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The Incredible Edible Bug
Imagine you’re lost in the wilderness and don’t have any means of hunting. You don’t have anything to help you fish. You might end up eating those creepy crawlers under your feet. That’s right – bugs!
In fact, bugs and insects can be very healthy. They are a great source of protein while low in carbohydrates and fats. In fact, one study showed that an ounce of crickets was a better source of protein than an ounce of beef!
But how do you know which bugs are edible? You don’t want to end up getting sick or die by eating a bug that is poisonous or bad for you. While there aren’t strict guidelines to insect meals and there are always exceptions to the rule, below, we’ve listed a few tips that might help you in a survival situation.
Bugs to Avoid
One rule of thumb that most survivalists endorse is to avoid brightly colored insects. This is usually a way for bugs to say “Stay away from me.” If a bug is extremely pungent, it’s best to keep them away for your mouth. That shouldn’t be too hard right?
Insects that carry diseases – things like flies, ticks, mosquitoes – should be avoided. Many survivalist experts also caution against bugs that are hairy or fuzzy. Insects that can sting you are also typically avoided. You don’t want it to struggle on its way down.
What to Look For
There are basically 15 different orders of insects that are edible:
• Anoplura - This would be things like lice.
• Orthoptera - Examples are grasshoppers, locusts, crickets and cockroaches.
• Hemiptera & Homoptera - They are also known as tree bugs. They are things like cicades, aphids, planthoppers, leafhoppers and shield bugs.
• Hymenoptera - These are identified as sawflies, wasps, bees and ants.
• Diptera - Also known as flies, gnats and midges.
• Coleoptera - These include beetles and ladybugs.
• Lepidoptera - Butterflies and moths are edible.
• Megaloptera - Alderflies and dobsonflies are examples of Megaloptera.
• Odonata & Ephemetoptera - Dragonflies, mayflies and damselflies are in these orders
• Trichoptera - Caddisflies
• Plecoptera - Another name for stoneflies
• Neuroptera - Lacewings and antlions
• Isoptera - These are termites
Cooking Bugs
Many people will tell you that the trick to eating bugs is to cook them. Even if a bug has harmful toxins or venom, boiling will usually negate the effect. Many bugs with hard shells – things like beetles – can carry parasites and need to be cooked before eating.
Aside from making them safe to eat, cooking bugs also improves the taste. For example, ants usually have a bitter taste until they are boiled.
You can also take insects wings and legs off before cooking. These parts of the bugs aren’t usually full of much nutrition anyways and contribute to bad taste. Sometimes you can also remove the head and that will help.
What Bugs Do You Eat?
Have you ever tried eating bugs? How did it go? Comment below and share your experience.
No I have never eaten bugs ad hope I never have to but this is interesting to know.
January 17th, 2013 at 4:35 amNah! never eaten bugs, some bug parts maybe, they say there are tons of it in our processed food we eat daily..
January 17th, 2013 at 4:58 amI have eaten a variety of bugs – from grasshoppers (chocolate covered), ants and a spider (I think it was a tarantula – fried). All were quite tasty.
January 17th, 2013 at 5:35 amI have eaten grasshoppers, but they were from a can, canned grasshoppers, also chocolate covered ants and I have to say both were pretty tasty.
January 17th, 2013 at 5:39 amHad some good information. Pictures would be nice.
January 17th, 2013 at 5:56 amI must say that I was entirely taken aback when I saw a heading for a blog about eating bugs. Its just not a subject that you stumble onto every day. However, this is a great topic, and I found it quite useful.
I’m an officer in the Marine Corps, and few years ago, I attended a military school called the Sapper Leader Course. The final evolution of the course was comprised of an intense patrolling exercise where we were given one meal (and a combined total of four hours of sleep) over the course of a week. If you’re thinking that it isn’t possible to function on that little sleep and nutrition, that’s precisely what I said leading into it.
Somewhere around the five or six day mark, amidst my near-delirium, I saw a procession of ants passing by while I was in a defensive position. I remembered hearing my father talk of eating bugs during a Marine Corps survival school that he attended in the late sixties. I was surprised by the taste of the first one. I remember it having a bitter, almost chemical-like taste. But the more of them I ate, the more comfortable I felt. I remember in vivid detail feeling no “fuller” after having eaten dozens of ants than when I started. Nonetheless, eating them did something for me mentally. I knew that there was something inside of me that slowed my body from digesting itself.
If you’ve never endured that degree of intensity or severity in either training or real life, I can tell you that under most circumstances, your body will rally behind your mind. Finding nutrition in unlikely sources can certainly make the difference between success or failure, and even life or death.
Thank you for tackling this subject!
