110315 New York Times - Edible Insects
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A6 N INTERNATIONAL THE NEW YORK TIMES TUESDAY, MARCH 15, 2011 By JOHN TAGLIABUE ’S HERTOGENBOSCH, the Netherlands — Johan Van Dong- en sells insects. A bright, engaging man, Mr. Van Dongen is head of the meat department at Sligro, a kind of Costco on the edge of this trim Dutch town. Besides steaks, poul- try and others kinds of meat, he offers mealworms, buffalo worms, locusts and other insects, as well as prepared products con- taining insects like Bugs Sticks and Bugs Nuggets — not for pets, but as a source of protein for peo- ple. On a recent afternoon he ar- ranged two sample stands, one with chunks of chocolate laced with ground mealworms (larvae for a type of beetle), another with various kinds of whole insects for munching, including worms and crickets, in small plastic contain- ers. At a nearby stand with a Dutch name that translated roughly as the Tasting Garden, there were more insects than garden. While shoppers gazed with puzzled looks, Mr. Van Dongen, 41, warmed up portions of an Asian vegetable dish with crickets mixed in. Silvia van der Donk tasted some, raised her eyebrows and smiled approvingly. Her daughter Melanie, 21, re- coiled. “I ate locusts once,” she said. “I didn’t like the texture.” The efforts of Mr. Van Dongen and Sligro, a chain of 25 member- ship-only warehouse stores throughout the Netherlands, are part of a drive to convince the Dutch that crickets, worms and caterpillars are healthier sources of protein, and are less taxing on the environment, than steaks and pork chops. Dutch breeders of insects, who until now have supplied the mar- ket for pet food — insects for geckos and other lizards, sala- manders, newts, frogs, birds or fish — have jumped at an oppor- tunity to open a new market and have founded a trade organiza- tion to promote the idea. The gov- ernment is backing them, and last year it appropriated $1.4 mil- lion for research into insects as food, to prepare legislation gov- erning insect farms, health and safety standards, and marketing through retail outlets. “The risky part is: How can we move this product upscale?” said Marian Peters, a public relations expert who is the organization’s general secretary, munching on Mr. Van Dongen’s insect-laced chocolate. To be sure, the idea is not new. Entomologists in the United States have promoted the idea for decades and produced a newslet- ter and even cookbooks with ti- tles like “Creepy Crawly Cuisine.” The Dutch take the food busi- ness seriously. One of the world’s largest food companies, Unilever, has roots here, and the Nether- lands, though a small country, is a major exporter of food prod- ucts, including vegetables, meat and fish. Moreover, it has the backing of the United Nations Food and Ag- riculture Organization, which warns that the production of meat like beef and pork as sources of protein taxes the envi- ronment, estimating that almost one-fifth of all greenhouse gas emissions comes from livestock. Ms. Peters stresses that in- sects are already a major source of protein elsewhere in the world. Caterpillars and locusts are pop- ular in Africa, wasps are a deli- cacy in Japan, crickets are eaten in Thailand. Yet in Europe, as in the United States, most people, except some very young chil- dren, consider them, well, pretty disgusting. “I have a friend who came to look with her 2-year-old daugh- ter,” said Marieke Calis, 29, who with her parents and sister Margje, 31, raises about 14 differ- ent kinds of insects, including mealworms, buffalo worms (lar- vae for another kind of beetle) and crickets on a four-acre farm an hour from here. Dipping a hand into a tray of her buffalo worms feels like im- mersing it in a bowl of warm pas- ta, except that the pasta squirms. “The daughter plunged her hands into a tray of worms, and was delighted,” Ms. Calis said. “The mother was horrified.” When Manon Houkes, 18, strolled by Mr. Van Dongen’s tasting garden at Sligro recently with her grandparents, Hans and Jenny Klop, Ms. Houkes would not taste the Bugs Nuggets, a concoction of 80 percent ground chicken and 20 percent ground mealworms, that Mr. Van Dong- en was preparing. “No, it’s yuck,” she said, curling her lip. Her grandmother tasted, and approved. “It’s like whole wheat,” she said. “Slightly fatty.” Arnold van Huis, an entomolo- gist at Wageningen University who advises insect breeders and the government, said, “The Neth- erlands wants to be in the fore- front of food.” “I was working in Niger teach- ing farmers how to control lo- custs,” Mr. van Huis said. “Then I realized that the farmers earned