or pretzels. He said that in his home, you go and you get a bag of deep-fried crickets. So, for him, this is just natural to serve this. But yes, it's just like any other simple sushi where it's just a cricket on top of a little ball of rice with a little bit of a sweet sauce on it. And, I won't lie to you, that was my first bug-eating occasion, so being a Westerner myself, I was a little taken aback, but I did it and I liked it. I really liked it. It actually had a texture a lot like popcorn.

Tony Federico: Interesting.

Joseph Moore: And, you know, it was very crispy, crunchy, but it had a flavor like – this is the silliest way to describe it I can imagine, but it's all I can come up with. It has a flavor kind of like it's nutty, you know, almost like almonds or pecans, but it's not like any nut that exists. This would be like a previously undiscovered nut flavor, but it's nutty.

{Laughter}

Tony Federico: So it wasn't bad is what I'm hearing, not bad at all.

Joseph Moore: No. I would definitely go back and probably will go back. {Laughter}

Tony Federico: Your initial idea was to procure some insects and cook them at home. It seems like there aren't a lot of resources if somebody wanted to get some quality insects because – I'm assuming, did you come across any evidence that would suggest we don't want to necessarily grab a net and go hunting for insects in our backyard? Is there any danger, I guess, you know, beyond the obvious of getting stung in the face to, you know, free-ranging insects in our lawns? Paleo Magazine Podcast Episode 29 2014 Page 9

Joseph Moore: Yes. Unfortunately, you can't really trust what your neighbors are doing. And any bug that's in your yard has probably passed through several of your neighbors' yards and you have no idea what they've been spraying. And one option that I was thinking about but I was kind of in crunch time with the article deadline, I was thinking about going to like a pet store and buying some feeder crickets, because they breed very quickly. You can breed a generation of them in just a matter of weeks. So I was thinking about trying to breed it as a part of the article. I just ran short on time. But, you know, if you get them from a source like that, you know that even if you're not going to eat the generation you bought, you know, you're going to breed them, they're going to be raised in captivity, you know they're going to be safe. That's an option for somebody if they've got the time and the inclination.

Tony Federico: Could get some good organic produce, you know, feed them a nice non-GMO (phonetic) diet, get some really quality going into those crickets.

Joseph Moore: We have a vegetable patch in my backyard, and we end up not being able to get through all of it before some of it goes bad. So if we had a little army of crickets to help us, and then we can eat the crickets…

Tony Federico: Hey, there you go.

Joseph Moore: …that would work.

Tony Federico: Yes, it's like the ideal recycling machine.

Joseph Moore: Yes. Well, that was another angle in the article, too, that it's not just great for us, it's great for the environment as well. There was an experiment where they Paleo Magazine Podcast Episode 29 2014 Page 10

took a fly called a soldier fly – maybe the listeners at home know this, maybe they don't, but pig farming, big factory pig farming produces millions of gallons of pig waste, and they store it in these big lagoons. And it's a hazard, and in some instances it's washed into rivers and polluted and killed millions of fish, and it's an awful situation. But they did an experiment where they took soldier flies, sicked them on pig waste, and they made short work of it. And then the flies, once they were done with their job, they were also harvested and then fed to chickens as chicken feed. It's win-win, it's feed for feed for us as – and it also gets rid of waste produces very efficiently.

Tony Federico: Absolutely. And I am aware of the efficiency of insects in converting food into body weight and protein and things of that nature. They're dramatically more efficient. I don’t know if it's just a factor of their size or what it may be, but they're a lot more efficient than larger animals.

Joseph Moore: Yes. They have extremely fast metabolisms, and they reproduce so quickly that, you know, you start with a small colony of crickets, you could have – if you do everything right, you could have, you know, a hundred thousand in a matter of a couple of generations. {Laughter}

Tony Federico: So if somebody were listening to this and they're thinking, all right, you know, I'm kind of sold on the concept, what do you think they should do? What – how would they maybe progress into experimenting with adding insects into their diet?

