Proponents of eating insects face a culinary challenge: taste

“Think of it like a cricket cake, like a fish cake,” the chef said as he urged a man in the buffet line to try the hot, spicy laksa – a coconut noodle broth – filled with “ready-made cricket protein”.

Next to it was a plate of chili crickets, a bug version of a favorite Singaporean dish – mud crabs marinated in a rich, sweet chili sauce.

It looked like any other buffet, except for the main ingredient in every dish: crickets.

The line included a woman who made Korean glass noodles topped with ground crickets on her plate, and a man who would not stop grilling the young chef.

You’d expect diners to feast. After all, they were among more than 600 scientists, entrepreneurs and environmentalists from around the world who had come to Singapore as part of a campaign to make insects fun. The name of the conference says it all – Insects to Feed the World.

And yet many of them are attracted to the buffet next to the spread full of insects. It was standard fare, some would argue: wild-caught barramundi seasoned with lemon grass and lime, grilled sirloin steak with onion marmalade, coconut vegetable curry.

About two billion people, about a quarter of the world’s population, already eat insects as part of their daily diet, according to the United Nations.

More people should join them, according to a growing nation of insect advocates who are championing insects as a healthy and green option. But is the hope of saving the planet enough to make people realize their high crawl?

“We have to focus on making them delicious,” said New York-based chef Joseph Yoon, who designed the conference’s cricket menu, along with Singaporean chef Nicholas Low. The event had permission to use only crickets.

“The idea that insects are hardy, nutrient dense, can address food security, and so on,” isn’t enough to make them palatable, let alone attractive, he added.

The study found that only six crickets met a person’s daily protein requirements. And raising them required a small amount of water and land, compared to livestock.

Some countries have given insect nutrition a nudge, if not a push. Singapore recently allowed 16 species of bugs, including grasshoppers, earthworms, grasshoppers and honey bees, as food.

It is among a handful of countries, including the European Union, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Thailand, that regulate what is still a nascent edible insect industry. Estimates vary from $400m to $1.4bn (£303m to £1.06bn).

Enter chefs like Nicholas Low who have had to find ways to “break down” insects in order to cook with them because people are not always ready to try them “in their original form”.

At the conference, Mr. Low reinvented the famous laksa when he replaced the regular cake with ground cricket cakes.

He said some work was also needed to hide the earthy smell of insects. Dishes with “strong flavors”, such as laksa, were okay because the sweetness of the original recipe distracted people from the crushed vegetables.

Mr Low said that cricket leaves little space for him to experiment. Usually deep-fried to a fine texture, or ground into a powder, unlike meat, it was meant to be cooked in a variety of ways, from roasting to barbecuing.

He didn’t think about cooking with crickets every day: “I might cook it as a special dish that is part of the main menu.”

Ever since Singapore legalized cooking with bugs, some restaurants have been trying their hand at it. The seafood place has started sprinkling crickets on their satays and squid ink pasta, or serving them alongside fish head curry.

Yes, there are others who have dedicated themselves to this challenge. Takeo Cafe in Tokyo has been serving customers from insects for the past 10 years.

The menu includes a salad with twin Madagascar cockroaches perched on a bed of leaves and cherry tomatoes, an ice cream scoop with three tiny grasshoppers and a spirit cocktail made with silkworm poo.

“The most important thing [the customer’s] it’s curiosity,” said Saeki Shinjiro, Takeo’s CEO.

What about nature? “Customers are not that worried,” he said.

Just to be on the safe side, Takeo also has a bug-free menu. “When we design the menu, we always remember not to discriminate against people who don’t eat insects… Some customers are here to accompany their friends,” said Mr. Shinjiro.

“We don’t want people like that to feel uncomfortable. There is no need to forcefully eat insects.”

It was not to be, however. For centuries, insects have been a valuable food source in various parts of the world.

In Japan grasshoppers, earthworms, and wasps were often eaten in enclosed areas where meat and fish were scarce. The practice re-emerged during the food shortages of World War II, said Takeo’s manager Michiko Miura.

Today, crickets and silkworms are often sold as snacks in night markets in Thailand, while diners in Mexico City pay hundreds of dollars for ant larvae, a delicacy once considered a delicacy by the Aztecs, who ruled the region in the 15th and 16th centuries.

But bug experts worry that these culinary traditions have been driven by globalization, as insect eaters now associate food with poverty.

“There’s a growing sense of shame” in places with a long history of insect consumption, such as Asia, Africa and South America, says Joseph Yoon, a New York-based chef.

“Now they get glimpses of foreign cultures on the internet and are ashamed of eating insects because that is not a practice elsewhere.”

In her book Edible Insects and Human Evolution, anthropologist Julie Lesnik argued that colonial rule increased the stigma of eating insects. He wrote that Christopher Columbus and the members of his expedition described the Native American people’s use of insects as “sleeping with animals… greater than any animal on the face of the earth”.

Of course, people’s attitudes can change. After all, delicious food like sushi and lobsters were once a strange concept to many people.

Sushi began as a worker’s meal available at street stalls. And lobsters, known as “poor man’s chicken”, were once served to prisoners and slaves in the American northeast because of their abundance, said food researcher Keri Matiwck of Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University.

But as transportation networks made travel easier and food storage improved, more and more people were introduced to the crustacean. As demand grows, so does its price and condition.

Foods that were once seen as “unusual”, or not considered food, may gradually become normal, says Dr Matwick. “[But] Cultural beliefs take time to change. It will take time to change the perception of insects as disgusting and dirty.”

Some experts encourage people to raise their children to be tolerant of unusual foods, including insects, because future generations will face the full effects of climate change.

Insects may be the “super food” of the future, as coveted as quinoa and berries. They may be consumed out of desperation, rather than sought out for the joy that comes with a buttery steak or a hearty bowl of ramen.

Meanwhile, Singaporean chef Nicholas Low believes there is nothing forcing people to change their diet, especially in affluent areas where almost anything you want is just a few clicks away.

Young consumers may be willing to taste out of curiosity, but the novelty will wear off, he said.

“We are spoiled for choice. We love our meat as meat, and our fish as fish.”