Meet the New York chef who wants to change our diets one bug at a time
Tried meatless Mondays? How about black fly Fridays or scorpion Sundays?
New York City-based chef Joseph Yoon started cooking insects four years ago for an art project. He now wants to change our perceptions of creepy crawlies so that we can have “delicious,” “nutrient-dense,” and “sustainable” insect diets.
“I absolutely love insects,” says Yoon, who is the executive director of Brooklyn Bugs, an organization that promotes edible insects. “The fact that they are so diverse, the fact that there are so many species of insects, the fact that we rely so heavily on insects for our own ecosystem and biodiversity is absolutely fascinating.”
There are more than 2,100 types of edible insects in the world, and they come in varying flavors, such as nutty, citrusy, cheesy and coconutty, says Yoon. “What I’m trying to do is present people with this wonderful cornucopia of flavors, textures and ideas of how to cook with edible insects.”
A sustainable protein source. Insects are regularly consumed by an estimated 2 billion people, according to a 2013 report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). However, the report says that feelings of disgust are associated with eating insects in most Western countries.
Feeding the world is an increasingly difficult challenge. Land is scarce and oceans are overfished, yet current food production will need to almost double to accommodate the 9 billion people that are expected to populate the Earth by 2050, according to the FAO report.
Tried meatless Mondays? How about black fly Fridays or scorpion Sundays? New York City-based chef Joseph Yoon started cooking insects four years ago for an art project. He now wants to change our perceptions of creepy crawlies so that we can have “delicious,” “nutrient-dense,” and “sustainable” insect diets. “I absolutely love insects,” says Yoon, who…