Joseph Moore: As of now, there are some decent options if you look on the internet. But I – when I was looking, it was like, okay, I need to do this quickly because my deadline is coming up. But you can find some sources on the internet. Marc said he gets his shipped directly from Thailand because I guess Thai crickets Paleo Magazine Podcast Episode 29 2014 Page 11

are about twice the size of American crickets, so he tries to get his from Thailand. And, I mean, he said sometimes with the Asian grocery stores, which every city I've ever lived in has had a nice, big Asian grocery store somewhere in it, he said a lot of times they’ll have things like crickets or certain types of worms and things like that. Unless you have an Asian grocery store or internet access, your best bet would be, like I said, try to go to a pet store and find some safe feeder bugs and breed yourself a couple generations.

Tony Federico: Grow your own.

Joseph Moore: Yes. It's not that hard. If you Google how to grow crickets, it's not that hard.

Tony Federico: Well, that's awesome, man. Well, Joe, I appreciate you taking the time to talk to us today. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the article. You know, this is kind of like a missing piece of the modern Paleo movement, if you will.

Joseph Moore: Yes, well, modern hunter/gatherers are still eating them, too. It's not just our ancestors that ate them. Like tribes in Africa and Australia and – they're definitely subsisting on large amounts of insects that they catch themselves.

Tony Federico: So, you know, maybe like you said, in the same way that offal was made cool as a matter of necessity, you know, maybe the impending necessity for us to be more conservative in our use of land and resources will help spurn (phonetic) a new generation of cool, hip insect recipes, maybe foodies will jump on board, and maybe the Paleo movement can be part of that.

Joseph Moore: I'll tell you this, too. At my family's Thanksgiving party, right after Thanksgiving that weekend we had about 20 of my wife's family all together, and I was telling them about the article that I wrote. And they brought out a Paleo Magazine Podcast Episode 29 2014 Page 12

big bag of mealworms that they use as chicken feed and I just grabbed a handful and threw them in my mouth. And everyone in the room was immediately – they were immediately horrified. And then one by one they're like, you know what, I'll try it, you know what, I'll try it, you know what, I'll try it—everyone in the room tried one. And no one was grossed out by it. So all I can say to these listeners out there is talk about it, ask about it, Google it, try it, introduce your friends to it. If we can change hearts and minds, it'll grow.

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Tony Federico: Okay. That's awesome, man. Well, thanks again. I really appreciate you coming on the show.

Joseph Moore: No problem, Tony. Thank you, I appreciate being on.

{Music}

Tony Federico: Hey, everybody, Tony here. I'm just going to take a short break between today's interviews to just give you a big thank you for getting us through our first year. This podcast originally released last January. Since then, we've had guests including Loren Cordain, Abel James, Diane Sanfilippo, Civilized Caveman's George Bryant—you know, lots of really great people have been on this show. I really can't thank enough of you guys, the listeners who allow me to do this, give me the opportunity, to talk to really interesting folks like Sarah Fragoso and Frank Forencich. It's a really, really cool thing for me. I want to make sure that I'm living up to the standard of Paleo Magazine. So if there's anything, anything at all that I can do to make this podcast better, whether it's bringing on a particular guest, or if there's a segment you'd like to Paleo Magazine Podcast Episode 29 2014 Page 13

hear, or if there's something I'm doing well, or something that I'm not doing so well, hit me with an email directly at [email protected]. So that's [email protected]. Shoot me an email, let me know how I'm doing. It's much appreciated. And thanks again for being with us all this time, and hopefully we'll be here for a lot more time as we continue to grow and continue to do what we can to get the word of Paleo, of real food, of real thinking and living out into the world.

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Tony Federico: Our next guest is David G. Gordon, a/k/a The Bug Chef. David, thanks for coming on the show.

David George Gordon: Hey, thanks for having me.

Tony Federico: We were just talking in the first interview with Joseph Moore. He wrote an article called "Eating Bugs" in the December/January, 2013 of Paleo Magazine. You've been writing about eating bugs for quite some time. You've been talking about eating bugs with people, doing cooking demonstrations, and featured in many different forms of media for years. When did you first stumble upon this concept of eating insects?

David George Gordon: You know, it's funny. I did literally stumble upon it, because in 1996 I was working on a book about cockroaches, of all things. I wanted to include a little bit of everything about cockroaches, including the people in other parts of the world who actually use them as food. There's been a lot of public interest in China right now where they're actually rearing cockroaches for medicine. Paleo Magazine Podcast Episode 29 2014 Page 14

But in 1996, that was sort of before shows like Bizarre and Anthony Bourdain, so most of what I was reading was scientific literature. And I just kept coming across more and more articles from anthropology studies and what have you about other cultures around the world that eat insects. So in 1998, I wrote and published the Eat-A-Bug Cookbook, which was kind of groundbreaking for its time. It had 33 recipes for cooking with critters. I figured this was a way more interesting way of putting that information out there than writing a really droll science text. And it worked. You know, my book was just re-released in June of this year and has been selling quite well.

