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Anyone hoping to spice up their gluten-free diet need look only at the billions of beady-eyed, shrimp-size cicadas currently emerging from the ground in the eastern United States.
"They definitely would be gluten free ... they do not feed on wheat," said Gene Kritsky, a biologist and cicada expert at the College of Mount St. Joseph in Cincinnati, Ohio. The bugs are also high in protein, low in fat, and low in carbohydrates, he added. (Related: "Cicadas as Food: Summer's Low-Fat Snack.")
Members of Brood II, one of the largest groups of periodical cicadas, have been crawling out of the ground and carpeting trees from North Carolina to Connecticut since early May. By July, they will be gone—not to be heard from again for 17 years.
Cicadas spend most of their lives underground sucking sap from tree roots. The plant-based diet gives them a green, asparagus-like flavor, especially when eaten raw or boiled, according to Kristky, who prefers his Brood II bugs blanched and tossed into a leafy green salad like chunks of chicken.
Gross? Not really, said Jenna Jadin, an entomologist who wrote the online cookbook Cicada-Licious: Cooking and Enjoying Periodical Cicada in 2004 while a graduate student at the University of Maryland in College Park.
She notes in her book that crawfish, lobster, crab, and shrimp are part of the same biological phylum—arthropods—as insects. "So popping a big juicy beetle, cricket, or cicada into your mouth is only a step away," Jadin writes.
You lucky rascals out on the East Coast! We don't have that opportunity here. We only have relatively low populations of regular (annual) cicadas here, and they won't begin showing up for another month or so. It would be tough to try to round up enough of them to make a decent meal, so I will probably never know just how tasty they really are.
Tex
It is suspected that some of the hardest material known to science can be found in the skulls of GI specialists who insist that diet has nothing to do with the treatment of microscopic colitis.
I remember when I was a flight attendant and was at DFW, there must have been the cicada equivalent hatching of big black crickets! You couldn't walk on the tarmack without stepping on one. Yuck!
During the last cicada invasion, my neighbor froze them as he caught them, then sauteed them with garlic. He said they tasted like mini soft shell crabs.
He says you have to get them as they're molting...
Okay, remember I am the fool who makes chicken broth from chicken feet. I am really grossed out thinking about eating crunchy insects. I love seafood, but not cicadas. I suppose if I were starving...nope, couldn't do it, I don't think.
Jane
Diagnosed with Lymphocytic Colitis 12/19/12
"When it gets dark enough,you can see the stars."
Charles A. Beard
We only have relatively low populations of regular (annual) cicadas here, and they won't begin showing up for another month or so. It would be tough to try to round up enough of them to make a decent meal, so I will probably never know just how tasty they really are. 
