From a New Yorker article on the movement to promote eating of bugs by people:
Matthew Krisiloff, who just finished his freshman year at the University of Chicago, recently started a company called Entom foods, which is working on deshelling insects using pressurization technology–trade secret–in the hope of selling the meat in cutlet form. “The problem is the ick factor–the eyes, the wings, the legs,” he said. “It’s not as simple as hiding it in a bug nugget. People won’t accept it beyond the novelty. When you think of a chicken you think of a chicken breast, not the eyes, wings, and beak. W’re trying to do the same thing with insects, create a stepping-stone, so that when you get a bug nugget you think of the bug steak, not the whole animal.” If he can overcome some of the technical challenges–like the fact that insect protein does not take the form of muscle, but is, as he put it, “goopy”–he plans to have a product out next year.
I really think Krisiloff is wrong about this. To me, the idea of eating a grasshopper cutlet is much nastier than the idea of eating a whole grasshopper, and I bet most people agree with me on this. I think the bug-eating movement will be better off distinguishing bug meat from other meat by playing up the “not processed at all” angle, rather than by making the bug meat just as processed as normal meat.