Should We Be Eating Insects?

When she was an undergrad, MacKenzie Wade, along with her roommate, would bake cookies made out of mealworms. She would then take some of the cookies to a party, and, surprisingly, people loved the cookies. The cookies also turned up to be good conversation starters. Wade is not the only one promoting insect eating.

Their arguments are legion: Edible bugs are better for the environment and can help slow climate change, they can alleviate malnutrition and ease food insecurity. Also, they’re delicious.

“June beetles are fantastic,” said [Wade], a doctoral candidate in anthropology at UC Santa Barbara. “They truly taste like bacon.”

...Her research specializes in insects as food, and the cultural aversions to eating them.

[...]

What’s clear, Wade said, is that edible insects have tremendous potential to feed a growing population in an increasingly damaged world. Some 2 billion people, mostly in the global South, already eat insects, many species of which contain as much protein as beef, more iron than spinach, as much vitamin B12 as salmon and all nine amino acids.

Now that is nutritious, but I’ll take meat, fish, and vegetables, thank you very much.

More details about Wade’s research over at The Current.

What are your thoughts about this one?

(Image Credit: Lipso_Kozerga/ Pixabay)