more from the grasshoppers they took from their millet than from their millet crop itself.” He acknowledged that Euro- peans did not relish insects as food, though he said it was an ac- quired abhorrence. “Children have no problem eat- ing them,” he said. Michel van de Ven, 38, and his brother Roland, 40, have been raising insects for 12 years, the last six of them in a large brick barn once used for growing mushrooms. They export 40 per- cent of their stock to pet shops in Britain, Germany, Portugal and elsewhere; only 1 percent or less goes to supermarkets. Michel van de Ven sees poten- tial for insects as human food, if customers are not told what is in the product in the beginning. “But later,” he said, “people will have learned to eat it.” His brother sees an obstacle other than distaste — price. “Wholesale, insects are similar in price to beef now,” Roland van de Ven said, citing the labor-in- tensive farming methods used. “Locusts are more like caviar.” Margot Calis, 62, who works with her daughter Marieke on the farm, which employs 10 people, agreed. “The price of insects is much too high,” she said. “There is lots of manual labor involved, and it is too expensive.” Mr. Van Dongen of the Sligro chain thinks the investment is worth it, though he admitted: “It will take four to five years; peo- ple must get used to it. It’s all in the mind.” Most of his customers are res- taurants, cafes and snack bars. To attract individual shoppers, he places his insect-laced chocolate samples where they will be en- countered first. Only then does he display his samples of insects. “When they see the bugs, they’ve already eaten them in the chocolate,” he said. “Some people scream, ‘Oh, my God!’ But if you do it once, then you do it twice.” PHOTOGRAPHS BY DIRK-JAN VISSER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES Customers at a Sligro store in ’s Hertogenbosch taste insect dishes made by Johan Van Dongen. ’S HERTOGENBOSCH JOURNAL Insects as Food? Tryingto Change ‘Ick’ to ‘Yum’ Hungry? Mealworms and locusts are sold for human consump- tion at Sligro, a Dutch membership-only warehouse chain. Amsterdam ’s Hertogenbosch North Sea NETHERLANDS GERMANY BELGIUM 50 MILES THE NEW YORK TIMES Sligro in ’s Hertogenbosch is part of a national drive. By ISABEL KERSHNER JERUSALEM — The Palestin- ian president, Mahmoud Abbas, expressed abhorrence on Mon- day over the killing of five mem- bers of a family in a Jewish settle- ment in the West Bank. The em- phatic condemnation, delivered over Israel’s public radio, came after Israel criticized the Pales- tinian leadership for what it con- sidered to be an initially mealy- mouthed response. “This act was abominable, in- human and immoral,” Mr. Abbas said in a rare interview with Is- rael Radio that was conducted in Arabic. Referring to the killing of three of the family’s young chil- dren, including a baby, he added, “Any person who has a sense of humanity would be pained and driven to tears by such sights.” The victims, Udi and Ruth Fogel, and three of their children, ages 11, 4 and 3 months, were stabbed to death in their beds late Friday in Itamar, near Nab- lus in the northern West Bank. The assailants, who are still at large, are widely suspected to be local Palestinians. In the days since the attack, which shocked Israelis across the political spectrum, Israel has ac- cused the Palestinian Authority of an indirect role in encouraging violence, citing incitement in the authority’s schools, mosques and news media. Yossi Kuperwasser, a retired Israeli general given responsibil- ity by the Israeli government for monitoring Palestinian incite- ments to violence and to hatred of Israel, said in a telephone in- terview that while Mr. Abbas and the Palestinian Authority prime minister, Salam Fayyad, had been careful in their words, “they too encourage an atmosphere of terrorism.” He noted, for example, that a senior Abbas aide had paid a call to the families of three Fatah mil- itants killed by the Israeli mil- itary, conveying condolences from Mr. Abbas. Israel held the three responsible for the fatal shooting of a rabbi in the West Bank in December 2009. In addi- tion, Israeli officials note, streets, summer camps and youth tour- naments in the Palestinian Au- thority have been named for peo- ple who committed terrorist at- tacks. The new focus on incitement against Israel, together with Is- raeli dissatisfaction over the Pal- estinian response to the brutal at- tack, seemed to pose a question about the Israeli government’s readiness to deal with Mr. Abbas as a serious peace partner — even though Mr. Abbas and Mr. Fayyad are widely considered