The Case for Eating Insects
Listen to our interview with Arnold van Huis here.
Van Huis is an entomologist at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, and he was our guest in this Science Forum discussion.
Crickets, dung beetles and giant ants may not be your idea of an ideal meal, but millions of people around the world rely on insects for food. Crickets are so popular in Thailand that people farm the critters. Big-bottomed ants are a delicacy in Colombia. (Check out our story by reporter John Otis here.)
Van Huis argues that people in developed countries should also make insects a regular part of their diet. Insects are nutritious, inexpensive and environmentally sustainable.
So, would you consider cricket pad thai for dinner if it helped the environment? Join the conversation!
In the late 1990s, van Huis took a three-month trip across Africa to interview people about edible insects. He found people reluctant to talk. They were worried that a Westerner like him would ridicule their eating habits as primitive and barbaric.
In fact, many Westerners do consider the practice repulsive, but van Huis calls that a misconception. ”We think that people eat insects [just] because they are hungry, which is complete nonsense!” he says. “They eat insects because they really like it.”
Insects can also be an important source of nutrition. They’re easily available and inexpensive to rear. And as van Huis and his colleagues showed in a recent study, insects emit lower amounts of greenhouse gases than conventional livestock, like cattle, pigs and chickens.
Van Huis worries that people in developing countries may give up eating insects to adopt the meat-heavy diets of developed countries. That, he says, could worsen food security and environmental problems.
The U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) is promoting edible insects as a valuable source of income and a solution to food shortages in developing countries. (See this 2004 report about insects being an important component of African diets.) Van Huis is advising the FAO in its efforts.
Learn about insect delicacies in Laos in the video.
Colombian dinner: Big-butt ants:
Additional Resources:
The FAO held a recent workshop on insect farming in Laos.
‘The Six-Legged Meal of the Future,’ The Wall Street Journal.
The FAO’s Edible Insect Programmes.
‘Bugs as Food: Humans Bite Back,’ National Geographic.
Mealworm french fries, Banana worm bread, Chocolate Chirp Cookies and more recpies.
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The world’s population is growing, consumers are becoming more demanding, and the need for alternative protein sources (other than “meat” from livestock) is urgent. Eating insects can provide a solution. Insects offer high quality food with a much lower environmental impact than conventional livestock.
Most people in tropical countries are used to having insects on the menu. Will consumers in the U.S. and other developed countries make the switch? What would it take to get you to eat insects? I look forward to hearing your thoughts!
I’ve been interested in this topic for years. People will eat insects if it becomes a pocketbook issue. Marketing is the key. One marketing idea that might work is to get a celebrity endorsement. First you have to get the celebrity to eat insects. I’m a retired agriculturalist and have given serious thought to raising insects. I’d like to work for someone in the business already if possible. Always learn on someone else’s money. I think that this is an idea who’s time has come. There’s a professor at Iowa State Univ. who has done research in this field. I plan to contact him. How do I contact you?
Thanks for being on the forum.
R Libby
I have found that in smaller animals like insects, the animal’s diet often plays a large role in how they taste. I feed my fish a variety of bugs, so I’ve tasted many, and I find that farm-raised crickets, who are fed nothing but oatmeal, have an outstanding flavor, quite similar to garam masala. However, I have eaten wild crickets and find that they don’t taste anything similar, despite being the same species. I would like to know what your guest’s thoughts are on this, and what the advantages would be for a human for eating something like these crickets versus just eating the oatmeal?
I look forward to your input
Even to-day I talked to the owner of an insect rearing company. He told me that you can influence the taste of insects a lot by providing them with different types of feed. Insects convert carbohydrates into protein. Oatmeal or crickets, vegetarian or carnivore, does not matter as long as you balance your diet.
Regardless of what a good idea it might be (and I do think it indeed is a good idea), I’m skeptical that we can alter a Western diet to include insects or to significantly halt the pace at which non-Western diets are moving away from eating insects. However, I’m wondering whether insect protein can be used to enrich foods other than human food, such as pet food or fish or other animal food. Perhaps by replacing fish or shellfish protein with insect protein, it will take some of the pressure off of the fish and shellfish populations.
Thoughts?
Absolutely. For example the Black Soldier Fly can be reared on manure and the larvae can be used as fish feed. In this way you reduce environmental contamination of manure and at the same time produce a high quality product containing 50% protein as fish feed. Animal and fish feed is becoming increasingly expensive due to ingredients becoming expensive (soya) or scarce (fish meal or fish oil). So at the moment insects as fish and animal feed are in the spotlight.
