Would You Eat Bugs to Save the Planet?

Cricket Chow is one of nine-year-old Ella Schlafly’s favorite breakfasts, and if the Missouri native could have it daily, she would. Cricket Chow is just what it sounds like – a crunchy cereal coated with protein made from bugs.

“I think it tastes pretty good. You can't even tell there are bugs in the food," says Ella.

“It’s like puppy chow [the popular kids' snack] with a cricket protein coating,” explains Ella’s mother, Sarah Schlafly, founder of  Mighty Cricket – an Agtech company selling, among other things, insect-based products.

However, these products are still a novelty in the U.S. due to their high price – with insect-protein powder selling for around $45 per pound – and their low availability.

Origins of eating insects

Entomophagy stems from the Greek éntomon, “insect,” and phagein, “to eat,” was first mentioned in 1871. However, “it is estimated that insects form part of the traditional diets of at least 2 billion people,” according to the United Nations. The concept of entomophagy is nothing new or unusual. In fact, eating insects due to their nutritional value and wide availability has been integral to communities across Africa, Latin America, and Asia for millennia, writesthe science journal The Pharma Innovation.   

In addition, worldwide insect farming is growing rapidly. In the UK, primary schools are educating children on the benefits of consuming insect-based foods, and products such as pasta and protein bars enhanced with insect powders can be found in major supermarkets; in South Korea, governmental efforts to promote the benefits of edible insects have seen the national industry double in size since 2011; and in Australia, stalls serving insects at food festivals struggle to keep up with rising demand. 

Yet, eating insects has not taken hold in North America, due to the cultural perceptions that eating insects is simply, well, gross. 

“While there is a small history of eating various land invertebrates among some indigenous peoples in Canada, such species have never been, as far as we know, a significant part of any diet in this part of the world,” says Heather Looy, a professor of biological psychology at King’s University in Edmonton. 

Food for thought: Would you eat a bug?

According to the World Food Program, one-third of food produced globally is lost or wasted. These broken food systems are also the cause of more than a third of global CO2 emissions, according to research by science journal Nature. 

Scientists are looking for other dietary solutions to reduce carbon emissions, and eating insects may be part of this solution. Adapting foods such as insect-based products into our diets could cut the environmental impacts of global food systems by up to 80%, according to a Finish study released last year. 

 “Insects are not only the most resourceful form of protein out there, they’re also highly nutritious and require minimal processing,” says Schlafly.

 Schlafly launched her Missouri-based company in 2018, whose products include cricket-infused chocolates and oatmeal, aiming to "create a better world” for her daughter. And it turns out that the mother-daughter duo are not the only ones touting this sustainable food source.

The Benefits of bug-based foods

There are environmental benefits to adding insects into people’s diet, according to academics. 

“To provide the same nutritional value [of meat], insect cultivation uses a fraction of the land, energy, and water used for conventional livestock farming,” writes Peter Alexander, a Senior Lecturer in Global Food Security at Edinburgh University.

 Alexander says that cultivating insects for food requires less resources, less land, less water, less transport fuel, and less human labor than animal livestock while possessing a much smaller carbon footprint.

 Entomologist Matan Shelomi also promotes the circular nutritional solution insects can provide:

 “If we could take the inedible parts of plants that we throw away, and use them to feed insects, which process nutrients into protein far more efficiently than vertebrates, then we return those nutrients to the food cycle instead of wasting them,” says Shelomi.

The value insect farming can bring to communities lacking resources for livestock production is enormous in Shelomi’s eyes: “If they can be farmed on wastes from other agriculture already being done, then it’s as close to a free lunch as one can get in terms of footprint.”  

The Market: High Hopes and Hardships

Crickets, mealworms and grasshoppers were the first three insects to be certified as food for human consumption by the European Union last year. Since there are currently no FDA regulations prohibiting the use of insects as food in the U.S., the ground may be ripe for insect-food entrepreneurs. With a market value estimated to reach $9.8 billion by 2030, the insect-farming start-up market may see rapid growth over the coming years, according to predictions by Market Data Forecasts

In the U.S. alone, there are 53 insect tech start-ups. Many of these focus on turning insects into food for humans, including Donbugito, an initiative focused on reviving the traditional food practices of Native Americans in the name ofsustainability, and All Things Bug, with the mission to “develop sustainable, eco-friendly technologies from insects to improve food security and health.” Yet, consumers, producers, and retailers in the industry face the same problem: the costly business of insect-derived foods “due to a distortion in supply and demand,” explains Jane Lind Sam, CEO of ENORM Biofactory, Denmark’s first-ever large-scale insect farm.

She believes that once a stable supply of insect-based foods has been established, bigger players in the food industry will jump in, leading to a narrative shift where insects are seen as “sustainable nutrients and ingredients, more than a new type of food.” 

Neither Schlafly nor Lind Sam believes that eating insects is the only answer to solving the climate crisis, however, nor that our every meal should consist of bugs – but rather, that it’s part of the solution and can lead us a step closer to a more balanced global food system.

 “That’s why we’re not single-handedly focused on insect-based foods but are also looking at developing mushroom-based products. Our focus lies on sustainability,” explains Schlafly.

In opposition to the movement

Like any possible climate solution, there are issues with mainstreaming insect diets. “It’s important to remember that insect agriculture is animal agriculture…so what we get is one form of animal agriculture fueling yet another form of animal agriculture, with inefficiencies all along the way,” says Matthew Hayek, an Environmental Studies Assistant Professor at NYU. 

Hayek doubts the effectiveness of insect farming due to the production chain it will involve. 

 “For all animals, including insects, we have to feed them food, for them to turn that food into their body weight and then kill and harvest them. In the process, much of the nutrients and calories get lost as heat, other wastes, and even greenhouse gasses. It’s better to grow and eat plants directly,” says Hayek.

The lack of transparency regarding the entire formulations feeding farmed insects, with only the food waste aspect highlighted, makes Hayek suspicious. He does not see insect food as a viable option for fighting climate change.  

“Many who claim to be ‘upcycling’ wastes are only using a relatively small fraction of food waste. The rest of their feed is typically corn and soy, grown on croplands that could otherwise go to feed people directly,” says Hayek.

The future of bug-based foods

Looy, however, sees the urgent need for change in our global food consumption patterns to be prominent enough to tread these unconventional waters. Global food systems are the leading cause of our planetary biodiversity loss, with current agricultural practices threatening 86% of the species most at risk of extinction, according to Chatham House, a Policy Institute in London. At the same time, agricultural production will have to increase by 70% to feed a global population expected to reach 9.1 billion by 2050, says data presented by the UN.

Adding to these skewed numbers, 80% of all agricultural land is used for livestock production, while meat only represents 15% of the global human diet, according to the French National Research Institute. Reducing our meat consumption and simultaneously increasing our consumption of insect-based proteins is, arguably part of solving the alarming trends of climate change. To do that, the production of such foods must increase.

“We need more insect farms to meet the demand and help drive the cost of insect protein down,” says Shelomi. 

However, He is excited about these industries' potential in combating the detrimental effects of current food systems on the environment. Pointing to products such as Gourmet Grubb’s fly-based ice cream, Shelomi showcases how solutions to climate change can take many shapes and how changing our diet can be an exciting and fun answer to a global challenge.

“Bug-based foods will become mainstream in the future. It’s just a question of when,” believes Schlafly.