The easiest marketing pitch ever was set up a few yards away from Quinnipiac University’s dining hall: college kids and free food, you can’t go wrong.
But there’s a catch. The secret ingredient is crickets.
According to junior Samantha Beckwith, “Anyone is willing to eat a cookie, even if there are bugs in them!”
And that’s the topic behind professor Julia Gilbin’s anthropology of food class.
One of the chefs, Samantha Beckwith, wasn’t exactly cool with getting to know her ingredients.
“Because i was part of the whole process, because i saw them alive, I feel a lot different about the cookies themselves.”
Entomology is the study of inscts, and entomophagy is the act of eating said insects. Nnow it sounds like a bad April Fools prank, but there’s actually a big lesson in teaching students what passes as food all around the world.
“There’s lots of reasons to eat bugs: They’e healthy, they’re rich in protein, they have lots of nutrients and vitamins,” Gilbin said.
So once nerves were settled, reviews were mostly positive.
“Crickets or not, free cookies are free cookies”, said Beckwith.