Dr Van Huis, I am currently in my third year of medical school, but I became interested in this topic 4 years ago while working on my undergraduate biology degree. My research involved maintaining beetle populations and it occurred to me that insects are incredibly easy and efficient to produce, and that they could be a very important source of protein if people were to use them for food. I imagined searching the world to find the perfect species of insect. I thought that perhaps to overcome the stigma of eating insects, they could be instead be processed into some sort of protein product similar to tofu. This could be done on a large scale at “insect factories” and distributed, or it could be even be done on a small scale in poor villages etc. I would love to get in contact with you.
In most tropical countries insects are already eaten. It is only in western countries that we have a psychological problem. You are right that processing insects into something unrecognizable, either by grinding them or by extracting the proteins, would increase the acceptability. We call this the hot-dog or fish finger analogy. In tropical countries edible insects are mostly collected from nature. In countries like Thailand and Laos, edible insects (in particular crickets) are now reared as a kind of cottage industry.
To be sure,
I get the selling job with insects as far as a good way to keep protein in your body..
However, I must disagree with your guest. During the conceptual argument about which cultures accept or reject the eating of insects, he mentions that people he spoke with in the country of Laos, are very accepting of this practice and people he spoke with in the country of Africa are not so…
Well…..Africa is not a country, it is an entire continent, and that make me wonder with whom he spoke. There are many cultures in and of Africa that have made widsprend and legendary use of insects as sustenance.
Thanks!
Eric Bass
Hi Eric,
The World’s science reporter here. I also produced the interview with Arnold. He did mention in the interview that he has traveled to and spoken with people in 24 African countries about eating insects—its just that the segment didn’t make it into the final version because of time constraints.
Arnold, perhaps you can tell us more here about the African countries you visited and how the insect diets in those countries vary.
Thanks,
Rhitu
Hello Rhitu,
As a science piece don’t you think it was important to edit the piece to make clear that he traveled to 24 African countries and that Africa is not a country? As a science reporter please keep these sensitivities in mind for future pieces..
Hi Collins,
Thanks for your note. Obviously, we don’t want to perpetuate misinformation, but we’re sometimes bound by time constraints. As I say in my comment above, I couldn’t include the details of Arnold’s travels across Africa because of time: I only had about 4 mnts to work with.
I highly recommend you check out the text version of the story on this page (click ‘Continue Reading’ above the comments). All the information we missed in the audio version is included there.
Best,
Rhitu
In 1995 and 2000, I interviewed 308 persons from 27 countries in West, East and southern Africa. The interviews concentrated on the traditional, nutritional and medical uses of arthropods and their products as well as on their
role in religion, witchcraft, art, song, music, dance,
children’s games, mythology and literature. However, much of the discussion was about the eating of insects. The study is published in 2003 and you can find it on our website: http://www.ent.wur.nl/UK/Edible+insects/News+and+calendar/ under “Insects as food in sub-Saharan Africa”.
What issues of parasites must be considered when eating insects. Cooking?
Insects should be reared under hygienic conditions and the shelf life should be respected. We recommend always heating before eating. However, these are normal procedures for all food. Probably insect meat is less dangerous than conventional meat as insects (invertebrates) are further away from humans than vertebrates.
My lifelong concern with our future overpopulation has kept me interested in insects as food, and I have lived in countries where deep-fried grasshoppers, ants, and beetles were available. But I and, I fear, most Westerners won’t be able to face actually crunching such things, so can’t we develop some kind of ground, roasted insects that could be formed into patties or snacks or sauces?
I agree, a lot of people prefer a chicken filet over a drumstick. Not knowing what it has been before seems to help.
The case is a good one – it’s often difficult to NOT rear black soldier fly larvae on a livestock farm, and under the feed towers I’ve found them by the thousands ready to be fed to chickens, or perhaps dried and ground to be a feed supplement.
On the other hand, for me to actually take a handful as a snack myself, would require an inordinate level of suffering. Despite my many years appreciating, and doing research on various insects, few of them have ever impressed me as edible, they being mainly chitinous crunch and too small to shell like shrimp (I also can’t be bothered with shrimp!).
On the other hand population issues are a serious matter, and I am not reproducing, you can thank me for that!
Whether they are tasteful or not depends on the recipes. With creative seasoning you can get excellent results.
In Northeast Thailand, its has long been a tradition to collect and eat a variety of insects. Nowadays, special lamp traps are used to increase yields. Whilst very few overseas guests at the villa will try these, they form part of the staple local diet, are free, and full of protein!
One of our own favourites is in fact not the insect itself but the casing discarded by the Thai silkworm – we use the silk for producing traditional silk cloth, then eat the “by-product” which is delicious.
