Entomophagy: A New Meaning To “Tasty Grub”
This article was written by a guest contributor, Xander Balwit. Read about Xander here.
The backyard was my childhood sanctuary. Enormous cherry, walnut, and willow trees bowered over a chaotic double-lot wild with lemon balm and unmowed grass. My siblings and I formed a civilization back there, building shoddy houses and digging treacherously-placed holes. There, I developed an intractable love of insects. Sprawling next to a rotting beam, my dad and I would snap up honey pot ants as they emerged from the wet bark and nibble on their abdomens, sampling the sweet substance that select workers known as “repletes” generate in their role as food storage for the colony. And though I didn’t realize it then, my dad and I were engaging in entomophagy.
Entomophagy, the practice of consuming insects, has accompanied us throughout the course of our evolution. Fossilized human feces containing the chitinous skeletons of insects confirm this gastric history. Even Aristotle, who didn’t hold larvae-bearing insects in particularly high-esteem, wrote in Historia Animālium about ways to capture and cook cicadas. While in the West, it may appear that only this seldom-mentioned and little-known history endures, entomophagy remains a robust dietary practice, with around 2,000 species of insects eaten globally by some 2 billion people.
As the catastrophic effects of climate change are felt more acutely, and as the pandemic continues to expose the fragility of our agricultural system, questions surrounding food security and environmental sustainability are growing even more urgent. It is time for Westerners to re-evaluate their perception of entomophagy, and learn how eating insects can improve food systems that are unsustainable and ecologically devastating.
The environmental benefits of eating insects
Black Solider Fly grubs that Xander is raising in her backyard.
The United Nations estimates that by 2050 the global population will reach 9 billion people. With the population growing by 70 million people a year, the strain on the earth’s environment and natural resources is intensifying. The rampant acceleration of urbanization encroaches on farmland and renders the current model of livestock production untenable. Easily one of the most ecologically harmful of all anthropogenic activities, livestock production uses 70% of the world’s agricultural surface area and accounts for 72-78% of total agricultural emissions and 18% of global human-induced emissions. These numbers are increasing, as a higher intake of red meat and poultry correlate with economic development. Such reliance on livestock-derived protein will prove ecologically calamitous unless it can be curtailed by the adoption of a more sustainable protein source.
An alternative protein is precisely what insects offer, and proponents of entomophagy cite its favorable ecological impact compared to that of animal protein production. Insect fecundity and efficiency make them a near-perfect crop for farming. Insects are also cold-blooded, and thus require less energy to warm their bodies, which means that they are marvelously efficient at converting their food-intake into body mass. For example, cows consume 8g of food mass per gram of weight gained, whereas insects can require less than 2g.
Not only can an insect convert feed to protein 12 times more efficiently than cattle, but 80–100% of their body mass is commonly consumed. I remember sitting in steak and barbeque restaurants studying the ubiquitous diagram of a hormone-engorged cow, body neatly divided into cuts: brisket, chuck, sirloin, and so forth. I now realize such sterilized portrayals deceive us as we consume only 40% of the cow.
Insects are also able to transform a wide range of organic material into edible insect biomass. It is estimated that 1.3 tonnes of food are wasted every year. Food-waste could be fed to insects, minimizing side-stream waste. This is referred to as a “circular economy,” an economic system that maintains values of waste through its use and reuse. Insects can upgrade the value of these side-streams by converting the waste into edible biomass, providing food for humans and/or their livestock, a consummate example of a circular economy, lucrative, utilitarian, and environmentally beneficial.
A grub a day…
In addition to their favorable environmental impact, entomophagous diets offer numerous health benefits. Research shows that insects are not only a good source of protein, but also an excellent source of healthy fats and micronutrients. Entomophagous diets could address malnutrition, anemia, and other micronutrient deficiencies. According to UNICEF, worldwide, almost half of all deaths among children under 5 are a result of malnutrition, with most of these deaths occurring in Asia and Africa. The high-fat content of insects could address the problem of energy deficiency that accompanies malnutrition. For example, the larvae of the African palm weevil, considered a delicacy in Nigeria, has a dry-weight lipid content of 67%, higher than the amount found in most conventional animal protein sources such as beef, chicken, egg, and milk. And because insects are most frequently consumed in their larval stage before their chitinous exoskeletons have had time to develop, their nutrients are remarkably easy to digest. On average, insects are more digestible than lentils and nuts.
