Why eating more insects could save the world, and what you need to know before you do
Two billion people regularly eat insects - a good source of protein and much more efficient at converting food into feed than farmed animals. Now gourmets in the West are joining them. So here are the facts about bug feasts
Fancy a cheesy locust croquette or a hot bug burrito for lunch? Or how about a mealworm, grasshopper and cricket burger for dinner, followed by a serving of bamboo worm ice cream for dessert?
At the newly opened Grub Kitchen in Pembrokeshire in Britain, you can try these and other insect-based dishes prepared by award-winning chef Andy Holcroft and his team. Described as Britain’s first insect restaurant, Grub Kitchen aims to offer a healthier and more sustainable way of eating.
There are a few other restaurants in Europe and the United States that serve gourmet-prepared creepy crawlies: Toloache in New York, Noma in Copenhagen and Le Festin Nu in Paris. But eating insects is not a new trend. For millennia, people around the world have relied on insects as a primary source of protein.
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In countries such as Thailand and Mexico, fried beetles and worms have long been enjoyed as appetisers and snacks; in China, hot ant soup is commonly eaten during the cold winter months; and in the Australian bush, aborigines feast on an array of bugs, from cicadas and caterpillars to a kind of moth larvae called witchetty grub.
The practice of eating insects is called entomophagy. According to a 2013 Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations’ Forestry paper, it is estimated that insect eating is practised regularly by at least two billion people worldwide. The most commonly eaten insect groups are beetles, caterpillars, bees, wasps, ants, grasshoppers, locusts, crickets, cicadas, leaf and plant-hoppers, scale insects and true bugs, termites, dragonflies and flies.
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The fact that insects are typically eaten whole – exoskeleton, organs and all, even when ground into flour – makes them especially nutritious.