moderates who have repeatedly said they would never resort to violence. Mr. Abbas rejected the claims about incitement in mosques, telling Israel Radio that the Pal- estinian Authority mosques have adopted a unified text for ser- mons, written by the minister of religious affairs. He called for a joint Israeli-Palestinian-Ameri- can working committee to inves- tigate claims that Palestinian Au- thority school textbooks incited violence. Mr. Fayyad was the first Pales- tinian official on Saturday to con- demn the deaths in Itamar, say- ing, “We utterly reject violence, and nothing justifies it.” Mr. Abbas’s office issued a statement later that day, through the Palestinian news agency Wafa, saying that he “stressed his rejection and condemnation of all violence directed against ci- vilians, regardless of who was be- hind it or the reason for it.” Mr. Abbas also called the prime minister of Israel, Benja- min Netanyahu, on Saturday evening to express sorrow over the killings. But Israel said the Palestinian condemnation was hesitant and nonspecific. “The weak and noncommittal condem- nation of the Palestinian leader- ship is insufficient and unaccept- able,” Mark Regev, a Netanyahu spokesman, said Sunday. “What is required is unequivocal lan- guage.” Mr. Netanyahu told a meeting of his Likud Party members of Parliament on Monday that he at- tached great importance to Mr. Abbas’s words of condemnation on Israel Radio, but that it was more important he say such things on Palestinian radio, Israel Radio reported. Mr. Kuperwasser suggested that Mr. Abbas’s condemnation on Israel Radio still fell short. The Palestinian leader emphasized the horrific nature of the killing of the young children and the baby in Itamar, Mr. Kuperwasser said. But he criticized Mr. Abbas for not showing “the same enthusi- asm” in condemning the deaths of the parents. “His words hold great impor- tance in my eyes,” he said, “but it is more important that he say these things on Palestinian radio, not just Israel.” Abbas Condemns Killing of Jewish Family Nxxx,2011-03-15,A,006,Bs-BW,E1
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Customers at a Sligrostore in ’sHertogenbosch taste insect dishes madeby Johan Van Dongen. ’S HERTOGENBOSCH JOURNAL By ISABEL KERSHNER By JOHN TAGLIABUE GERMANY Amsterdam NETHERLANDS ’s Hertogenbosch BELGIUM North Sea 50 MILES PHOTOGRAPHS BY DIRK-JAN VISSERFOR THE NEW YORK TIMES THE NEW YORK TIMES N
Transcript of 110315 New York Times - Edible Insects
A6 N INTERNATIONALTHE NEW YORK TIMES TUESDAY, MARCH 15, 2011
By JOHN TAGLIABUE
’S HERTOGENBOSCH, theNetherlands — Johan Van Dong-en sells insects.
A bright, engaging man, Mr.Van Dongen is head of the meatdepartment at Sligro, a kind ofCostco on the edge of this trimDutch town. Besides steaks, poul-try and others kinds of meat, heoffers mealworms, buffaloworms, locusts and other insects,as well as prepared products con-taining insects like Bugs Sticksand Bugs Nuggets — not for pets,but as a source of protein for peo-ple.
On a recent afternoon he ar-ranged two sample stands, onewith chunks of chocolate lacedwith ground mealworms (larvaefor a type of beetle), another withvarious kinds of whole insects formunching, including worms andcrickets, in small plastic contain-ers.
At a nearby stand with a Dutchname that translated roughly asthe Tasting Garden, there weremore insects than garden. Whileshoppers gazed with puzzledlooks, Mr. Van Dongen, 41,warmed up portions of an Asianvegetable dish with cricketsmixed in.
Silvia van der Donk tastedsome, raised her eyebrows andsmiled approvingly.
Her daughter Melanie, 21, re-coiled. “I ate locusts once,” shesaid. “I didn’t like the texture.”
The efforts of Mr. Van Dongenand Sligro, a chain of 25 member-ship-only warehouse storesthroughout the Netherlands, arepart of a drive to convince theDutch that crickets, worms andcaterpillars are healthier sourcesof protein, and are less taxing onthe environment, than steaks andpork chops.
Dutch breeders of insects, whountil now have supplied the mar-ket for pet food — insects forgeckos and other lizards, sala-manders, newts, frogs, birds orfish — have jumped at an oppor-tunity to open a new market andhave founded a trade organiza-tion to promote the idea. The gov-ernment is backing them, andlast year it appropriated $1.4 mil-lion for research into insects asfood, to prepare legislation gov-erning insect farms, health andsafety standards, and marketingthrough retail outlets.
“The risky part is: How can wemove this product upscale?” saidMarian Peters, a public relationsexpert who is the organization’sgeneral secretary, munching onMr. Van Dongen’s insect-lacedchocolate.
