The Atlantic
If you must eat them, go for air-fried.
Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images
Can you think of a good reason not to try a cicada, other than “ew”? I’ve posed this question to numerous friends and family, even my partner’s extended relatives, now that Brood X is swarming parts of the United States. Eating cicadas just makes sense, even for someone like me, who’s been a stalwart vegetarian since basically the last time they appeared, in 2004. They’re a bountiful and easy-to-forage protein source, they very likely won’t make you sick, and they’ve made appearances on some Native American and Chinese dinner tables for centuries. (Even Aristotle ate them.) Plenty of evidence suggests that they don’t feel pain the way other creatures do, if that kind of thing is important to you. I watched