Noma chef says we should all be eating like ants

Ants stick to the real deal when it comes to food. (iStock)

The founder and executive chef of the world’s best restaurant thinks humans should take their dining cues from an ancient yet highly advanced insect specie: the ant.

René Redzepi, the chef behind the world renowned Danish eatery Noma, has been championing the eating of  insects as a sustainable protein for years. But now he says we should act like them.

On Tuesday, Redzepi posted a picture on Twitter with three samples of butter and butter-like spreads including reduced fat and margarine.

In the picture, the ants have a clear favorite and have all flocked to the “natural sample” butter.

“I relate to ants,” the chef writes above the telling picture.

Butter has been vilified for decades, and the debate has taken many forms. Margarine took off  in the 1970s and 1980s as a “healthier” alternative but has since become less popular with the scientific discovery that cholesterol-heavy trans fats in the spread are actually worse for you than the real thing. Now, with the recent paleo-diet obsession, natural, less-processed foods are back in favor.

Redzepi probably isn’t arguing that we use butter like the pre-scandal Paula Deen, but his message echoes that of authors like Michael Pollan who champion “real food” over unpronounceable substitutes in over processed edibles. It also eschews the logic of many diet fads that promise crazy claims with fake food.

This comes as Noma is going through transformation from a traditional restaurant to an urban farm. The old Noma will be shuttered at the end of next year and Redzepi plans to reopen with a menu focused on rotating seasonal food.

And he has found at least one celebrity chef to jump on his eat-like-ants agenda,-- “Bizarre Foods” host Andrew Zimmern.

“Bravo. The natural world tells us all we need to know,” the Travel Channel host said in a Retweet.