To be sure, the idea is not new.Entomologists in the UnitedStates have promoted the idea fordecades and produced a newslet-ter and even cookbooks with ti-tles like “Creepy Crawly Cuisine.”
The Dutch take the food busi-ness seriously. One of the world’slargest food companies, Unilever,has roots here, and the Nether-lands, though a small country, isa major exporter of food prod-ucts, including vegetables, meatand fish.
Moreover, it has the backing ofthe United Nations Food and Ag-riculture Organization, whichwarns that the production ofmeat like beef and pork assources of protein taxes the envi-ronment, estimating that almostone-fifth of all greenhouse gas
emissions comes from livestock.Ms. Peters stresses that in-
sects are already a major sourceof protein elsewhere in the world.Caterpillars and locusts are pop-ular in Africa, wasps are a deli-cacy in Japan, crickets are eatenin Thailand. Yet in Europe, as inthe United States, most people,except some very young chil-dren, consider them, well, prettydisgusting.
“I have a friend who came tolook with her 2-year-old daugh-ter,” said Marieke Calis, 29, whowith her parents and sisterMargje, 31, raises about 14 differ-ent kinds of insects, includingmealworms, buffalo worms (lar-vae for another kind of beetle)
and crickets on a four-acre farman hour from here.
Dipping a hand into a tray ofher buffalo worms feels like im-mersing it in a bowl of warm pas-ta, except that the pasta squirms.“The daughter plunged herhands into a tray of worms, andwas delighted,” Ms. Calis said.“The mother was horrified.”
When Manon Houkes, 18,strolled by Mr. Van Dongen’stasting garden at Sligro recentlywith her grandparents, Hans andJenny Klop, Ms. Houkes wouldnot taste the Bugs Nuggets, aconcoction of 80 percent groundchicken and 20 percent groundmealworms, that Mr. Van Dong-en was preparing. “No, it’s yuck,”she said, curling her lip.
Her grandmother tasted, andapproved. “It’s like whole wheat,”she said. “Slightly fatty.”
Arnold van Huis, an entomolo-gist at Wageningen Universitywho advises insect breeders andthe government, said, “The Neth-erlands wants to be in the fore-front of food.”
“I was working in Niger teach-ing farmers how to control lo-custs,” Mr. van Huis said. “Then Irealized that the farmers earnedmore from the grasshoppers theytook from their millet than fromtheir millet crop itself.”
He acknowledged that Euro-peans did not relish insects asfood, though he said it was an ac-quired abhorrence.
“Children have no problem eat-ing them,” he said.
Michel van de Ven, 38, and hisbrother Roland, 40, have beenraising insects for 12 years, thelast six of them in a large brickbarn once used for growingmushrooms. They export 40 per-cent of their stock to pet shops inBritain, Germany, Portugal andelsewhere; only 1 percent or lessgoes to supermarkets.
Michel van de Ven sees poten-tial for insects as human food, ifcustomers are not told what is inthe product in the beginning.“But later,” he said, “people willhave learned to eat it.”
His brother sees an obstacleother than distaste — price.
“Wholesale, insects are similarin price to beef now,” Roland vande Ven said, citing the labor-in-tensive farming methods used.“Locusts are more like caviar.”
Margot Calis, 62, who workswith her daughter Marieke on thefarm, which employs 10 people,agreed. “The price of insects ismuch too high,” she said. “Thereis lots of manual labor involved,and it is too expensive.”
Mr. Van Dongen of the Sligrochain thinks the investment isworth it, though he admitted: “Itwill take four to five years; peo-ple must get used to it. It’s all inthe mind.”
Most of his customers are res-taurants, cafes and snack bars.To attract individual shoppers, heplaces his insect-laced chocolatesamples where they will be en-countered first. Only then doeshe display his samples of insects.
“When they see the bugs,they’ve already eaten them in thechocolate,” he said. “Some peoplescream, ‘Oh, my God!’ But if youdo it once, then you do it twice.”
PHOTOGRAPHS BY DIRK-JAN VISSER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Customers at a Sligro store in ’s Hertogenbosch taste insect dishes made by Johan Van Dongen.
’S HERTOGENBOSCH JOURNAL
Insects as Food? Trying to Change ‘Ick’ to ‘Yum’
Hungry? Mealworms and locusts are sold for human consump-tion at Sligro, a Dutch membership-only warehouse chain.