Research into the eating of insects reveals another interesting health-related discovery—that insects are highly unlikely to transmit livestock diseases because they are much more taxonomically distant from humans than conventional livestock. The CDC recognizes the recent COVID-19 pandemic as one such zoonotic disease. The origin of this outbreak is believed to be a wet market in China, where humans, wildlife, and poorly regulated meat come into close contact with one another. Insect farming could mitigate the reliance on markets such as these, reducing exposure to zoonotic pathogens.
Consumer attitudes and perceptions
That there are such clear health and environmental advantages of entomophagy and yet the practice is not more popular around the world suggest that something else is hindering its adoption. It should come as no surprise that consumer attitudes, and perceptions about insects in general, present significant obstacles. These consumer attitudes and perceptions vary from country to country, but for the people who are hesitant or resistant to eating insects, disgust is typically cited as the cardinal reason. The term used by researchers for this food-related disgust is “neophobia,” the human disinclination to try unfamiliar foods, particularly if those foods are of animal origin. It appears that even though the FDA allows for peanut butter to contain 30 insect fragments for every hundred grams, most people would not knowingly choose to eat insects.
Behavioral scientists studying entomophagy are curious as to whether the revulsion people feel towards eating insects is hard-wired or acquired through cultural conditioning. If the disgust is selective, there is a better chance that it could be rationally addressed than if the disgust is truly hard-wired. Previous research establishes that food preferences have a large sociocultural component. In the cases of countries where entomophagy is not common practice, disgust-related neophobia may be a consequence of lack of exposure.
Limited exposure to entomophagy correlates with a cursory understanding of insects in general. In the United States, most people boast a near-complete ignorance of insects. This lack of knowledge about insects contributes to rampant misconceptions, such as equating insects with spiders, lizards, frogs, and other insect-like creatures, a group known as “folk category insects.” Westerners’ fear of folk category insects applies to their mere presence and visual appearance, and not only to their consumption. Scientists are hopeful that by educating people about insects, the fear of folk category insects will diminish, thus increasing the likelihood of entomophagy’s success.
Some of our lack of familiarity with insects is no fault of our own. Entomologist Julie Lesnik writes that “with the majority of both Canada and Europe residing past the 45th parallel, the environments there include strong seasonality and cold winters which are not habitats rich in insect fauna, and thus contain few large or swarming insect species.” This has certainly been my experience growing up in the North-Western United States. Of course, this geographical rarity has been exacerbated by global warming. The swallowtail butterflies that used to speckle the summer months have grown scarce, as have the honey pot ants I grew up savoring with my dad. The orb-weaving spiders and carpenter ants with which most North Westerners are acquainted do not have physiques that one would immediately suspect were scrumptious.
Tropical zones are home to a larger variety of insects, and where insects are plentiful, eating them may be a matter of practicality. There is evidence that entomophagy can address the overpopulation of certain insects in tropical zones. The government of Thailand urged the population to consume locusts during a period of notoriously bad locust plagues in the late 1970s. A similar thing happened in 2004 in Australia, in which locusts were given the palatable nickname “Sky Prawn.”
Attitudinal barriers may have a geopolitical basis as well. Julie Lesnik studies how insect food avoidance in the United States relates to its colonial and imperial history. Lesnik argues that “Cultural disdain for insects in the United States can be traced to historical attitudes from colonial settlers and monocropping industrial farmers...” Between 1790 and 1860, the population in the United States exploded, and in order to keep up with the demand for food, machinery was invented to streamline the agriculture processes that specialized in harvesting single crops on a massive scale. As Americans began to adopt monocropping they came to consider multi-species farming primitive. Lesnik writes that “Farmers whose livelihoods depended on the success of a single crop could be financially devastated by an insect attack.” This historical view of insects as pests may be the basis for why many Americans find insects so loathsome.
