Lovely Grub: Are Insects the Future of Food?
They sometimes seem frustrated by what they hear at the conference, by all the talk of growing insect production, using insects in highly processed products, and creating a global insect trade, with a few easy-to-farm species shipped all around the world. They object to large-scale insect farming partly on gastronomic grounds – in their experience, farmed, freeze-dried insects taste “like cardboard”, Evans says – but also on ecological ones, worrying that we may end up merely replacing one industrial protein-production system with another.
“Insects themselves could be the most sustainable thing; they could have no carbon footprint at all,” Reade says. “But then if we insisted on freeze-drying them all using huge amounts of energy and sending them halfway across the planet for energy-consuming protein extraction and then decided to sell that protein in another part of the world shaped like chicken breasts in a little plastic packet – well, there’s nothing sustainable about that at all.”
Indeed, just because insects have a killer feed-to-food conversion ratio doesn’t mean that anything we do with or to insects will be eco-friendly. Bart Muys, an ecologist at KU Leuven in Belgium, tells the conference-goers that although insects can be reared on relatively tiny plots of land, producing insect meal requires significantly more energy than fishmeal or soymeal does, largely because the bugs need to be raised in warm conditions. The environmental impact of each production system will vary, depending on countless factors, including location, species and feedstock. The golden rule, Muys warns, is “Do not claim before you know.”
Although everyone at the conference is dreaming of a future with more insects on the menu, the exact natures of those dreams vary widely – from the chefs who want to showcase insects’ unique flavors at the world’s best restaurants to the businessmen who believe the best use of bugs is as a feedstock to help lower the price of beef. There’s no central authority dictating the next steps;. However, there’s talk of gathering for another conference in two or three years, all the experts and advocates will pursue their own priorities in the meantime.