Eating Insects Around the World

Insects are an everyday food in many parts of the world. More than 2,000 species are known to be eaten, according to the list compiled by Yde Jongema at Wageningen University. Most of them are gathered from the wild rather than farmed.

Number of insect species consumed, by country. [Source: Ron van Lammeren Laboratory of Geo-information Science and Remote Sensing at Wageningen University using data from Yde Jongema]

What people eat

When people in the UK think of eating insects, they usually think of crickets or grasshoppers, but the range is much wider. In Thailand, ants, bee larvae, bamboo worms and silkworms are common. In Mexico, chicatana ants are fried with lime and salt as a snack. In Uganda, termites are roasted and eaten like popcorn.

Credit: https://lifepart2andbeyond.com/eating-chicatana-ants-in-mexico/

The flavours vary as much as the insects. Some ants are sour, others sweet and creamy. Termites are often described as nutty, and bee larvae as a bit like bacon.

Many edible insects are high in protein and contain healthy fats. If you missed it, our post on insects in human evolution looks at the idea that termites helped early humans grow bigger brains.

Wild insects are under pressure

Most insects eaten around the world are still gathered from the wild, and wild insects are in trouble. A 2019 review estimated that around 40% of insect species are declining (Sánchez-Bayo and Wyckhuys, Biological Conservation). The main causes are habitat loss, intensive farming and pesticides, and climate change.

Forests matter most. The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that about 10 million hectares of forest were lost each year between 2015 and 2020. Pesticides harm insects well beyond the crop pests they target, including the bees that pollinate our crops. Warmer temperatures and changing rainfall add to the pressure, and many insects can't move somewhere more suitable.

Some traditional wild harvests, such as witchetty grubs in Australia, have been gathered sustainably for generations. But if insects are to become an everyday food for more people, most will need to be farmed.

Credit: https://www.foodnavigator-asia.com/Article/2017/03/29/Witchetty-grubs-still-on-the-menu-for-nine-out-of-10-Aboriginals

Why farm insects?

Livestock uses about 80% of the world's farmland but provides 18% of our calories and 37% of our protein (Poore and Nemecek, Science, 2018). Insects can be farmed in a small space, stacked vertically, and some can be raised on by-products that would otherwise go to waste. That's why researchers are interested in them as a way to produce protein using less land. They're not a silver bullet, and the real footprint depends on how and where they're farmed.

Insect farming is still young, and the FAO has pointed to gaps in what's known about rearing and processing insects at scale. We work with partner farms in the UK and overseas, and prepare and pack everything ourselves at our facility in Lincolnshire.

If you'd like to try some, have a look in the shop.