You bite down. Your teeth break the crisp exterior and release the savory juices inside. You munch, enjoying every little bite, well aware that you’re simultaneously benefitting your body. It’s the perfect snack. Nutritious and delicious. So next time you’re feeling a little rumbling in your stomach, avoid the same boring bag of potato chips or scrumptious pints of Ben & Jerry’s and do yourself a favor. Grab yourself a nice sack of delectable cockroaches.
No, that’s not a typo. Cockroach farming is widely popular in China, and the insects are even considered a “miracle drug.” According to the Telegraph, the proper way to eat a cockroach is to fry it twice in a wok of scalding oil. Wang Fuming, 43, whose recipe calls for the double fry, is the leading cockroach farmer in Shandong province, with more than 22 million of them living in a series of concrete bunkers in the suburbs of Jinan. He could feed armies.
“They really are a miracle drug,” said Liu Yusheng, head of Shandong province’s Insect Association, a totally normal job. “They can cure a number of ailments and they work much faster than other medicine.” Liu added that a handful of Chinese hospitals use a cream made from powdered cockroaches to help burn victims. A syrup in Sichuan apparently cures gastroenteritis, duodenal ulcers and pulmonary tuberculosis.
One reporter claims the cockroach's innards “resemble cottage cheese, has an earthy taste, with a slight twinge of ammonia.” Delicious, or at least the Chinese think so. In the past two years, demand for cockroaches has skyrocketed, prompting Fuming to refine his business.
"We kill them before they reach four months old, because then their wings are fully grown and they can fly," Fuming said. "They are very easy to kill, we take large vats of boiling water into the corridors and dunk the nests into them."
Fuming sells his product solely to pharmaceutical companies, and makes good money doing so. Since 2011, production has quintupled to nearly 100 tons of cockroaches a year. Lovely.
Will the cockroach remedy makes its way west? Are we months away from seeing cheddar, barbecue or sour cream and onion roaches on our supermarket shelves? Maybe in Whole Foods.