Tony Federico: So have you noticed a resurgence of interest in insect eating; and, if so, what do you think is driving that?

David George Gordon: You know, actually I'd say over the past five or six years there has definitely been an enormous increase in interest in that topic. You know, the scientific word for this, which kind of cracks me up, is called Entomophagy. That means bug eating for those of us in the cheap seats.

{Laughter}

And Entomophagy has really become a big topic and sort of a little movement among foodies ever since the UN started supporting the idea that people need to start rearing and eating insects in addition to other, more traditional sources of protein.

Tony Federico: And one of the things we were discussing in the first half of the show was this recent UN report suggesting what you just said. And it looks like on multiple fronts, whether it's a sustainability question, whether it's a health question, we really could benefit from tapping into this resource. And I asked my first Paleo Magazine Podcast Episode 29 2014 Page 15

guest what he thought were some of the obstacles standing in the way of this, and obviously we have a lot of social, psychological barriers. You seem to have been able to overcome some of those. What is your approach, and why did you take that particular angle?

David George Gordon: Well, you know, first of all – and probably a much larger campaign for me – people in our cultures have a very weird perspective about insects and arthropods in general. We think they're germy and disease-ridden and gross and disgusting. And, of course, if we didn't have insects for – at the variety of services they provide, our planet would probably shut down in a matter of weeks. I mean, they're very important players in our ecosystems. And part of the reason is such a hard sell to get people interested in eating bugs is exactly that, people don't really understand their value and they actually are an animal that, in popular culture, we love to bash. So I'm really trying to friendly people up partly through humor. You know, my book has recipes that are titled things – there are some bad puns in there.

{Laughter}

Pesto is one of the recipes. Three Bee Salad, for example.

Tony Federico: Nice. {Laughter}

David George Gordon: And I've been trying to use some humor. And also, it's funny when I look at my original edition of the book, it had some certain degree of shock value to it. My new edition is quite gourmet and looks – has all those beautiful food shots that you would expect to see of other , and is more elegant in its approach, mostly because people are starting to warm up to that idea. Paleo Magazine Podcast Episode 29 2014 Page 16

Tony Federico: And I'm actually looking at your website right now and I'm seeing there's a couple recipes featured, including Sheesh! Kabobs and (Scorpion Scalapini), and it seems like the insects are featured very up front. There isn't much of an attempt to try to hide them. And I know that's one strategy is to grind them up or to basically disguise the insect within the recipe. And you've done quite the opposite of that. You've put them front and center. Do you…

{Crosstalk}

David George Gordon: Yes. I mentioned that in my book, that rather than try to conceal the bugs – because I'm using this kind of as a teaching device, let's say. I want people to be really aware of what they're eating. Likewise, I also am an advocate of seasoning them very lightly. I don't want foods, you know, smothered in sauces and things where you can taste the sauce, but what did the grasshopper taste like. I want people to be able to taste those critters themselves.

Tony Federico: So what did the grasshopper taste like? Could you kind of run down a list of some of the insects you've had the opportunity, had the pleasure of consuming, and what their particular flavor profiles are?

David George Gordon: Oh, sure. You know, crickets, which are probably the easiest to obtain – you can literally go to a pet store and buy live crickets, freeze them, defrost them, and bake them – those taste very mildly like shrimp. If you're not over- seasoning them, you'll notice a very slight either nutty or shrimp-like flavor to them. Paleo Magazine Podcast Episode 29 2014 Page 17

Things like the scorpions we were talking about, the tails of those have very long and very tasty white muscle meat, and that tastes somewhat like crab meat, both in texture and in taste.

And then there are all sorts of other ranges of flavors. I mean, grasshoppers themselves to me taste sort of like green peppers.

Tony Federico: Interesting.

Joseph Moore: I like bees a lot. The bee larva tastes almost like you're eating beeswax. They have that same kind of sweet and pungent flavor.

