Chowing down on cicadas is this season’s latest foodie trend, but the government says the insect hors d’œuvre isn’t for everyone.
The FDA took to Twitter Wednesday to warn that people with seafood allergies shouldn’t try the buzzy dish.
“Yep! We have to say it!,” regulators wrote. “Don’t eat #cicadas if you’re allergic to seafood as these insects share a family relation to shrimp and lobsters.”
Trillions of the noisy insects have emerged from hibernation for the first time in 17 years, and onto plates of adventurous eaters.
A cookbook called “Cicada-Licious,” published in 2004, when the last generation of insects emerged, expands on the FDA’s advice, and warns readers not to be bugged out by eating the insects for breakfast, lunch, dinner and dessert.
“If you have ever eaten a crawfish, lobster, crab, or shrimp then you have already eaten members of the class Arthropoda, of which insects are a part. So popping a big juicy
beetle, cricket, or cicada into your mouth is only a step away,” the cookbook advises.
A Maryland bakery has been “inundated with orders” of its chocolate-covered cicadas, and a Connecticut sushi chef is using the seasonal delicacy in his cooking, according to The New York Times.
Bun Lai uses different cooking techniques to “brings out different tones and shades,” of the cicadas for his New Haven restaurant Miya’s Sushi, according to the article, which notes he is mesmerized by “their sweet, bitter flavor reminiscent of walnuts, chestnuts and adzuki beans, and their gently crunchy exterior giving way to creaminess, like a soft shell crab.”
Anthropologists have long promoted eating insects as a sustainable, inexpensive protein source, and the practice is common in many cultures.
For many that live in Brood X’s summer stomping ground between Georgia and New Jersey, it’s still an acquired taste.
“Ummm… how ‘bout don’t eat cicadas if you’re a human,” one person wrote in reaction to the FDA’s post.