Diet for a Changing Climate/ Food for Thought

Written by Christy Mihaly and Sue Heavenrich

There‘s enough eeuuwww!! material and social consciousness in this nonfiction book to capture readers in fifth grade and beyond. The authors make a strong case for eating crickets, scorpions, dandelions, and a host of other bugs, animals, and wild plants to address our planet’s changing climate and the havoc it wreaks. Farming, with its livestock, machinery, and pesticides, is not the ticket. Rather, the authors reflect the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization’s point of view.

“Food deserts” play a part in the book’s issues to be addressed. The University of California Berkeley’s Open Source Food program is most concerned about low income neighborhoods that have little or no access to healthy food. The program investigator leads “plant walks,” examines soil on city lands, and brings city governments on board to minimize pesticides and certify foraging lands. Apps exist for identifying wild food and offering recipes for cooking, e.g. “Dandelion Flower Pancakes” and “Wild and Weedy Quiche.”

Some chefs are on board with this diet by including on their menus invasive species, e.g. tilapia fish, Zebra mussels, and squid. A conservation biologist started the “Eat the Invaders Project,” which includes parrot fish, a fish that reduces a large portion of native species and damages reefs. A sushi chef in New Haven, serves Asian shore crab to give native species a chance to recover. He was named White House Champion of Change for supporting sustainable seafood.

And then there are bugs. “80% of the world’s cultures harvest and eat more than 1900 insect species.” Entomophagists (insect eaters) enjoy grasshoppers, wasp larvae, and crickets, to name a few. Bits of cricket relatives are in snack packs and protein bars. Who knew?
The authors say, “……eating bugs is good for the planet…”. And so the book ends where it began. Plus 19 pages of back matter.

And here are scorpion lollipops:

P.104, Diet for a Changing Climate