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Why not eat insects?

Key word definition

Entomophagy - The practice of eating insects

In May 2013, the United Nations organisation for Food and Agriculture (FAO) urged people to start eating insects as an alternative to meat. People have generally associated eating insects with survival reality TV shows, such as Im a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here! However, the concept of entomophagy has recently become of global interest as new ways are sought to provide protein for the ever increasing human population, in ways that minimize habitat clearance for agriculture.

Energy flow in food chains

Due to the second law of thermodynamics, the conversion through trophic levels in the food chain is inefficient, as a lot of the energy is lost through respiration and waste production. Food systems that depend on crops are more energy efficient than those that rely on livestock: this is because the food harvested is from a lower trophic level. Producers are at the start of the food chain and contain a greater proportion of the suns energy compared to the subsequent trophic levels. If consumers are involved in the food production system, ideally they need to be at a low trophic level (e.g. primary consumers) and from a group that does not waste too much of the available energy. In aquatic systems the scenario is a bit different. The energy conversion is more efficient than in terrestrial systems as the fish are cold blooded. Nevertheless most of the food eaten from water is from the highest trophic levels, where the storage is much smaller. In addition, aquatic food systems have the problem of the initial fixing of available solar energy on the primary producers, as it tends to be less efficient due to the absorption and reflection of light by water.

There are 1.4 billion insects per person around the world, which means we can sustainably eat them without the fear of the reduction of the population. Moreover there is a common misconception that insects are dirty and dangerous, yet less than 0.1% of them are harmful, and about 5 million known species of insects are used as a food source. Insects are a very good protein resource. Their protein content is similar to fish, beef and pork, but insects have more unsaturated fatty acids. However the biggest benefit of insects is their efficiency, as they are placed very low in the food chain as herbivores and are cold-blooded. Moreover they eat considerably less than any other animal to get 1 kilogram of edible products. The table on the next page compares the number of kilograms of feed needed to feed a cricket, a chicken, a pig and a cow for 1kg of edible food.

The number of kilograms of feed needed to produce 1kg of edible food

Cricket

2.1

Chicken

4.5

Pork

9.1

Beef

25

Furthermore, feed ingredients for livestock and aquaculture are becoming too expensive. Insects have the power to transform organic waste into high value protein, as they can even grow in manure.

In addition, chicken and cows are warm-blooded animals which move throughout the entire day. This causes them to lose a lot of energy through respiration and excretion, leading them to be considerably less efficient then insects. Fish are in a similar situation. Fish are cold-blooded animals, yet humans prefer to eat the species in the top trophic levels. These species are not energy efficient as they have lost a lot of it through the food chain.

What insects can we eat?

Not only are insects more energy efficient than meat, but they also have a high nutritional value. For example, it was estimated that an average grasshopper contained 20.6 grams of protein, 35.2 milligrams of calcium and 5 milligrams of iron. Making insects part of the diet could be particularly beneficial in less economically developed countries that have experienced high rates of malnourishment in past

years. This is because they are much more energy-, and therefore cost-effective, than producing meat. For example, it is estimated that it requires 12 times fewer inputs to produce the same amount of insect compared with beef.

For dozens of countries around the globe, insects have become an important part of peoples diets. For example, in Thailand many street markets sell freshly cooked insects to tourists and local people (photos left and above). Insects cooked and eaten in many of Thailands markets include crickets, grasshoppers, cockroaches, water beetles, bamboo worms and ant eggs. These unusual snacks have proved to be extremely popular with tourists from both other parts of Asia and the western world. However, in recent years the drying up of paddy fields has meant the Thai population have become more reliant on small-scale insect farming.

Top 6 edible insects!

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Beetles: Beetles are the most popular of edible insects due to the fact that they are easily found in a woodland ecosystem. Beetles are also very rich in protein.

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Butterflies: Despite their beautiful appearance, many people in Latin America eat butterflies due to their high content of protein and iron.

3

Bees: Although we commonly associate bees with honey, some indigenous people eat them in their larval form and claim they taste similar to peanuts and other salty snacks.

4

Grasshoppers, crickets and cockroaches: Grasshoppers form a very important part of Thai cuisine as they are easy to catch and have a neutral flavor.

5

Mosquitos and flies: Although Mosquitos are feared by many tropical populations, they are a great food source as they take on the flavour of their host e.g. flies swarmed around a lake would have a fishy flavor.

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Ants: Ants are very rich in protein and low in carbohydrates. However, you would need to eat a lot of ants to meet your daily protein allowance (approx. 100,000 ants).

Are there any dangers of eating insects?

Due to their creepy-crawly nature most people feel anxious by the prospect of eating insects. However, as knowledge of nutrition has improved, scientists have discovered that there are hundreds of insects that we could eat as a part of our daily diet without any adverse effects on humans. Despite this scientific claim, many people around the globe are still hesitant to eat insects due to the potential dangers of pesticides and the bioaccumulation of toxins through the food chain.

Insect recipes and restaurants

As discussed above, insects are eaten around the world as a main source of protein. Insect eating is seen in South America, Africa, and other areas of South East Asia as well as Thailand.

As time goes by people have an increasing tendency to want to experience eastern cultures, this alongside rising meat prices has led people to want to try out cheaper more efficient proteins. Insects are an ideal food of the future according to a report by the United Nations on Food and Agricultural Cultivation.

There are over 200 farmed types of insects which all are comprised in different meals; however, it will take a while for insects to be introduced into western cuisine. This could be similar to the case of sushi a couple of decades ago, which was slow to take off the in the West: when people saw its benefits and tried it out they found it more palatable and sales rapidly grew.

Different insects can be used in all sorts of meals like light snacks such as dry roasted crickets:

1. Season the crickets with desired seasoning

1. Place in an a preheated oven at 200C for 60 minutes

1. Remove when dry enough to crush with pressure

1. Rub between fingers to remove legs and antennae

1. Season with salt or make it sweet and salty by pasting on caramelised sugar.

Or maybe even as an addition to pastry or bread.

1. Roast half a bowl of crickets

1. Break of legs and antenna by rolling between fingers

1. Crush on a hard surface until the size of a grain of rice

1. Mix into flower

1. Make dough or pastry

Or maybe even add a protein to your pizza?

1. Add olive oil, sea salt, pepper and ricotta cheese to the pizza dough

2. Add steamed seasonal vegetables

3. Fry the cicadas in butter with garlic, salt and red pepper and add to the pizza as topping.

4. Bake the pizza in an oven for 8 to 10 minutes.

If you fancy some of these edible insects, restaurants in the USA have become more and more successful, especially in New York. The takeaway restaurant BugOut NYC has seen queues stretching around corners to wait for the signature dishes of herb-fried dragonflies and melt-in-your-mouth butter caterpillars.

Can insects help feed the world?

Chironomus riparius, also known as the Harlequin fly, is a species of non-biting midge common in North America and Europe, particularly around lakes and other aquatic/semi-aquatic environments. Dominant in polluted waters, they are adapted to survive in virtually anoxic (severely oxygen-deficient) conditions and are often used in toxicity tests.

The species is a good candidate for a possible future protein source for several reasons:

their resilience to tough conditions suggests that, in a farming context, they would require little maintenance

they are ectothermic (cold blooded) and occupy low trophic levels, and so are far more energy efficient than endothermic (warm-blooded) organisms, such as cattle, because less energy is lost through life processes like respiration and excretion

they are detritivores (organisms which ingest non-living organic material, e.g. rotting wood) and effectively act as recyclers in an ecosystem: if they were raised as a source of protein they could be fed on organic waste products, such as trea