UBC students hold bug recipe competition

Will you be adding bugs to your holiday treats? Some university students are showing CityNews they don’t taste half bad.

Students held an insect recipe competition at the University of British Columbia (UBC) on Tuesday to raise awareness about the nutritional value of bugs and their role in sustainable food systems.

Sessional Lecturer Yasmin Akhtar had her Applied Biology students prepare an insect recipe as part of their course requirements, with judges scoring the food on taste, originality, texture, presentation, effort, and creativity.

“In terms of sustainability, we can get them anytime. We can farm them and their reproduction rate is very fast — they require little space, less water, emit less greenhouse gases, and it is easier to rear them,” she said.

“There’s no scarcity of food when talking about insects.”

Evelyn Springer and Mariam Alkandari baked gluten and dairy-free ginger cookies made with a secret ingredient — crushed mealworms.

“You can kind of see a little bit of the mealworms in there, but it didn’t change the overall texture,” they said.

“We always see insects as something that is gross, or related to agriculture, but relating them to food is a different way to start looking as insects.”

A pound cake and shortbread cookies made with cricket powder took the top prize in the Great UBC Bug Bake Off, and Ahktar says creativity like this could change some people’s minds about eating bugs.

“People have negative perceptions about eating insects, especially in the West,” she said. “But if you make this kind of baking and introduce insects and ask people to taste them, then I think that negative perception is going to go away.”