It has been a while.
What started as one missed week quickly turned into 2 blog-less months of writing up research, finishing my master’s degree, moving back home and trying to get a job to start paying back the 4 years of borrowed money. But this week I went back to Sheffield for my graduation and it made me realise just how much I miss science! So I decided enough was enough…
Minifeasts
It’s 11 o’clock, you’ve been working hard all morning and your stomach starts to grumble – you need a snack to go with your morning coffee. How does a cookie sound? Good, I Imagine. What do you fancy – chocolate chip, oat and raisin, creepy crawly?
No, you didn’t misread that. You really could tuck into a cookie made from ground-up insects, if you wish. Earlier this year designer Susana Soares worked alongside a team of food scientists and engineers to develop a 3D printer that makes cookies out of insect flour. The machine was part of the ‘Insects Au Gratin’ installation running at the Wellcome Collection in London in April this year, which explored the use of insects as a food source.
Seven billion, one hundred and sixty-five million, five hundred and twelve thousand and eight hundred and sixty-seven. That was the population of the world as of 8:59am this morning. Fast forward to 2050 and this is supposed to reach a staggering 9 billion! We are already struggling to feed the mouths we’ve got – so how exactly are we going to fill these 2 billion extra stomachs?
You might be thinking ‘why not just breed more cows?’ and sure, that’s one option but I’m afraid it’s really not that simple. Whilst animal agriculture does provide us with tasty meat, it also has an extremely bad effect on our planet. In total, greenhouse gas emissions from the livestock sector are higher than transportation. I’ll stop you there whilst you get the image of cows breaking wind out of your head. Gas emissions from agriculture are largely due to the farming techniques used by farmers, such as applying large amounts of fertilizers or using irrigation systems as well as the way animal waste is managed. (Whilst cows do produce the greenhouse gas methane as part of their digestion, I should mention that it’s actually mainly released through their mouths and not the other end! And although cows do belch a lot, they aren’t the only animals that suffer from excessive flatulence! In fact cows, alongside animals such as sheep, deer and giraffes, belong to a group of animals called ruminants. Ruminants have a special stomach with four compartments which helps them to digest the large about of plant material they eat. The down side is this results in the formation of methane, a potent greenhouse gas which is released into the atmosphere when the animals break wind!)
To reverse the environmental impact of livestock, experts believe we need to cut our meat consumption by half. That’s all well and good, but we’ll still want meat. We’ll still crave Sunday roasts, sausage and mash and a Big Mac. This is where insects could save the day. The EU hopes to produce a product from insects that can be used to replace meat in prepared foods such as lasagnes and sausages. However, this will not happen before a major change in our perceptions of insects as a food source.
Insects are not exactly what most people in the West would call ‘lunch’. Most people’s experience of eating insects will be limited to episodes of reality TV. We are spoilt with supermarkets stocked with a huge variety of meat – beef, chicken, lamb – I even had a kangaroo burger last month. I’ve seen ants in chocolate bars and various winged bugs in lollipops in department stores – gimmicks for the more adventurous snacker – but insects usually bring to mind thoughts of dirty, wriggly nasties, not a delicious teatime treat. How can we convince a nation of meat eaters to put aside their cultural sensitivities and swap their bacon butty for some grasshopper fries?
Maybe some nutritional facts will help. Four grasshoppers give you as much calcium as a glass of milk. Tarantulas, although not technically an insect, provide you with 10 times the amount of zinc you get from beef. Eating insects, or entomophagy to give it its proper name, might not be a bad idea. There are around 1900 species of edible insects, all full of essential nutrients you need to survive.
Many Eastern countries are already making use of these nutritional benefits. In fact, 2 billion people already eat insects as a regular part of their diet. My favourite example occurs in Thailand, the insect-eating capital of the world, where school children catch crickets at night that are cooked at school for lunch the next day! Can you imagine a class of 8-year-olds in this country settling down to a plateful of insects for school dinners?
Insects also make the perfect mini-livestock. They reproduce very quickly, producing lots of biomass – 1 cricket can have 100 babies in just a month! Insect-farming produces little greenhouse gases, so the carbon footprint is tiny compared to traditional livestock. They require little food and even less water and, being cold-blooded, they don’t waste energy keeping themselves warm. They could even reduce the need to use harmful pesticides to remove pests from crops – in the East removing unwanted insects that are damaging crops and selling them on as food is big business!
The benefits of eating insects cannot be denied. But don’t panic – insect burgers won’t be served any time soon. For one, we don’t know everything yet –allergic reactions are a possible hazard and use-by dates are causing some confusion. But, with the world population continuing to grow and grow, we might not be able to ignore this great untapped food resource in the future. Can you overcome your squeamish attitude in the name of filling 9 billion stomachs?
Guess what I know? 