The aversion is surely just cultural: Thais generally find the idea of eating rabbit or lamb off-putting, but are happy to drink whisky with some crunchy critters, or to eat raw fermented pork or field mice. we would suggests a starter menu of fried grasshoppers: simply pretend you are eating popcorn!
Lamps are often used to collect insects, in particular termites (lamps above a tub with water). But also the edible grasshopper, Ruspolia differens, is collected traditionally by women and children from street lights in eastern Africa. In Uganda you find in the capital even upward shining very bright lights during the night used to collect the insects commercially.
The silkworm is indeed interesting because of the dual benefit: silk and food.
Having enjoyed termites in Cameroon when I worked for the Peace Corps Training Center in Ngaoundere, North Province, I am wholeheartedly in favor of these food sources for locals. It is natural to take what is falling from the sky and feed your family. No deforestation required. Termites were easily prepared and available.
In the US it may take some convincing starting at the level of farmer’s markets to reach the more educated families,and work its way down through markets to those who are seeing the healthier trends.
The only problem with harvesting from nature is that it is very seasonal. Termites will only come out during the first rains after the dry season. These are the winged ones, the reproductives, or the future queens and kings. Interestingly local people may trigger certain termite species to emerge by beating and drumming on the ground around the hill (simulating falling rain). However, soldier termites can be eaten throughout the year. To extract them from the mounds, women or children lower grass blades into opened shafts. In defence, the soldiers bite into the grass blades, which are then pulled out and the soldiers stripped into a container.
This discussion prompted a little thought experiment: Could I raise crickets at home to supplement a stir-fry now and then? It seemed easy until I got to the point of actually cooking them. Does one toss them in the skillet alive, or does one go through some other killing procedure first? (Freeze? Suffocate? Boil?) I’m curious about how the “slaughter” of culinary insects is ordinarily accomplished–and how it varies by species or recipe.
Thanks!
Elsa
We recommend to put them in the freezer. Insects are cold-blooded or poikilotherm which means that they adjust to the ambient environmental temperature. We do not know whether insects can experience pain. However, cooling them down is probably the best method.
Not only are insects nutritious, but they convert a larger share of their consumption into biomass, waste less of consumption as lost respiratory energy and are higher in protein per unit weight than beef.
And, in my experience they actually taste quite good!
How timely was this program as I have just finished reading the book, “The Art and Science of Eating Insects by Peter Menzel & Faith D’Aluisio. Very interesting with much humor. Oh that we all could be so adventurous. It very well could be that interest in this subject is on the increase. Thanks for the report.
Why do insects release more greenhouse gas than livestock?
I mean less
It is not generally true that insects emit less greenhouse gas than livestock. For example, representatives of cockroaches, termites, and scarab beetles produce CH4. This originates from bacterial fermentation by methanobacteriaceae in the hindgut. My PhD student Dennis Oonincx looked at several species, and among them the following edible insect species: mealworm, cricket and a locust species (easy to rear and can be used as a replacement of meat). They emit less CO2 equivalents and less NH3 than livestock. The complete story can be found in an open access journal: http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0014445. One of the reasons is also their high food conversion efficiency because they are cold-blooded.
I always wondered why we didn’t eat the locusts during the dust bowl days.
Now I’m wondering if eating wild-caught insects means risking insecticides.
If insects appear in large numbers than people start considering eating them, also in the USA. In the book of Jeff Lockwood entitled “The fate of the Rocky Mountain locust, Melanoplus spretus Walsh: implications for conservation biology” he mentions this on page 116-117. It is also true for the 13- and 17-year periodical mass emergence of the Magicicada in eastern North America, when they mass emerge. They are then also on the menu. In Yemen people have prevented the Plant Protection Service to spray pesticides on locusts as they prefer to eat them.
Well I am mostly a vegetarian with some fish in my diet. But I have to say after listening to the chef describe roasting the “big butt ants” I think that I would like to try them. Maybe my body is just craving some protein..but they do sound good.
It won’t be long before we must eat them. The ever growing population of the world will at some point force us to eat new things like insects.
I really enjoyed the discussion. Eating insects in many places of the world is already common practice. There, governments and entrepreneurs should exploit better the potential, promote the industry, and develop the entomophagy food chain. In Western countries, it may be difficult to change food habits. Then, the best option maybe to make insects unrecognizable by developing processing techniques such as milling or extracting proteins. With prices of ingredients rising the industry delivering feed for fish and livestock are looking for alternatives. Converting waste product to high protein insect-based feed is challenging. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has recently taken up the challenge of promoting the contribution of edible insects in assuring food security: http://www.fao.org/forestry/65422/en/.
Arnold
Any comments or suggestions for eating cabbage worms. They taste (not too surprisingly) like cooked cabbage.