Enlarge / Yes, those are crickets adorning this otherwise standard chips-and-guac. (credit: John Timmer)

Around this time last year, one of our intrepid staff members took on something that’s on the verge of being a culinary trend: eating bugs. In Beth’s case, this involved incorporating cricket-based flour into a traditional muffin recipe. The results were anything but positive.

Still, that was just one implementation of a single type of bug—we hadn’t really given eating them the traditional Ars “thoroughly reviewed” exploration. So, when an opportunity presented itself to try a much larger assortment of insects (and a couple arachnids) prepared in a variety of ways, I quickly signed up.

Why bugs, why now?

Part of the reason is that it isn’t actually “now.” Cultures all over the world have been incorporating insects into their cuisine for ages. Many of us have only become aware of bug-eating as a result of the development of travel-eating as a television genre, popularized by people like Andrew Zimmerman and the late Anthony Bourdain.