To Save the Earth, Let Them Eat Bugs

We've all watched squeamishly as Anthony Bourdain took down fried bugs in his hit show No Reservations. Turns out Bourdain's insect-eating provides more than just shock value. According to some experts, chowing down on bugs benefits the planet and people's health, and can also act as a solution to global famine.

The Royal Entomology Society met this week at Swansea University for its annual conference. According to the BBC, Arnold van Huis, a professor and consultant to the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), touted his beliefs that insect protein can help alleviate worldwide hunger. Van Huis also says that being an insectarian is a far greener diet than eating beef. "Producing a kilogram of meat from a cow requires 13 kilograms of vegetable matter as feed," van Huis told the BBC. "Yet one kilogram of meat from a cricket, locust, or beetle needs just 1.5 to 2 kilograms of fodder, and produces a fraction of the CO2 emissions."

The thought of crunching into a cricket, or feeling its tiny legs and antennae brushing against my tongue immediately triggers my gag reflex. But after doing some research and giving it some thought, I've got to admit: Van Huis may really be onto something here.

With the exception of the Western world, insects make up part of the diet of about 80 percent of the global population. Thailand boasts about 15,000 cricket farms. In South Africa, the Mopane worm industry is worth about $85 million. Based on evidence from other cultures and van Huis' research, insects don't just contain high levels of proteins and vitamins — they must taste pretty good, too. Perhaps the ick factor associated with eating bugs, then, is only evidence of Westerners' own cultural imperialism. As Dr. Seuss taught us all with his green eggs and ham, judging food on its appearance alone means we could be missing out on something truly delicious.

What's even more impressive is insects' low carbon footprints. As I recently wrote, raising livestock produces a pretty significant amount of greenhouse gas emissions — about 18 percent of the world's total emissions output, actually. While cows' and other livestocks' carbon hoofprints are pretty big on their own, they also require a lot of feed. Growing and producing that feed requires arable land, a commodity that only gets rarer as the global population grows, farmland gets lost to development, and environmental changes start to negatively impact soil and water. Eating a big bowl of bugs may not seem as appetizing as sinking one's teeth into a juicy cheeseburger, but it certainly carries a much lower carbon count.

Green as I am, I can't even handle a spider in my house, never mind on my dinner plate. But as the global population continues to grow and climate change rolls on, the world's food systems are inevitably going to change significantly. Already, one billion people suffer from chronic hunger. If the world can't make more of the same food, it's going to have to start relying on other forms of protein. When that day comes, insects just may move from No Reservations to everyone's — even Westerners' — dinner tables.

Photo credit: Thomas Schoch via Wikimedia Commons