As an increasing number of progressively inclined Americans seek to mitigate the damage done by colonialism, Western imperialism, and corporate capitalism, perhaps the discovery that entomophagous diets were endemic to pre-colonized America will prove to be a compelling reason to bring back the tradition. Indigenous communities living in pre-colonial North America ate numerous species of insects. The honey pot ants that my dad and I enjoyed in the backyard used to be regularly consumed by Native Americans residing in the southwest U.S. and parts of Mexico. These ants were called “nequacatl” and were eaten straight or fermented for alcoholic beverages. As American settlers pushed indigenous communities northwest, they separated them from the insects that made up a good portion of their diet. That insects are no longer eaten is a result of continued marginalization and suppression of indigenous heritage.
Culinary brilliance: helping insect-containing foods become a dietary staple
Despite knowing everything that I know about the evils of the meat industry, and despite the intellectual gymnastics I do to address my moral inconsistency, I still eat meat. Why? Because I find it delicious. And this gets at another important issue to face when it comes to entomophagy, and that is that the choice to eat insects will ultimately be contingent on palatability. Research into ethical consumerism shows that the sensory aspects of food maintain importance, regardless of consumers’ commitment to sustainability and animal welfare. Stressing the nutritional or environmental benefits of eating insects will not ultimately be enough to guilt people into eating insects. To eat insects, we will have to enjoy them.
This may seem like a tall order, but Americans went from believing that feeding lobster to prisoners was a cruel and unusual punishment, to serving it in the elite restaurants patronized by society’s upper-crust. The same can be said of sushi. When sushi was first introduced in the United States, Americans were disgusted by eating raw fish, but now it is enjoyed in over 4,000 restaurants across the country. Culture and community may dictate food preferences, but tastes shift over time.
Pop-up dinners and culinary events surrounding edible insects attract a great deal of positive attention. Tasting sessions led by experts at food fairs, schools, museums, and other special events would help introduce Westerners to the idea of eating insects. The hope is that culinary sophistication and gastronomic interest in entomophagy can elevate the eating of insects from something that is merely palatable, to something that is truly delectable. If people consider insects a delicacy then it is more likely that they can become a dietary staple. It has also been observed that when insects are cooked, disgust reactions are not as strong.
Cooking insects would provide people with the opportunity to use the traditional flavors and seasonings of their choice to enhance their eating experience. In Culinary Themes and Variations biologists Paul and Elizabeth Rozin wrote that “most of the world’s people seem to belong to well-marked cuisine groups that create culinary products with distinctive and describable gustatory themes.” People are generally unwilling to abandon these familiar gustatory themes, so with respect to the introduction of a new food group, such as insects, it would be wise to promote insects as something that could fit into the already established and beloved flavors and dishes of the consumer’s heritage. Cheeto dusted Lepidoptera or Barbecued Coleoptera do not sound half bad.
On our way to entompageous diets
A thoughtful pedagogy and widespread education, starting with the young, whose tastes are more malleable, can help to reprogram the way that people think about eating insects. For better or for worse, the Western cultural standard is enormously persuasive, and if the Western perception of entomophagy can be ameliorated, it will impact the eating of insects across the globe.
As evinced by the old dictum “you are what you eat,” across cultures, we believe that at some level the food that we eat becomes part of us. As a food source, insects are healthy, low maintenance, and sustainable. If by eating them human beings could acquire similar qualities, we should consider ourselves lucky. What is more, insects have no reservations when it comes to devouring us. As many as 500 species of fly may be involved in the decomposition of a human cadaver. Why should we wait for the necrophages to get the last word? Entomophagy has an unprecedented ability to change the world, and the question that remains is whether we can let go of our irrational fears and learned disgust to actualize that potential.
This article was written by a guest contributor, Xander Balwit. Read about Xander here.
