By Whitney Bauck for The Guardian.
Broadcast version by Edwin J. Viera for New York News Connection reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration

Chef Joseph Yoon is used to people reacting negatively to his creations: he’s watched a child cry when she realized the pumpkin cake in her mouth was made with cricket powder, seen a grown adult spit out his bug-laden bite of food, and endured racist online comments aimed at him for suggesting that scorpions or mealworms are worth eating.

But none of that seems to faze Yoon. If anything, it just reaffirms the importance of his work destigmatizing entomophagy. As the founder of Brooklyn Bugs and a self-described “edible insect ambassador”, Yoon is on a mission to prove that eating bugs is good for the planet – and the palate.

Yoon’s work includes giving presentations everywhere from elementary schools to Harvard, partnering with institutions like the Smithsonian and Nasa on sustainable food initiatives, and occasionally cooking for journalists like me, all in an effort to raise awareness about the planetary benefits and culinary joys of eating bugs.

“I like to share the sense of hope and optimism and to be able to capture people’s imagination through cooking insects,” Yoon said from his kitchen table in Queens over a bite of stir-fried cicadas. “The question is: how do we start changing the perception from insects as pests to something that’s sustainably farmed, nutrient dense and that can add a tremendous amount of flavor to your food?”

Insect consumption has been highlighted by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization as an important tool in addressing food insecurity for a growing global population. And since agriculture is the second-largest greenhouse gas emitter after the energy sector, insect eating presents a compelling climate solution, too – crickets, for example, can provide the same amount of protein as cows for less than 0.1% of the emissions.

Yoon pointed out that people have been eating insects since long before the practice was recognized as a climate win. “There are over 2 billion people in 80% of the world’s nations that are already regularly consuming insects,” he said. But the stigma and yuck factor that persist in many places, including much of the US, are what Yoon is interested in changing.

His approach is to lead with the joy of eating. Learning to enjoy consuming bugs might require some retraining of your palate depending on where you grew up, he said, but we apply that training whenever we try new foods from unfamiliar cultures or admonish our kids to eat veggies.

“There are over 2,000 types of edible insects with wildly different flavor profiles, textures and functionality,” Yoon said. “Take garlic, for comparison. Say someone was like, ‘I love garlic, try a piece raw,’ and you’d never had it before, you’d probably be like, ‘This is really intense, I don’t like this.’ You have to learn to work with the ingredient, to roast it, to saute it … We’re just at the very tip of understanding how to truly work with insect protein.”

So where might the entomophagy-curious get started? And what do all these varieties of bug actually taste like? Yoon and I sat down together over a beautifully plated bug tasting menu served in his home kitchen to dig in to those questions and talk through a few of his go-to insect ingredients.

Crickets: a nutty flavor

“Crickets are commonly referred to as the gateway bug,” Yoon told me, serving up a few different varieties of his homemade kimchi that substitute cricket powder for fish sauce. “I’ve cooked easily over 100 unique dishes with crickets.”

Available in both whole and powdered form, crickets are farmed in indoor settings and given a savory, “nutty” flavor by roasting. Yoon noted that crickets are remarkably versatile – you can add the powder to smoothies, baked goods or hummus to increase the protein content, or use them to form a crunchy crust on fried foods.

Grasshoppers: a savory snack

There are many flavor and texture similarities between grasshoppers and crickets, Yoon said, though grasshoppers tend to be a bit meatier. But the grasshoppers he served me, nestled on a bed of delicately arranged avocado and mango, were something special: they were chapulines, seasoned with lime, chillies and salt. Gathered from Oaxaca, Mexico, these are some of the only insects that are caught outside in specially designated fields, Yoon said.

“These are also sold at [T-Mobile Park] in Seattle, and they sell out of grasshoppers every ball game,” he said of the stadium where the Mariners play. They were so tasty that I found that easy to believe – and they were the first insects I looked into buying for myself after leaving Yoon’s kitchen.

Ants: ‘insect caviar’

Yoon described black ants as “insect caviar” and “almost like Pop Rocks” while sprinkling them as a garnish over soft-boiled quail eggs. Their formic acid content gives black ants a bright, citrusy tang, which is why Yoon uses them in “virtually any application where I want a citrus flavor”, he said, whether that’s a vinaigrette or a cocktail.

Weaver ants, while similar to their ebony counterparts, are bigger and “a little woodsier, with a little bit of a lemon flavor”, said Yoon. They’re particularly popular as an ingredient in chutneys or salsas, he added.

