“What’s for tea?”
This is, it’s safe to say, a question asked every evening up and down the UK by a multitude of kids, their tummies rumbling after a busy day.
Answer “beefburgers”, and unless they’re vegetarian, they’ll probably chow down with delight and polish off the lot before asking for seconds. But answer “insects” and you’re likely to see an altogether different reaction. “Ewww, disgusting! That’s so freaky!”
But let’s look closer; what’s actually freaky in this equation? Insects form a part of the diet of over two billion people, and over half of the planet’s population is familiar with them as a snack. Perhaps we’re the freaky ones if we turn up our noses at them?
And what’s more disgusting: chewing the ‘mechanically recovered’ innards (yes: lips, bogies, blood vessels and ground-down, sieved carcasses) of GM grain-stuffed, antibiotic-injected, greenhouse gas-emitting cows – or choosing something clean that consumes only vegetables and converts its food into protein with over twenty times more efficiency and a tiny fraction of the carbon footprint and land use of their bovine counterparts?
There are nearly 2,000 edible types of insects. They put rabbits to shame with their speed of reproduction, they produce body mass with incredible speed, and there are 40 tons of them for every human on the planet. So with land scarce, oceans overfished and food production needing to double to cater for the 9 billion humans Earth will host by the year 2050, what are we waiting for? Why aren’t we all crunching crickets and munching mealworms?
Well, there’s the ‘yuck’ factor, for a start. You may well be reading this with your features scrunched into a grimace, and the thought “No way, never!” running through your head.
You may associate insects with dirtiness, despite them actually being very clean creatures. You may have been bitten and annoyed by them on a Mediterranean getaway, or mentally scarred by having them flicked at you by a pesky older brother, or unnerved seeing their 20-foot-tall fictional counterparts wreaking havoc in cheesy Hollywood films. A couple of the team here at Healthy Supplies refused point-blank to even nibble a feeler when we passed round a packet of grasshoppers the other day!
But ultimately, many of us probably aren’t actually going to be around in the year 2050. The real key to us realising the potential of insects as a food source is educating younger generations – or indeed, letting them educate us. In Thailand, kids come running for fried grasshoppers and pandan leaves; in neighbouring Cambodia they go nuts for grilled tarantula with soy sauce. And with the vast means of food production technology available to us in the West, we have no excuse not to start experimenting with this protein-rich, super-healthy ingredient.
So how can we start changing our attitudes towards entomophagy (the eating of insects)? For a start, we might think about stopping calling them “insects” when talking of them as food, and thereby break any negative associations people may have. A small measure, perhaps, but you won’t find anyone telling you they’re going out for a pig chow mein or a sliced cow sandwich, and it could be psychologically helpful if we came up with a different name.
So I put ‘entomophagy’ into an internet anagram generator, and one of the results was ‘mega typhoon’. “Kids, come in for your mega typhoon!” Now that’s pretty cool.
Secondly, there’s a lot you can do with insects. You can grind them to a powder and turn this into pasta and eat it just like you would normal wheat pasta, only benefiting from about six times the protein. You can make burgers or falafel-type bites. You can use it as flour in a cake, only without most of the carbs. You can make fantastic crisps out of it, and not have to feel guilty about ‘empty calories’ afterwards.
Gym-goers and body-builders can whizz up grasshopper powder with milk and blueberries for a body-replenishing, restorative, muscle-enhancing smoothie – and with some grasshoppers containing 75% protein, this is a level comparable to pea protein powder, which is recognised as one of the most protein-rich natural powders out there. And all this is before you take into account insects’ abundance of minerals and good fats.
Forward thinking companies such as Grub and Crobar have already launched some very well-received products – both delicately-spiced whole insects for snacking, and energy bars made with insect flour and flavoured with goodies such as freeze-dried raspberries and cacao nibs. More companies are following in their wake with a dizzying array of inventive and super-tasty insect products.
Thirdly, these edible critters are the eco-friendly choice for the canny kid of the future. Not only are they almost completely free of the intensely damaging carbon footprint of more traditional livestock, but also if we switch to eating insects instead of other meat, those canny kids may well find the land freed up by the collapse of livestock farming could be used to build affordable homes for them and their families. And for the livestock still around, insects would make a very economical and efficient food source. Plus, of course, we’re going to need someone to run all the insect farms!
Finally, what better time to bite the bullet and try a few insects than Hallowe’en? We double dare you! It’s fast approaching, so why not glaze some mealworms with honey and put them atop a cupcake. Lob some locusts into some squid-ink pasta for a devilish dish. And to really turn the tables, hand out some bugs to the scarily-dressed kids who call round your house on Hallowe’en night – they won’t be able to tell if it’s a trick or a treat!
