Food Bytes: June 1st Edition

Food Bytes is a weekly blog post of “nibbles” of information on all things food and nutrition science, policy and culture.

Indeed, it has been a while. One would have thought that the COVID-19 pandemic would have made me more productive—there is so much to blog about! Alas, for some of us, we’re okay going “underground” so to speak.

Speaking of underground, cicadas have emerged—the Broods (X) are back after a 17-year slumber. What does that have to do with the pandemic? Well, everything and nothing. My guest blogger and better half went hunting to cook some up. And let me tell ya, they are scrumptious. Truly. I too spoke about them on NPR and CNN.

COVID-19 has us not only experimenting with grubs but has upended our entire lifestyle. This NY Times piece argues that as we emerge from a year ++ of inactivity and less than normal eating patterns, we do not have to give in to all the diet fads that companies want you so badly to believe and buy. The video is quite thoughtful.

So many podcasts on food…but I like Point of Origin. This one, on “food apartheid” as opposed to “food desert” is particularly interesting.

Speaking of podcasts, I am pretty excited about my book that is coming out on June 22: Can Fixing Dinner Fix the Planet? I spoke to Jeremy Cherfast of Eat This Podcast about the book and fixing our food systems.

The UN Food Systems Summit is gearing up for better and for worse. There is a lot of chatter, dialoguing, planning, and writing on the peripheries. Corinna Hawkes, my go-to on all things food systems, has been keeping up her blog sharing gems of thoughts on leadership, inclusion, and what it means to truly change food systems around the world.

Some other random media nuggets that caught my eye this past week or so:

• NYT questions the measurement of Body Mass Index. It’s about time…

• Inspiring article in Mother Jones about black farmers reclaiming land that is rightfully theirs.

• Mark Bittman has written another book and this one hits hard at the U.S. food system. Always provocative, here are some of his thoughts on what needs to change. Alice Waters weighs in too.

• Should we have a scientific body that weighs the evidence on food systems? Some say no. Why? Because it already exists. Yes, it does but it needs help…

We cannot end any Food Byte edition without highlighting some of the fantastic science being generated on all things food. Here are a few gems:

• Animal source foods reduced stunting in young children in Bangladesh and Nepal. Nature Food.

• A modeling exercise looked at the cost-effectiveness of food programs on saving children’s lives. Bottom line, they make an impact. Global Food Security.

• A call to action for a one-health approach to avoid future land use-induced spillover events. Lancet Planetary Health.

• Interesting perspective of pastoralists and another piece on their resilience. One Earth and Aeon.

• You say you want a food systems data revolution? Well, think again. Sustainability.

• While food systems could address disability-adjusted life years due to chronic hunger, population pressure and climate change will make it much worse, particularly for sub-Saharan Africa. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

And that’s all she wrote folks. See you soon.

Brood X - Collecting and Cooking Cicadas 101

This post is from guestblogger, 5cense. Original posting here.

Since Jess has been too busy giving all these interviews about eating cicadas to actually collect and cook them, I figured I'd walk the talk for her and give the practical low-down (though this advice won't be useful to anyone for another 17 years (for brood X anyway), which is crazy to think about... seriously a 4/5-times-in-a-lifetime opportunity). For the past week I've been waking up before dawn to collect cicadas, until yesterday when it got cool and rainy and seems they stopped coming out of the ground. All in all I don't think it was the biblical plague the media hyped it up to be, at least not in D.C. proper... maybe it's a different story in the suburbs? Seems the cicadas don't like "nature" and the majority I found were in grassy open areas in Rock Creek and Kalorama Park, which certainly made them easier to find. I saw some in Malcolm X park but there were tons of squirrels, birds and rats to compete with, not to mention the possibility of pesticides or rat poison. Ideally we looked for ones crawling on the ground or starting to go up trees. If I collected stationary nymphs on trees I often found that they'd molt by the time I got back and while some say the soft white adults were the best, they looked gross after being trampled to death by the active nymphs. Like lobsters and crabs (also bugs), seems it's best to collect and keep them alive as long as possible.

And here's what the ones we collected the other morning looked and sounded like:

Some also say the black adults taste good, but we never tried them... seems if an adult made it to the tree and molted then it deserves to live, especially the pregnant females which some say are a delicacy. I "saved" quite a few adult cicadas that were on sidewalks or seemingly lost nowhere near a tree by putting them high up in trees, and a few (including a stowaway that hitched a ride home on my backpack) we brought into our house and put on our plants to keep them safe until they were ready to mate, but then they flew around our house and wouldn't settle down so we put them in our backyard, where likely they were eaten by the numerous birds or squirrels that eat anything that moves in our yard. Once I'd get home I'd sort thru them to remove the grass and debris and dead ones, and also any fungus-infected "sex-crazed zombies".

Once I sorted thru them I bagged them into meal-size batches and stuck them in the freezer, which seems sort of cruel, but better then having them suffocate or slowly die. I collected about a dozen bags worth (maybe a ½ pound each). The first 2 times we tried them (including the ones Jess cooked for CNN, see the previous post), we sautéed/fried them in sesame oil w/ garlic, chili and spices. This past weekend we had a friend over for dinner and made cicada fajitas/tacos, which were tasty.

A few nights ago we wanted to try them roasted and without too much spice to really taste the bug (after all, most anything fried with garlic and chilis will taste good). As when we fried them, we boiled them first for a few minutes, which serves to clean them (and also seems to plumpen them up) and then rinsed them in a strainer to get off any remaining debris. We mixed them in with potatoes on a cookie sheet and added olive oil and a little garlic, salt, pepper and rosemary and stuck them in the oven for about 20 minutes (the potatoes for longer).

They might look gross, but must say they were quite delicious—nutty, buttery and earthy. In fact we gobbled the bugs up before the potatoes. They taste like something that's meant to be eaten, like shrimp, sea urchin or clams (which we tend to eat a lot of... the lower on the food chain the better). They supposedly have a lot of fat because once they emerge from the ground they live off their fat stores during their 2-week party of molting, courting and mating, but seems nobody has done a proper nutritional analysis, so "my better ½" Jess wants to sacrifice one of our baggies for analysis (if we don't devour them all first).