Eric
January 17th, 2013 at 5:57 amI ate many bugs during my years with the 7th Special Forces Group. Training for evasion and escape to survival school, I mostly enjoyed crickets and worms. Word of advice, remove the legs first. These two insects can also be used as bait, good news if you have line and a hook.
January 17th, 2013 at 6:08 amWhat kid hasn’t eaten bugs – if only on a dare from other kids.
When I took the “Escape & Evasion” survival course in the military we were introduced to eating bugs raw as a food source – mainly grubs, worms, and grasshoppers.
When I was in sunny Southeast Asia during the Nam era I learned to snatch rice bugs, wrap them in a bit of toilet paper, and then set it on fire to roast them. You would then bite the head off, and suck out the insides as a delicacy. Ummm!!!
January 17th, 2013 at 6:21 amI too have had chocolate covered insects – (grasshoppers and ants) that my uncle brought back from Africa. They were first toasted and then covered. They were actually quite good and almost nutty crispy.
January 17th, 2013 at 6:53 amQuestion: Do you have any information on “earth worms”? I have heard of folks raising them for food so as to have an ample supply of protein in dire times.
This article was very informative. Thank you for the information.
It’s easy to think “Ug! I’d rather die…” but if you watched your kids starving you would catch every grasshopper you could. Yes, I’ll turn to my garden and livestock first and my food storage second, but assuming true worst case scenario – driven from our homestead by MZBs (mutant zombie bikers) – I would gladly squeeze in some bug innards into the dandelion soup I was cooking. I might not tell the kids, though…
January 17th, 2013 at 7:31 amVery interesting. Thank you!
It may be good to caution people on dragonflies, however. Although I haven’t eaten bugs, our vet has warned us not to let our dogs eat dragonflies since we live in an area with a high population of mosquitoes, and of course dragonflies eat mosquitoes.
January 17th, 2013 at 7:50 amI’ve had worms before and the trick is to wash them off and put in cornmeal over night. Fry them up the next day, YUM =)
January 17th, 2013 at 8:05 amI have eaten a bee before; it didn’t have any taste or flavor to it, it was quite interesting. This is a great artical, pictures of the bugs to eat and avoid would of been great.
January 17th, 2013 at 8:41 amI have to agree with thebasiclife.com – I would squeeze um in and not tell the kiddies. Yeah, the descriptions above from the article and the comments made me cringe but as my mother always said, “in a pinch!”…..
January 17th, 2013 at 8:59 amYup, I’ve eaten bugs. Grubs are usually safe. The golden rod gall grub tastes just fine and is easy to find. We would not hesitate to supplement our diet with bugs if we needed to.
Just make sure you kill the ant before you eat it, otherwise it will bite your tongue before you swallow it.
My daughter was given bugs as a meal while on a trip through Asia with her family. Her children had no problem eating them.
January 17th, 2013 at 8:59 amOut walking with my six year old granddaughter, we saw ants. I picked one up and ate it-sweet and tart. blew her mind. Ha! I love being a grandpa.
January 17th, 2013 at 9:53 amI have grandpa Dave envy.
January 17th, 2013 at 10:22 amI have never eaten a bug but, I think that catsup would go a long way in making them palatable.
January 17th, 2013 at 10:56 amLarge black carpetner ants have a good taste, raw they taste like lemon juice. I have also have tried dampwood termites right from a fallen tree, not bad at all.
January 17th, 2013 at 11:24 amSeriously- are there any recipes for eating insect. You may have to dig (no pun intended) into the archives from the 1800′s survival guide!
January 17th, 2013 at 11:40 amMealworms on chocolate chip cookies – yum!
January 17th, 2013 at 11:56 amEarthworms as gathered are full of dirt. One way to get around that is to put ‘em in a container of water and they will purge themselves. When that is done, put them on a flat rock in the sun. This will dry them out and make them crunchy like “bacon bits”.
January 17th, 2013 at 12:08 pmWe have a small insect farm in the house for mealworms (darkling beetles) and our kids have grown up around them so they think nothing of it when we cook ‘em up!
January 17th, 2013 at 2:13 pmEarth worms should be dropped in salted boiling water then rinsed, then fried or baked with onions or wild mushrooms Euell gibbons wrote of this in STALKING THE WILD ASPARAGUS which is out of print
January 17th, 2013 at 2:46 pmWhy not boil the dirt out of the
January 17th, 2013 at 2:52 pmWorms. Then fry or bake them with wild onions watercress .
Another source of food in the wild is snakes. In one escape and evasion course back at Ft. McCellan, we had to to kill and cook a snake, and then eat it. Not my favorite meal, but in a pinch, better starving to death.
January 17th, 2013 at 4:04 pmThese comments make me gag, but I’m very glad for the information. Thanks, folks.
