Paleo Magazine Podcast Episode 29 2014 Page 1 Podcast Episode 29 2014 {Music} Host: Welcome to PMR, Paleo Magazine Radio, where we bring you Paleo nutrition, 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. {Music} 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 protein, and they've been part of the human diet 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 Entomophagy, 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. {Music} 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 meal 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 bodybuilding 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 protein bar 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 calcium or Vitamin 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.