Giant water bugs, which are a delicacy in Thailand, they have a really amazing, complex, aromatic hydrocarbon, if you know what those are. It's sort of like gin. You know, when you can smell gin as well as taste it? It's very vaporous. And actually, the flavor of those water bugs is very vaporous, too. So I've had – seen people describe that as watermelon mixed with gin.

Tony Federico: Maybe there's a cocktail waiting to be developed?

Joseph Moore: Well, what's funny is you can actually buy the extract of the water bugs. If you go to an Asian grocery store, you'll find a little box; inside the little box is a small bottle and a very small eyedropper, and that's the extract of those water bugs.

Tony Federico: And what might one do with water bug extract?

Joseph Moore: Well, if you're following a Cambodian or Thai , you would add some of that to your hot sauces or other flavorings for your food. Paleo Magazine Podcast Episode 29 2014 Page 18

Tony Federico: Interesting. I think I'm going to be putting that on my grocery list for the next time I go out to the local Asian supermarket.

Now, you've done numerous cooking demonstrations all across the country. What are some of the reactions, what are some of the responses, that you've received from audience members?

Joseph Moore: Well, first I should say that people have really strong feelings about food, and it's like religion or politics as far as getting into fights with people. You know, you get into, like, "That's not how you make chili where I come from."

{Laughter}

Or, you know, "Where's the best barbecue," or – you know, it's easy to get people volatile. So sometimes I have people coming up to me before I've even started, and they're going, "You're not going to eat that," you know. And then I go, "Well, no, I'm not. I'm going to cook it and you're going to eat it."

{Laughter}

Because in my cooking demonstrations, I like to bring people up from the audience and sample these dishes.

But, in all seriousness, when I do programs, there usually are three kinds of people that come to them. Some people are like, "No way. I'm just here to observe." They don't even want to get near the table. Other people are sort of the kind of California-I'll-try-anything-once people, God bless them for that. And then there are some people I find who are just like genuinely excited. Paleo Magazine Podcast Episode 29 2014 Page 19

They got up very early in the morning and drove for hours to get to my cooking demo and they can't wait for me to get started.

Tony Federico: Those are the real insect enthusiasts?

Joseph Moore: That's right. And also a lot of those people are also people who would be, well, Paleo diet followers, but also mushroom hunters or foragers. They don't have a very finite definition of what's acceptable and what's not in terms of food.

Tony Federico: So typically in one of these demonstrations, you'll get up on stage, you'll prepare a few recipes. What's that moment like when you start handing these creations out and people actually start biting down?

Joseph Moore: You know, it's funny. When I do a program, I usually make maybe four or sometimes even five different dishes for the audience. And, like I said, I bring people up to help prepare the dishes just for the sheer entertainment of it all, and then also do a sample of the dishes, taste test them. What I do in my programs is I sort of have an escalating degree of difficulty. I might start out with tempura battered and deep-fried mealworms. And when those come out of the oil, they actually look like Cheetos or something. They're not very challenging. It's not like, "Oh, I can't eat this, it's looking back at me," which is a response I hear of some people.

{Laughter}

I eventually work my way up to maybe we'll be cooking a tarantula spider, or a really large grasshopper or something that really separates the men from the boys, so to speak. Paleo Magazine Podcast Episode 29 2014 Page 20

{Laughter}

But, you know, there's usually this reaction of, "not bad," which is a high compliment in this country. {Laughter}

Tony Federico: "You know, that was really not bad at all."

Joseph Moore: And I always say, "You're relieved you're still alive."

{Laughter}

Tony Federico: So what do you think has been the most popular, or what's the most accepted insect dish that you've prepared? What kind of goes over well? What's the thing that someone might consider preparing for a house guest or for a party?

Joseph Moore: Well, a couple of things. I have a recipe in my cookbook for white chocolate and wax worm cookies. And the wax worms, they're not worms at all. They are little white caterpillars from a moth. And the moth lays its eggs on the honeycombs in beehives. So when the caterpillars hatch out, they're eating the wax in – that's why they call them wax worms – inside the honeycomb. And, you know, here's this critter that's been eating wax and honey for its entire life, like what's not to like about that?