Manchurian scorpions: a shrimp-like taste

Despite being some of the more intimidating-looking critters in his pantry – those stingers! – Manchurian scorpions actually have a rather familiar flavor, Yoon noted. “These are brined in salt and sun-dried. They’re arthropods just like shrimp, so they have a baby-shrimp-esque quality and flavor,” he said. The scorpion he served me was tantalizingly dripping in gochujang, but he said he also enjoys eating scorpions in the form of a dashi stock that combines them with mushrooms and kombu.

Bamboo worms, weevils and wasps: creamy, coconutty, sweet

Bamboo worms, which hail from south-east Asia, aren’t worms at all, but caterpillars that live in bamboo thickets. Yoon said that they’re so mild and creamy that they’re tasty enough to be eaten straight out of the bag.

Another creamy variety is the palm weevil: besides being a low-carbon protein source, palm weevils are also an invasive species that causes damage to palm trees, which is all the more reason to eat them. Yoon served the slightly coconutty critter toasted on a bed of roasted beets with a cricket-powder-infused green goddess dressing and a sprinkling of black ants.

For a different kind of sweetness, look to Japanese wasps. Their flavor “starts a little bit sweet and finishes with this really fascinating minerality,” Yoon said. In Japan, people sometimes add the wasps to sake to infuse the alcohol with their unique flavor.

Mopane worms: pungent and earthy

Popular in Botswana and Zimbabwe, mopane worms are actually the caterpillar form of the emperor moth. Gathered from the mopane tree, they are commonly enjoyed in stews or maize porridges. For the western palate, Yoon recommends using aromatics like onions and garlic to balance their pungent flavor.

Cicadas: a meaty treat

The surprisingly meaty cicadas Yoon served on a bed of rice are “the most buggy” item on the menu: with legs and wings intact, there’s no mistaking them for anything else. But their flavor, enhanced by stir-frying with chillies and garlic, was enjoyable enough that I’d happily eat them again. These specimens were extra-special for a few reasons – first off, Yoon foraged them himself, and second, they were part of last summer’s Brood X emergence, an occurrence that only happens once every 17 years. He also served some cicada kimchi to showcase other ways they can be eaten.

Superworms: nature’s cheese puff

When eaten alone, superworms have a somewhat cheesy flavor that makes them a nice pairing for fruit, Yoon said. Tasting one by itself, I could see what he meant – it was a little like nature’s cheese puff. He then pulled out brownies for dessert that he told me contained both mealworm powder and whole mealworms, which he described as tasting “nutty with a hint of cacao and dried mushrooms,” and though I could sense a bit of a unique crunch, the truth is they just tasted like deliciously chocolatey but otherwise normal brownies.

Yoon laughed. “That’s very commonly the reaction when people try my food. They’re like, ‘Oh, that’s just food.’ It’s not this crazy thing. And that’s really what I’m trying to help people appreciate, so they can see insects as a new ingredient they can integrate into the things they already like to eat.”


Whitney Bauck wrote this article for The Guardian.


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By Alana Horton for Arts Midwest.
Broadcast version by Mike Moen for Minnesota News Connection reporting for the Arts Midwest-Public News Service Collaboration

When’s the last time you wrote a love letter—and then read it out loud to a room full of your neighbors?

That’s what happened in Granite Falls, Minnesota (population 2,600), during a recent artist residency featuring JJ Kapur, a theater performer turned psychology PhD student.

Over the course of a week, Kapur’s workshop, Letters of Love, invited participants to explore vulnerability through letter-writing and oral storytelling. Attendees spent two evenings writing heartfelt letters while sharing home-cooked Singaporean meals prepared by the artist’s father. The final night culminated in a public reading.

The love letters took many forms, including messages to partners, departed family members, and even the town itself.

“I did not expect people to open up the way that they did,” Kapur said. “There were folks who came up to me who literally didn’t know things about the people they’ve lived with in this community for years.”

A Space for Exchange

Based in Des Moines, Iowa, Kapur was invited to rural Granite Falls by Department of Public Transformation, a nonprofit arts organization that runs a unique space called The YES! House.

The YES! House is a creative, multi-use community gathering space on Main Street. Upstairs, two apartments host visiting artists. Downstairs, community members can attend events, hold meetings, cowork, or simply hang out. Each year, the space hosts up to 20 artists-in-residence—a number that continues to grow.

Kapur said that staying at The YES! House during his residency was essential to Letters of Love, allowing him and his father to connect with community members and share stories and food beyond workshop sessions.

