Kicker: The insect experience

NICK EICHER, HOST: If the hassle of coming up with what’s for dinner bugs you, maybe this’ll spur some fresh ideas. 

Chef Mario Barnard heads a pop-up restaurant in South Africa. Perhaps the name of the place will clue you in to the main item on the menu: The Insect Experience. 

Sound courtesy of DStv:

BARNARD: I chose to use locally farmed insects from in South Africa like mopane worm, black soldier fly, and meal worms and silk worms. It adds so much flavor to it….

Umm-hmm. So much flavor.

So many offerings: Polenta fries made with worm flour. An ice cream and milk alternative from the black soldier fly. 

Any why not? Nearly 2,000 insect species are edible for humans. And something like two billion people around the world already eat insects, primarily in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

BARNARD: As a sustainable protein source it adds so much nutrition to dishes. It’s huge in protein, the exoskeleton is huge in fiber. The inter milk’s got more calcium than normal milk.

Sorry. I’m just too first world here. But I do think dinner’s solved.

Solved by losing my appetite.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

(Photo/CNN)

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