Tony Federico: That actually sounds…

Joseph Moore: So those are quite delicious. If you bake them on a cookie sheet, they actually taste kind of like pistachio nuts. They have a great flavor to them. That's very easy, acceptable. Paleo Magazine Podcast Episode 29 2014 Page 21

You know, if people do the blindfold test so they're not really reacting to what something looks like, believe it or not, tarantula legs are really tasty.

Tony Federico: Really?

Joseph Moore: They're actually one of my favorite foods.

Tony Federico: What goes into preparing a tarantula leg? I know they are covered in course hairs. Is there a lot of prep work that goes into tarantula…

Joseph Moore: Well, I have this recipe in my revised Eat-A-Bug Cookbook. I don't have it online yet. But, first of all, I – what I do is I cut off the abdomen. That’s just basically a fluid-filled sac, so we remove that part of the tarantula. But then I use a small BIC lighter, or something like that, crème brûlée torch, and I singe off all those hairs. And for the recipe that I'm currently using, I – again, I like to dip it in tempura batter and deep fry them. Now, the real benefit of eating tarantulas – they're kind of expensive, that's a disadvantage. But the benefit is, unlike things like grasshoppers or beetles, their body armor, the exoskeleton, is not very thick or crunchy. It's actually more chewy. They actually have a very thin body armor. So you're getting sort of a nice, chewy texture, but they also have a lot of meat in those legs, so you're getting a lot of leg muscle as well. So they're pretty good. You can get eight nice, little legs out of there.

Tony Federico: And you mentioned previously that it almost has a crab-type flavor. And I imagine that hearkens to the common ancestry between spiders and crabs. Paleo Magazine Podcast Episode 29 2014 Page 22

Joseph Moore: Yes, that's right. In fact, scorpions actually evolved in the ocean. I've seen photographs of sea scorpions that are now extinct that were once the size of my living room couch. So, you know, when there's a great die-off in the oceans millions of years ago, those creatures went extinct. But for some reason, they survived on land, the smaller versions.

Tony Federico: Good for us, because the tables might have been turned, literally, if the couch- sized scorpions had made it out of the ocean.

Joseph Moore: That's right, and they were predatory, so we wouldn't like that.

{Laughter}

Tony Federico: No. So the tempura and roasted and put into cookies, you know, that all seems to kind of help them go over. I'm sold on the idea of a pistachio- reminiscent wax worm. What do I do if I want to get some of these things? How do I actually procure some insects for my kitchen?

Joseph Moore: Well, first I have to plug my Eat-A-Bug Cookbook and say I have a whole list of resources in the back of the book.

Tony Federico: Perfect.

Joseph Moore: So if you're looking to order termites or ants or giant water bugs, you name it, you might be able to find those resources in the back of my book.

But second of all, I should also mention that – and people might have qualms about this initially, but the live foods that they sell at pet stores or even bait and tackle shops are perfectly fine to cook with. If you're raising crickets to Paleo Magazine Podcast Episode 29 2014 Page 23

feed to reptiles, for example, pet reptiles, some of those chameleons and iguanas and such, they're actually valued at hundreds of dollars, so you don't want to be feeding them substandard food. So there is a lot of quality control in the producing of that food. You know, and you can get things like wax worms, mealworms, crickets, and in some places even things like grasshoppers.

Tony Federico: Now, would there be any particular steps that someone should take in terms of safety? Would eating raw insects pose a safety hazard? Is there a certain temperature that one should strive to cook them to?

Joseph Moore: Well, there are two safety hazards that I see. First of all, some people are actually allergic to bugs. And the way they would know that is if they have an allergy to shellfish. If they've gone out and had, you know, the all-you-can-eat Red Lobster experience and then are – have a hard time breathing or their skin gets really itchy, that's an allergy to shrimp or lobster, and they probably would have that same allergic reaction to grasshoppers or any of the land- dwelling arthropods surprisingly. And I should say, though, by the way, that's a – seems to be a pretty rare allergy. I'm not meeting many people who have that, but I have met a few.

But, secondly there are some things, parasites, that live inside of certain insects that could live inside of you. It's kind of unusual for a – something that parasitizes a cold-blooded invertebrate to have a benefit inside a warm- blooded person, but there are a few that actually use people as intermediate hosts. I don't know if you were thinking about this, but eating a raw cockroach is a really bad idea (inaudible)

{Crosstalk} Paleo Magazine Podcast Episode 29 2014 Page 24

Tony Federico: I wasn't thinking about it.

