It can! The UN recommends entomophagy as a sustainable way to supply future protein for a growing population. Insects are very protein rich for the amount of water and primary production they consume!
It can! The UN recommends entomophagy as a sustainable way to supply future protein for a growing population. Insects are very protein rich for the amount of water and primary production they consume!
I wish entomophagy becomes mainstream in the future. The current initiatives to introduce it are doing it the wrong way, keeping the insect appearance just because it's flashy and gets repercussion. I believe people would have absolutely no problem in eating mealworm burger as long as it doesn't look like them.
It's funny to see people's reactions when I compare a caterpillar to a shrimp. De-shelled shrimps look just like any caterpillar, and yet they eat it without any problem.
^ The issue is that in Western cultures entomophagy tend to be generally viewed in two ways: with sheer disgust or with curiosity. Appealing to curiosity with flashy insect appearances turns off those who are disgusted by it, but the same can be said for processed foods to those who wishes for the entomophagy "experience."
The UN FAO's plan to incorporate insects into the western diet does mention that processed foods are an easy way to wean people unto insects slowly, and there has been some progress in incorporating insect components into food. Yet even there, there has been a lot of friction with consumer groups who thoroughly question the viability of eating something so unfamiliar. Policies are also slow to catch up with entomophagy, and many laws enacted historically for animals as a whole serve as barriers to introducing insects.
Another problem to using insects as processed food arises from its price. In certain countries some agricultural products are so subsidized that even though insects are more sustainable to produce, the product it seeks to replace can actually have a lower price due to subsidies. This weird price signal is probably why we don't see mealworm burgers in supermarkets. Appearance wise it may be very similar to beef, but beef is so much cheaper that marketing an expensive mealworm "substitute" with no established market simply doesn't make economic sense.
