Lovely Grub: Are Insects the Future of Food?
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.
The edible insect industry is still in its infancy, and it’s too soon to tell how it will develop or whether it will succeed. Will we accept insect flour in our snack foods? Can we be persuaded to make waxworm tacos in our own kitchens? Will crickets become a grocery store staple? And will any of this add up to real change? Many other innovations are also being hailed as the future of food, from fake chicken to 3D printing and from algae to lab-grown meat. Whether any of them, including insects, will turn out to make a real contribution to food security and sustainability remains an open question.
For their part, Evans and Reade reject the notion that insects will be some sort of silver bullet. Bugs, they say, will only be a real part of the solution if we are careful and thoughtful about how we integrate them into the food system. In their eyes, entomophagy is about more than merely getting a precise amount of protein on a plate – it’s about making sure everyone on the planet has access to affordable, healthy, diverse, environmentally sound food, and, yes, delicious. “Insects can be a vehicle for something,” Reade says. “But it has to be recognized that it’s not the insects themselves that are going to make it sustainable. It’s the humans.”
In the summer of 2014, Ben Reade announced that he’d leave the Nordic Food Lab and return to his native Scotland to pursue other food-related projects. The insect deliciousness project is continuing under the direction of Josh Evans.