Gourmet food! Cicadas have become the latest food trend, with chefs posting recipes for bacon-wrapped, Cajun fried and praline pests – so, would YOU be brave enough to eat them?

They swarm the US by the trillions and are known for producing an annoying buzz.

But one way Americans have dealt with the “apocalyptic” influx of crickets is by eating them.

The tiny insects – which are brown at first but darken as they age – are low in fat, high in protein and taste ‘nutty’, according to those brave enough to try them.

Restaurants and home chefs alike use the noisy insects in dishes such as stir-fries and salads, wrapped in bacon or simply fried in herbs as a tasty snack.

Bill Broadbent, president of edible insect company Entosense in Maine, said crickets are “high in protein” and nutritionally similar to beef.

‘They contain healthy fats, are low in calories and carbohydrates and are a good source of antioxidants,’ Broadbent told MailOnline.

‘Insect protein is a real animal protein and contains all essential amino acids.’

In New Orleans, Bug Appétit, a restaurant inside the city’s Audubon Insectarium, prepares dishes like cicada salad and roasted crickets.

Zack Lemann, the Insectarium’s curator of animal collections, has legal permission to serve wild-caught crickets while he works to gather resources for the insects.

“Every culture has things that they like to eat and maybe things that are taboo or things that people just turn their noses up at and frown at,” Lemann said.

“And there’s no reason to do that to insects when you look at the nutritional value, their quality on the plate, how they taste, the environmental benefits of harvesting insects instead of dealing with livestock.”

El Rey in Philadelphia has also used crickets, minced for salsas and mixed into potato soup to add a nutty flavor, while Bar Sótano in Chicago also plans to add crickets to its menu.

But it’s not just professional chefs who use the insects in their cooking.

According to Smithsonian Magazinea couple in South Carolina recently hosted a cicada dinner party where the insects were wrapped in bacon, fried in Cajun spices and even made into a praline.

Jim Warner, former program director for food and nutrition at the Ohio State University Medical Center, said home cooks should collect crickets from wooded areas far from home.

“Stay away from well-manicured yards due to the potential for lawn chemicals and other contaminants that the crickets may have ingested,” he said in a blog post.

“Watch them climb a tree and start to shed their outer shell.

“When they come out of their shell, gently handle the soft bodies, blanch them in boiling water for a minute, then place them in a Ziplock bag and place them in the freezer before preparing them for cooking.”

Warner adds that the insects have “a nutty flavor” and are nice and crunchy when fried in olive oil with a few spices, but they also make a good stir-fry.

According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, people who are allergic to shellfish should avoid eating crickets because they have a family relationship with shrimp and lobsters.

Dr. However, Wade Syers, a food safety specialist at Michigan State University, warned that cicada foraging could pose potential health risks.

“There are a lot of different risks involved and one of the problems we have is that there hasn’t been a lot of research into how big those risks are,” Dr. Syers told me. the times.

“If you just think about the life cycle of insects and where they spend their time, we don’t know if the insects… from the wild are contaminated with bacteria.”

Scientists divide the more than 3,000 cicada species into two groups: ‘annual’ and ‘periodic’, but it is the emergence of the latter group that is currently leading to a ‘cicada apocalypse’.

Shortly after a periodical cicada hatches from its egg, it burrows into the ground, where it spends the first 13 or 17 years of its life, depending on the species.

Once it emerges from the ground, it only lives for four to six weeks – just long enough to mate, fertilize or lay eggs, and start the cycle all over again.

In the US this spring, for the first time since 1803, the emergence of both the 13- and 17-year-old varieties coincides.

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This means that more than a trillion insects will swarm across 16 US states in May and June – creating a noisy buzz as the male tries to attract a female.

Cicada experts say the two North American variants of the species can produce an alarming call as loud as 105.9 decibels, or “as loud as a lawn mower.”

“The double emergence is a one in two or three lifetime event,” says Dr. Gene Kritsky, professor, entomologist and cicada expert at Mount St. Joseph University.

‘This happens twelve times every 221 years, but this is the first time since 1803 that these broods have emerged together.’