Amsterdam
’s Hertogenbosch
North Sea
NETHERLANDS
GERMANY
BELGIUM
50 MILES
THE NEW YORK TIMES
Sligro in ’s Hertogenbosch ispart of a national drive.
By ISABEL KERSHNER
JERUSALEM — The Palestin-ian president, Mahmoud Abbas,expressed abhorrence on Mon-day over the killing of five mem-bers of a family in a Jewish settle-ment in the West Bank. The em-phatic condemnation, deliveredover Israel’s public radio, cameafter Israel criticized the Pales-tinian leadership for what it con-sidered to be an initially mealy-mouthed response.
“This act was abominable, in-human and immoral,” Mr. Abbassaid in a rare interview with Is-rael Radio that was conducted inArabic. Referring to the killing ofthree of the family’s young chil-dren, including a baby, he added,“Any person who has a sense ofhumanity would be pained anddriven to tears by such sights.”
The victims, Udi and RuthFogel, and three of their children,ages 11, 4 and 3 months, werestabbed to death in their bedslate Friday in Itamar, near Nab-lus in the northern West Bank.The assailants, who are still atlarge, are widely suspected to belocal Palestinians.
In the days since the attack,which shocked Israelis across thepolitical spectrum, Israel has ac-cused the Palestinian Authorityof an indirect role in encouragingviolence, citing incitement in theauthority’s schools, mosques andnews media.
Yossi Kuperwasser, a retiredIsraeli general given responsibil-ity by the Israeli government formonitoring Palestinian incite-ments to violence and to hatredof Israel, said in a telephone in-terview that while Mr. Abbas andthe Palestinian Authority prime
minister, Salam Fayyad, hadbeen careful in their words, “theytoo encourage an atmosphere ofterrorism.”
He noted, for example, that asenior Abbas aide had paid a callto the families of three Fatah mil-itants killed by the Israeli mil-itary, conveying condolencesfrom Mr. Abbas. Israel held thethree responsible for the fatalshooting of a rabbi in the WestBank in December 2009. In addi-tion, Israeli officials note, streets,summer camps and youth tour-naments in the Palestinian Au-thority have been named for peo-ple who committed terrorist at-tacks.
The new focus on incitementagainst Israel, together with Is-raeli dissatisfaction over the Pal-estinian response to the brutal at-tack, seemed to pose a questionabout the Israeli government’sreadiness to deal with Mr. Abbasas a serious peace partner —even though Mr. Abbas and Mr.Fayyad are widely consideredmoderates who have repeatedlysaid they would never resort toviolence.
Mr. Abbas rejected the claimsabout incitement in mosques,telling Israel Radio that the Pal-estinian Authority mosques haveadopted a unified text for ser-mons, written by the minister ofreligious affairs. He called for ajoint Israeli-Palestinian-Ameri-can working committee to inves-tigate claims that Palestinian Au-thority school textbooks incitedviolence.
Mr. Fayyad was the first Pales-tinian official on Saturday to con-demn the deaths in Itamar, say-ing, “We utterly reject violence,
and nothing justifies it.” Mr. Abbas’s office issued a
statement later that day, throughthe Palestinian news agencyWafa, saying that he “stressedhis rejection and condemnationof all violence directed against ci-vilians, regardless of who was be-hind it or the reason for it.”
Mr. Abbas also called theprime minister of Israel, Benja-min Netanyahu, on Saturdayevening to express sorrow overthe killings. But Israel said thePalestinian condemnation washesitant and nonspecific. “Theweak and noncommittal condem-nation of the Palestinian leader-ship is insufficient and unaccept-able,” Mark Regev, a Netanyahuspokesman, said Sunday. “Whatis required is unequivocal lan-guage.”
Mr. Netanyahu told a meetingof his Likud Party members ofParliament on Monday that he at-tached great importance to Mr.Abbas’s words of condemnationon Israel Radio, but that it wasmore important he say suchthings on Palestinian radio, IsraelRadio reported.
Mr. Kuperwasser suggestedthat Mr. Abbas’s condemnationon Israel Radio still fell short. ThePalestinian leader emphasizedthe horrific nature of the killing ofthe young children and the babyin Itamar, Mr. Kuperwasser said.But he criticized Mr. Abbas fornot showing “the same enthusi-asm” in condemning the deathsof the parents.
“His words hold great impor-tance in my eyes,” he said, “but itis more important that he saythese things on Palestinian radio,not just Israel.”
Abbas Condemns Killing of Jewish Family
Nxxx,2011-03-15,A,006,Bs-BW,E1
