Thanksgiving morning, as the turkey breast roasted outside on the barbecue grill, I picked up my cell phone and sent a few “Happy Thanksgiving” texts to people who make me thankful that they are in my life.
My son and daughter, of course, and old friends like Bill and Mike with whom I worked for more than 30 years. And Alejandra and Margaret, loving stroke caregivers I haven’t seen since my wife died almost four years ago.
With each “Happy Thanksgiving” I attached an emoji of a fat Thanksgiving turkey — until I got to my friend Hans, who is vegan. Sending him an emoji of a bird on Thanksgiving would make no more sense than sending a butterfly.
I scrolled through the available food emojis and sent him a stalk of broccoli, an ear of corn, and something that might have been either a gourd or a rhinoceros horn. “Sorry,” I wrote, “I’m not sure what vegan emojis are turkey equivalents.”
We joked back and forth for a few texts about the relative merits of chowing down on dead beasts versus kale and carrot slaw, and it all ended with him texting me a snapshot of his Thanksgiving plate — stuffing, corn bake, sweet potato, cranberry sauce and cheesy bread. I had to admit that it looked pretty good, but… well, a bit lonely without a hearty slab of turkey breast slathered with gravy.
There’s no accounting for personal taste when it comes to food, I mused.
Later that day, after surviving a tryptophan coma battling with a stubborn Bears game that went to the last second before we could eke out a victory from a pathetic turkey of a Detroit team, I flipped through the TV listings before settling on a Nova episode titled “Edible Insects.” Just the thing, I figured, to keep me from waddling over to what was left of that pumpkin pie.
According to Nova, it turns out that more than half of the biomass on earth is walking, flying and slithering around in the form of insects, and most of them are edible to humans. In fact, when it comes to serving as a delivery system for protein, polyunsaturated fat and other nutrients, insects score higher than meat, fish or fowl.
Better yet, insect farming doesn’t require the destruction of carbon-cleansing rainforests, as beef does. Unlike cattle, insects don’t produce clouds of climate-wrecking methane. And when it comes to feeding herds of insects destined for the table, the cost is comparatively minimal, since insects can be fed with the unfathomable amount of food waste that we humans now throw in the trash every year.
In fact, Nova says, “waste” is the wrong term for food that has sailed past its freshness date. For now, think of it as a “mismanaged resource” that will become a gold mine once we’re raising insects destined to end up on our Thanksgiving tables.
Insect eating has long been an accepted practice in much of the rest of the world, like China, where busy markets bustle with fried, dried, and candy-coated bugs of every description. It’s only in the Western world, settled mostly by fussy Europeans, that a cornucopia of tasty, nutritious bugs goes unharvested. Millions of us go hungry with dinner crawling about right under the empty table.
Surprisingly, when the Nova show ended, I found I still had room for another slice of that pie. Watching all those bugs get processed into food and scarfed down by smiling people hadn’t sickened me at all. In fact, some of those bug-nuggets looked pretty tasty.
But then, I have to admit that I have eaten bugs before. The last couple times that the 17-year locusts showed up, I sampled a few. The first was one that took a nosedive into the cheddar cheese atop my burger on the grill, and it wasn’t bad once it was grilled. The last one was still alive, and it tasted a bit like a raw potato.
Anyway, those locusts are due to show up again in this neighborhood in 2024, and I can’t wait. It will likely be my last chance to welcome them — and I’m going to start working on recipes.
I doubt that Hans will add a side of stewed locusts to his Thanksgiving plate because, after all, that would probably still be a violation of vegan code. But my “Happy Thanksgiving” texts to everyone else in 2024 just might include a butterfly emoji after all.
TR Kerth is the author of the book “Revenge of the Sardines.” Contact him at trkerth@yahoo.com.
