Making a case for eating insects

Two billion people worldwide consume insects as part of their diet, and if you eat shrimp, you can almost count yourself as one of them.

That’s according to food expert  Prof. Johannes le Coutre. He leads UNSW’s food program, charting a course for the future of how and what we eat in hopes of meeting everyone’s nutrition needs.

“If you like to eat shrimps or prawns, you do eat and you do consume something which for biologists is known as Arthropods,” he says.

“Arthropods represent lifeforms either on land or in water that are surrounded by a chitin exoskeleton.

“And insects are exactly the same thing as they belong to the group of Arthropods. Biologically speaking, you're eating members of the same group, and there's really not much difference.”

Earlier this year, Singapore approved 16 insect species to eat as food, and places like Thailand and Mexico have embraced creepy crawlies in their cuisine for centuries.

Witjuti grubs, bogong moths and honey pot ants are known to be a traditional food source for Indigenous cultures in Australia.

But the “yuck factor” is still very present in modern Australia, Prof. le Coutre says, so telling people to jump straight to eating fried grasshopper might be a stretch.

“What we would need to rely on initially is good processing to make something like chips or anything like that, or just a seasoning for other meals to provide protein.”

Statistics about how badly the world deals with proper nutrition make a convincing argument for getting stuck into insects.

More than 730 million people go to sleep hungry, and 582 million people will be chronically undernourished by 2030 if current trends continue.

The global population is expected to grow to 10 billion by 2050, creating even more need to find more ways to feed people.

But insects alone can’t solve these problems, and Prof. le Coutre says a mix of alternative food sources as well as education campaigns that empower people to cook for themselves and make smarter choices can help.

“It should be possible to improve insight and knowledge about healthy food and proper nutrition. That is not too difficult. And also, it's actually not too expensive, necessarily. ‘Eating better’ does not really mean ‘eating more expensive’.”

Adding to the argument for insect cuisine, Prof. le Coutre says there also needs to be a significant decrease in meat consumption to reach our sustainability targets.

Livestock systems are currently estimated to cause around 12 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions – compared to an estimated 2 per cent for the aviation industry.

“Meat consumption clearly is a significant culprit on a global scale, which is linked to massive feed production and the use of arable land and water to keep all that livestock alive and growing to meet the demands of our current food systems.

“I do not think we should ever totally eliminate traditional animal-based meat – that will always be in our food system, and in our supermarkets and on our plates. And that’s OK, because we all need to be eating a balanced diet.

“In 20 or 30 years, if we start to see a dent in the consumption of animals, then again that will be a big success. But it will go slowly.”