“We made The YES! House our home. In our Indian culture, when people come to your house, you take off your shoes, you’re offered tea, and the first thing someone asks is: ‘Have you eaten?’ Not ‘How are you?’” he said. “We wanted people to feel they could write from that place—like they were sitting in their living room.”

The ability to offer that kind of care is what makes The YES! House special, says coordinator Luwaina Al-Otaibi.

“Deep work takes more than a one-off event,” she said. “It’s about the connection between artists and the community—and how we can facilitate that.”

Healing and Performance

Kapur, who is studying to become a counseling psychologist, is drawn to the intersection of therapy and theater.

“I’m interested in how groups can heal together,” he said. “How is the theater therapeutic and how is therapy kind of a form of theater?”

That resonance was felt by participants, including Al-Otaibi, who read a love letter to her cat of 23 years who was nearing the end of his life.

“I would never just have had that outlet,” she said. “There’s something healing about getting up and reading something like that in front of people.”

In a world that often asks us to guard our hearts, Letters of Love made space for Granite Falls residents to speak theirs out loud—and be heard.


Alana Horton wrote this story for Arts Midwest.


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Supporters of the arts are gathering Wednesday in Sacramento for Arts Advocacy Day in order to lobby lawmakers on a range of issues.

Educators are drawing attention to problems with the implementation of Proposition 28, which was supposed to help schools hire more art teachers.

Abe Flores, deputy director of policy and programs for the nonprofit Create CA, said some districts are doing something of a "bait and switch."

"Some schools are using the new Prop 28 funding to replace their existing investments in arts education," Flores pointed out. "Their students are not seeing a net increase in their arts teachers or arts programming."

The Los Angeles Unified School District is currently being sued over the issue by local parents and by the author of Proposition 28. Create CA also wants the state to designate the visual and performing arts as a qualified shortage area, so people studying to become an arts education teachers have access to more financial aid. They'd like to see lawmakers pass Assembly Bill 1128, which supports grants for student teachers.

Julie Baker, CEO of the advocacy group California for the Arts, said they will be asking lawmakers to restore funding to a number of different programs which have been zeroed out in the past few years.

"California is number one in the United States for arts jobs," Baker noted. "But we're actually 35th in the United States in per capita funding to our state arts agency, which is the California Arts Council."

California for the Arts is also promoting a bill to make it easier for cities to hire muralists by removing a requirement they be licensed painting contractors.

By Frankie (Amy) Felegy for Arts Midwest.
Broadcast version by Mark Moran for Iowa News Service reporting for the Arts Midwest-Public News Service Collaboration

Chuy Renteria started dancing-specifically breaking-at the age of 14. A magazine editor and writer these days, Renteria still uses breaking to express his identity-and defiance, rebellion, and frustration with the other dancers.

"We're in conversation. We're having the equivalent of a heated argument on the dance floor," he says. The improvisational street dance is rooted in African American and Latino culture. It originated in New York City in 1980s, alongside a growing hip-hop scene.

Renteria dances to engage with the labels pasted onto him, both accurate and biased.

"When people see me walking down the street, they can't help but think A, B, C, right? So when I go to sleep and I wake up, I can't take that away," he says.

'This is Me'

Renteria grew up in West Liberty, Iowa, in the 80s and 90s-a time and place that has shaped who he is and where his art leads him.

The city is less than two square miles in size; inside is a historically majority Hispanic population.

"Growing up in West Liberty, I felt too Mexican for the white people and too white for the Mexican people. And that was always this constant [existence] between those spaces," Renteria says.

As young as nine years old, the first-generation Mexican-American remembers racial slurs being flung at him. People would say they hated him.

"And when I found dance, it transcended all of that," he says. "It's like, this is me."

Finding Meaning

Renteria shares: "Just by nature of my own identity, in the context of the social constructs around us, me existing becomes this political conversation point to folks."

But that politicization isn't as direct a translation in dance as, say, artforms that use words or visuals. The dialogue is more subtle.

"Dance and movement, and that sort of expression, is just as valid, and it's just as politically cognizant of the world. It just does it in this kind of abstraction. It doesn't have to be hitting you over the head," he says.

Renteria's 2021 memoir We Heard It When We Were Young, along with his more recent blog posts in Of Spanglish and Maximalism, grapple with his past, the now, and beyond.

What is identity? How does intergenerational trauma and racism impact who we are? The list goes on: "Did I have a good childhood? Am I a good person because-or in spite of-my upbringing? ... Is my town a good town? The town that I grew up in, the town as of now, is it a good place?" Renteria asks.

"I'm really interested in the questions that I don't know the answer to."


Frankie (Amy) Felegy wrote this story for Arts Midwest.


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