The Supply Side Problem with Insects as Food
Domesticated insects: bees buzzing around their hives. An illustration in one of the many Latin versions of the medieval handbook on health, the Tacuinum sanitatis, itself based on an 11th century Arabic medical treatise. Wikimedia Commons
Chatting this morning with an advocate for increasing insect consumption among humans, I was reminded that I have long thought there was a largely unacknowledged stumbling block to this worthy program.
No, it’s not the disgust that many Westerners feel when faced with a crispy fried grasshopper or the juicy body of a flying ant, though that is a problem.
Equally important is that most of the insects that humans currently consume are foraged. They are wild and appear only for a few days a year. Thus they are supplementary foods, nice little snacks, not a major source of protein.
To contribute much to the world protein supply, the insects have to breed (and breed steadily) in captivity. This is not impossible as the examples of bees and silkworms show.
The problem is that most of the species that humans have fastened on as agreeable additions to the diet have not yet been domesticated in this way.
For example, the crickets (Acheta domesticus) now being raised in captivity and ground to powder to add to energy bars and the like are not the tastiest of the insects. Indeed Mexican friends, and I agree with them, reject any comparison with their chapulines, which are grasshoppers of the genus Sphenarium.
So if I were promoting insects as food, I’d be fretting about supply, not just mulling over ways to increase demand.
Or have I missed something here?
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There’s a pretty large literature on insects as food. A good starting point is this FAO downloadable pamphlet.
Indeed. Of course you’re right! So where is that plague of locusts when we need it?! (I hear that locusts, like grasshoppers, taste just fine. I’ve had roasted and salted ‘hoppers. Crunchy and fun.)
I’ve tried locusts. I can’t say they taste like much. The texture is odd, sort of like chewing on shrimp shells. An insect exoskeleton is composed of similar proteins (such as chitin), so no surprise there.
As I said on twitter, I think these are two different modes that will continue to exist in parallel for a long time, much the same way that foraging/hunting remained a major source of food through the entire history of agriculture (basically up to the modern day, in some places and forms).
I agree. I think insect eating is likely to be around for a long time. What I was reacting to was the combination of ardent advocacy of insects as a major source of protein including in countries that have not traditionally eaten insects (“the West”) and the belief that the major barrier to wider acceptance was disgust.
The bonus with locusts, crickets, and grasshoppers is that they’re Kosher. (Leviticus 11:22). And I’ve had chapulines on trips to Mexico (don’t taste bad, but the legs and antennae get stuck between one’s teeth.)
The downside is that, in large numbers, they eat all your crops. And if you’re raising them in large numbers, given what they are capable of consuming, what would we feed them?
I think considering them emergency rations is valid — or, in places that are protein poor, a special bonus (in the Sahara, they call them desert shrimp). But I agree, they definitely aren’t practical as a regular and reliable protein. Better
Thanks for pointing out their ability to wipe out the harvest. One good reason to eat them before they ate what you were going to eat!
Don’t think the citizens of the West will ever eat insects, given they ate so bent on destroying just about anything that crawls. Can’t get them to eat offal and octopus.in Greece which has been part of the diet for thousands of years. The EU tried to outlaw serving lamb and goat offal dishes found in evrry typical taverna. Don’t think anyone here is listening. We go right on making and eating magiritsa soup at Easter. Imaginei trying to get them to approve bugs and such!
BTW, what do you think of sunthetic meats as source of protein. Would like to know more. Happy2019.
Interestingly, I think the synthetic meat and the insect issues are related in a way other than just alternative solutions to current animal protein. Insect flour and synthetic hamburger are heavily processed and distanced from the animal/laboratory source. I can’t rouse much enthusiasm for either of them as food.
I would guess that: if insects can be put into food in a way that is not in-your-face, like a flour as with grasshoppers, after reaching a production watershed they can be sold as a source of tasty nutritional food that is cheaper than other sources, a decent subset of consumers will relatively quickly overcome their biases to incorporate the food into their diet for economic reasons.
I don’t understand why there would be an issue with breeding most species of insects in captivity. With animals, I know domestication is a lengthy difficult process, but even with animals breeding experiments such as with the fox have demonstrated that domestic traits can be breed into animals. Not to denigrate insects, but I am under the impression that they generally have simpler behaviors than mammals, in re as such behavior would apply to the degree of domestication that would be needed. So what are reasons or causes for concern?
Let us say one were to build an insect farm of the type currently used for grasshoppers, but using the tastier grasshoppers. How would this be problematic? A lack of certain behavioral traits?
For other insects with other needs, an infrastructure would need to be designed and put into place. I can see how this could be problematic for ants, but for example toy ant farms already exist that could be the basis for a design to farm ants on an industrial scale. And breeding for needed domestic traits could be done if needed relatively quickly with insects given their short generational cycle.
So, I noted some concern in your article, but found myself uncertain on the specific origins of your concern. I’m better with examples than concepts, so maybe that is it. In any case, thanks for your thoughts!
On the economic incentive, at the moment most insect foods remain more expensive than beef or soy protein so there is some work to do there.
On breeding in captivity, my sense is that humans have been trying for millennia to bring get all plausible plants or animals to the point where they can be managed. If it were easy and profitable to farm insects, I have the feeling it would have been done. Yet in Mexico, for example, almost all the insects that are eaten are still foraged. Here’s a better-than-usual article on the problems of raising chapulines.