Eight legged eats: why don't we eat insects and why we might start

If the thought of eating insects makes your skin crawl, you’d actually be in the minority.

Entomophagy, or the use of insects as food, is commonplace across four continents and it’s reported that over half the world’s population eat them as part of their regular diet.

In Africa, Asia, Australia and Latin America people have been eating creepy crawlies for thousands of years. But the same question keeps bugging us:

Why don’t we eat insects in the West, and how long will it be before we catch up with the rest of the world?

It's Just Not Crickets

The sight of an insect on the dinner table would have most Europeans and North Americans hopping mad.

But this is understandable given the way public perception has been shaped over the years.

Agricultural communities, built on sowing grain and rearing cattle, grew to see insects as a pest that would ruin their crops and threaten their livelihood. Down the centuries, this distaste morphed into a belief that insects were inherently dirty and had no place in our sophisticated diets.

Let’s face it - with their unsightly antennae, bulbous black eyes, and multitude of legs, who in their right mind would eat such a thing?

Well, anyone who’s ever slurped the meat out of a lobster claw, or crunched the head off a tiger prawn might need to reconsider their answer…

The idea that insects cannot be eaten is something that we have learnt over time, but that doesn’t mean we can’t unlearn it.

After all, some of our most revered ancestors had a serious craving for critters. Roman aristocrats used to dine on beetle larvae grown on flour and wine, and lets not forget this passage from the Old Testament:

“You may eat insects that have jointed legs for hopping on the ground. Of these you may eat any kind of locust, katydid, cricket or grasshopper.”

Who needs milk and honey, when you can have whatever katydids are.

Crawl Before You Wok

With over 1400 different species of insect appearing on menus around the world, it makes us start to wonder - what have we been missing out on all these years?

During the Spring rains in Ghana, winged termites are caught and sautéed to be served as snacks. They are also commonly ground into a powder and made into a nutrient rich flour for bread.

In Cambodia, brined and deep fried tarantulas became hugely popular during the famines caused by the Khmer Rouge regime. Known for their crunchy exterior and sweet tasting meat, demand for this local delicacy continued long after the famine was over and are sold across the country to this day.

But arguably the most well known destination for edible arthropods is Thailand, with its market stalls filled with insects of all different shapes and sizes.

Locals and tourists flock to buy bags of these bugs - from salty deep-fried crickets (think corn nuts with legs!), to silkworms stir fried in soy sauce and kaffir leaves (think tofu with a head!).