When food supplies are low, what would you turn to? If insects come to mind then you’re belong to a group of 2 billion like-minded people in the world. Imagine it, a world where any other type of food source is running low and the population has turned to eating insects to deal with their hunger. Well it seems that might soon be a reality. In the past couple of years the UN has been urging people to eat insects to fight world hunger.
Food resources are slowly running out if the alarming rate at which global warming has progressed isn’t clear enough. Sure governments around the world have pledge to try to reduce greenhouse gases through more plantations, less deforestation, less CO2 being emitted – we’ve heard it all. This unfortunately has been making slow progress and our world is not that patient to be restored into balance. The great barrier reef has officially been proclaimed “unlikely to be saved” by australian experts and the permafrost outside of the seedbank defrosting leading to a minor flood of what was supposed to be a backup plan should our crops be wiped out.
What does this mean for us? As global warming progresses our crops and food sources will reduce so perhaps it is time for us to consider other options like insects. According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), “insects can offer the same protein and mineral content as regular meat or fish – but at far less cost”. Scorpions and grasshoppers can now be found on the menus of upscale French restaurants but the French aren’t the only ones.
A fair number of countries around the word see entomophagy (also known as the act of eating insects) as a fairly common part of their staple diet. Entomophagy isn’t exactly new either, it’s old and part of many cultures where food have become scarce, be it due to loss of habitat or other reasons.
So with the increasing world population making food even harder to come by, doesn’t that make eating insects as a perfect alternative? Perhaps someday as our society progresses, we might just find cans of insects on our supermarket shelves.