January 17th, 2013 at 8:56 pmSeems I remember many years ago organizations drying out earth worms grinding them up and sending them overseas to provide nutrition for under nourished people. Never thought to much about it at the time.
January 17th, 2013 at 9:11 pmDuring my High School Biology course 55+ years ago, our Biology teacher told us that as a Marine in the islands during WWII, he had eaten “anything that didnt eat him first” including grubs, monkeys, etc. They had been blokaded by the Japanese and no supply ships could reach them. Several weeks later, when we came into class, there was a small plate in front of each student. Each plate contained a multitude of items. He told us to try them and when we were finished, he would tell us of what we had eaten and where they were from. We had eaten fried earthworms, fried grasshoppers, choclate-covered ants and a small piece of Rattlesnake. Thank you MR.BROWN for the great demonstration.
January 18th, 2013 at 1:24 amSitting here laughing! Was married to an Army SF Ranger – heard alllll kinds of stories. Also, remember – we are told that each human being ingests approx 500 spiders in their life-time – usually asleep LMSO!
January 18th, 2013 at 1:56 amFor those who don’t want to actually eat the bugs but need the nutrition (fats and such)that that wild game animals lack. you can always wrap the bugs in a piece of cheese cloth and add it to things like stews to get the benefit without seeing the source.
January 18th, 2013 at 9:58 amI tried raw ants in Air Force SERE training. Kind of like a crunchy lemon drop. You want to make sure they are dead though before popping them into your mouth. They will fight back.
January 18th, 2013 at 10:13 amSince boxelder bugs have pretty colors I suppose they’re not edible. Too bad. If we could find a use for the hoards of them maybe they’d disappear!
January 18th, 2013 at 7:49 pmthanks for that malcolm, that might be the only way i could eat them
January 19th, 2013 at 1:42 amI have eaten grubs, the larval form of beetles, adult grasshoppers and cicadas. The grubs were boiled, mainly to make me feel better not mouthing a squirmy meal; the hoppers and cicadas were fried. They are surprisingly tasty.
The cooking also makes wing and leg removal easier. Always remove legs as they frequently get stuck in your throat
Watch oiut for allergic reations, though.
January 19th, 2013 at 3:55 pmI’m a bit confused, in the section of bugs to avoid it states to avoid bugs that sting, but listed in the bugs to eat it reflects: Hymenoptera – These are identified as …, wasps, bees …
Is it just certain stinging insects to avoid??
Thanks for the info, I hope too to never need to eat bugs but I can see it happening.
January 19th, 2013 at 7:46 pmI’ve tried flies. they’re quite juicy
January 20th, 2013 at 3:14 pmI’d cook any bug, because even ants have been known to carry Salomenella. Just to be safe it is always better to cook them. You don’t know if they’ve crawled over a dead animal and picked something up.
January 20th, 2013 at 4:19 pmI have eaten lemon ants in Brazil. They are just like lemon flavored bits. They find them and then rinse them and fry them in cooking oil and if they have have it they sprinkle them on meat. I have also eaten fire toasted grubs. These were fine with me. Tried the fried tarantula in Cambodia, it is a national delicacy at a certain time of year. Everyone is eating them and sellers are walking around with large trays of fried tarantula. No one is complaining.
February 4th, 2013 at 8:13 pmVery interesting, but I must confess that reading all this just makes me want to order another case of Mountain House.
May 16th, 2013 at 6:02 amI’m with you, Ron M. And maybe ordering two cases of chocolate. I could probably eat ANYTHING covered in chocolate! My Dad used to say, “You can do anything you have to” and our family motto is “whatever it takes.” I guess that includes eating insects “in a pinch.”
May 16th, 2013 at 7:33 amMy ex-husband was in the AF during Vietnam. He always carried chili powder with him – you can anything with chili powder…..
May 16th, 2013 at 3:04 pmI too have eaten grubs, night crawlers and other worms, crickets and cicades, and ants. Interesting comments above about ants tasting of chemical. I rather thought ants tasted like sweet tarts without the fruit flavoring. Some earthworms are reminescent of sirloin steak rather raw. I have not eaten any ”bugs” that tasted bad, some were better than others. In many places in the world ”Bugs” are a daily faire and sources of protiens many people otherwise would have a difficult time obtaining. Many foid companies are experimenting with farm mass raising of insects and processing them into more acceptable edible forms such as burger like patties. It is a coming major protien source to feed the growing masses of people. Get yerself ready for bug burgers and various other forms of insect protiens for regular consumption world wide. Come on try a roach, theyre good for you.
May 16th, 2013 at 6:33 pmBoiling takes away toxins and nutrition, but it is a tradition in Mexico to find an ant mound and get the juicy/soft ants, fry them up (or roast)and eat them in tortillas. If that luxury is available. Grubs get the same treatment.
May 16th, 2013 at 8:52 pm