Tofu is not the most popular protein in America, partially due to the fact that a lot of it has the taste and consistency of packing foam. But just in case the bland flavor and squishy texture weren’t enough to put you off, some graduate students have figured out a way to make tofu out of mealworms.
The Cornell University team, though, isn’t doing this on a bet. Well, that’s probably how it started, but it’s turned into an attempt to solve a fairly serious problem: Namely, how the hell do we keep feeding growing human populations while trying to limit the impact on the environment? The answer to this question, from a protein perspective, is eating bugs. Most people, however, will not eat bugs in their bug-like form, so you have to get a little… creative.
Namely, you grind up the mealworms, isolate the necessary protein, and form it into tofu-like blocks. To be fair, the process sounds gross but you can’t argue with the results; it’s got as much protein as an egg and more omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. And the recipes do look pretty good.
All that said, though, you’re asking people to eat ground-up worms. That’s going to be something of a hard sell. We dared Burnsy to eat it, a man who will gamble his colon on the entire Taco Bell breakfast menu, and he straight-up refused. Still, the team might get their shot: They’re entering the product in a competition to win seed funding for turning it into a consumer product.