Bugs: The Series

Ben and Josh from the Danish Nordic Food Lab have one goal: making delicious food available to more people. For three years, the chefs and researchers travel the world, to learn from the two billion people, who already eat bugs.

The journey goes to Mexico, where Ben and Josh from Nordic Food Lab, are going to visit an escamoles farmer. Escamoles are the edible larvae from ants, and Mexico’s version of caviar. In addition to divine taste experiences from escamoles, honey larvae, honey ants and hornets, the team experiences a profound knowledge of food and nature, and not least how the two can coexist.

The team has arrived in Kenya, to learn how a termite queen tastes with mango and why the West is not eating bugs. Ben, Josh and Roberto from the Danish Nordic Food Lab have one goal: making delicious food available to more people. But preparing bugs is as complex as talking about how to prepare meat or fish.

Who worries about how much money you have in your bank account, if you have truly tasty food in your garden? When the team from the Danish Nordic Food Lab travels around the world to learn from the two billion people, who are already eating bugs, it is about being happy and satisfied by what surrounds us.

Will we be better off, if bugs are part of our daily foods? In Peru we are going to taste the Peruvian suri larva and skewers with bugs of the jungle. When Ben and Josh from the Danish Nordic Food Lab travel the world to eat and learn about bugs, it is about locating the delicate taste experiences.

In this episode the team is going to Japan, to capture the gigantic and deadly poisonous hornet, and they will be tasting rice, steamed with the feces of the cherry fruit maggot.

There are many cultures around the world, where bugs are not only eaten but are even considered a delicacy. In Sardinia, in Italy, they use the Casu marzu method on cheese, so that larvae start living in the cheese, and in Denmark it is possible to eat the larvae of bees.

In Holland the chefs and researchers from the Danish Nordic Food Lab cook food with farmed bugs, and visit the international conference; Insects to Feed the World. But when we talk about how bugs can be a sustainable part of our food system, we have to consider whether our own food system is sustainable at all.