Foods such as Jell-O, caramel apples and chocolate are pretty ordinary by themselves, but adding a special ingredient got one group of ISU students on national television.

The group was the Entomology Club, and the special ingredient was bugs.

The club members could be seen making insect-oriented foods on a segment of “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” Wednesday night on TBS. The show was about odd food and strange cooking.

“I thought the segment was lively,” said Gretchen Schultz, sophomore in entomology.

The episode with the Entomology Club’s segment will be re-broadcast Saturday morning at 8 on TBS.

Schultz said the show found out about the Entomology Club’s culinary insect delights through the Internet.

“One of the producers of the show wanted to find people who eat bugs,” said Schultz, who was president of the club at the time. “They did a search on the Internet, and they found the club’s Web site.”

After the producers got in touch with Schultz, they began working with the club to film the segment.

The TV crew came to Iowa State to tape the segment in early November.

Nathan Brockman, senior in entomology, said the experience was exciting.

“First the TV cameras came in, and then the reporters came,” he said. “It was really busy.”

“It was kind of chaotic,” agreed Jennifer Mueller, freshman in entomology. “There were tons of people, but it was also a lot of fun.”

Schultz said the camera crew spent about five hours filming the club and its insect treats. The segment on the show was about three to five minutes long.

“It was an awful lot of filming for just a little bit of time on the show,” Brockman said, “but I still thought it was great.”

Mueller said she thought no one would see the show, “but people came up to me the next day and said they saw me, so that was neat.”

The members of the club whipped up some of their favorite recipes for the show. Brockman said his favorite bug was the meal worm.

“You can dry roast them, and it’s just like eating popcorn,” he said. “It’s also OK to eat them while they’re still alive.” Brockman made meal worm caramel apples for the show.

Schultz also said her favorite was the meal worm.

“My favorite recipe is the meal worm Jell-O,” she said. “That’s what I made for the show. I like the taste, and it looks neat, too. It’s almost like looking through a magnifying glass at them.”

Schultz said she was pleased with the “Ripley’s” segment.

“I think it represented us well,” she said. “It was just one of the things we do in Entomology Club. We do several other things as well. It shows we’re active, and that we don’t just sit around studying bugs.”

Erica Simbro, current president of the Entomology Club, also liked the segment.

“I thought it was done very well,” said Simbro, sophomore in entomology, who helped organize the food for the segment but did not appear on air. “I was really proud of those guys.”