Joseph Moore: Yes, they sometimes carry actually a nematode worm parasite that can actually affect your optic nerves. So if you want to go blind, eat a raw cockroach.

But – so my real recommendation is to make sure everything is well done. It doesn't take very long, because we're talking about small-bodied animals. So it's not like the Thanksgiving turkey that takes all day to cook. Probably about a minute of high heat is enough to kill any parasites or germs on those foods.

Tony Federico: So a lot of surface area?

Joseph Moore: Yes, that's right. And actually not that much interior.

Tony Federico: That makes sense. So, could you walk us through a recipe? Could you kind of take us through the steps of preparing an insect culinary creation?

Joseph Moore: Oh, sure. And, actually, I would mention my Orthopteran Orzo. Time Magazine also called that my signature dish. And that's sautéed crickets with orzo pasta. You know, orzo is actually a – it's a rice-shaped pasta. Orzo means "barley" in Italian, so it looks like barley to them. For that dish, what I do is I pre-make orzo, you know, let's say a cup full of orzo pasta, set that aside, and I'll sauté an onion, maybe a little bit of green pepper and red pepper for color, and add the crickets – these have been frozen and defrosted. I like to use four- or five-week-old crickets that are not fully grown yet and they don't have their wings, so there's a little less crunch in eating an immature cricket than an adult cricket. Paleo Magazine Podcast Episode 29 2014 Page 25

So once I've mixed in the crickets, let's say about a quarter cup or a half cup full of crickets, after they've been sautéed – I'm using a wok usually for this kind of thing – then I like to add the orzo, mix that up, season it lightly with a little bit of salt and pepper, maybe add some diced parsley to freshen the breath and, you know, mix it all together and serve it up. I've had people come back for seconds and thirds, and in one case even fifths of this dish.

Tony Federico: I'm going to have to make a version of this. You know, one of the things that, you know, the Paleo community, we, strive to do is, you know, eliminating certain foods, and wheat typically falls into that category. So I'm going to prepare a Paleo version of that dish and I'm going to throw it up on Facebook and see how many people we can get to really jump on the insect-eating bandwagon in the Paleo community. Because I have to say, I don't know if it's your descriptions or the fact that you've been doing this for a while and you're used to kind of talking people into it, but I'm sold. I definitely want to give it a shot. I'm going to issue a challenge to anyone out there listening. I'm going to put some pictures up and we're going to make this thing happen. We're going to have some cricket Paleo-friendly pasta happening.

Joseph Moore: Well, and let me give you a head start. In my new version of the Eat-A-Bug Cookbook, because I do so many school programs and traveling programs, I invented a similar dish using niblets corn, like right out of the can. And that I would think would be acceptable to a Paleo diet. And the flavoring of the corn and the crickets and whatever else you add to it is really excellent.

Tony Federico: Wow. All right, man. Hey, I'm sold on the idea. And I appreciate you coming onto the show talking to us about eating insects. I definitely want people to check out your book, the Eat-A-Bug Cookbook. It's recently been re-released with new, delicious pictures and recipes. If people want to track you down, Paleo Magazine Podcast Episode 29 2014 Page 26

how would you best communicate with your audience? Do you like using Twitter, Facebook?

Joseph Moore: Well, three ways. They can go to my website, which is just my name, davidgeorgegordon.com. They can go to Facebook and look up "The Bug Chef." That's my Facebook page that's devoted to Entomophagy. And on Twitter, I'm also listed as "The Bug Chef."

Tony Federico: Perfect. All right, David. Thanks again so much for coming onto our show. It was inspiring to me; I hope to our listeners as well.

{Music}

You have a great day and keep eating those bugs.

Joseph Moore: All right. (Bug appetit) to you.

{Laughter}

Tony Federico: All right. So that does it for today's episode of Paleo Magazine Radio. I am Tony Federico. And on behalf of everyone at Paleo Magazine, thank you for listening.

Host: If you would like to share your story on PMR, please visit our Facebook page at facebook.com/paleomagazine. For full transcripts of the show, as well as exclusive online content, go to our webpage, paleomagonline.com. You can also talk to us on Twitter at #PMRadio. Paleo Magazine Podcast Episode 29 2014 Page 27

{Music}

THE END