Why aren’t we eating more insects?

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Tickets at BroadwaySF.com

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Hello and welcome to BBC Inside Science.

Hello.

Oh, you're a whoopee audience.

I love you already.

This week we're coming to you from the Green Man Festival in almost sunny South Wales.

I also have some amazing guests and a talking point which is could insects be the future of food?

So give me a cheer if you would eat insects

and give me a cheer if you'd rather go vegan.

Okay, so we're pretty much 50-50.

So this idea, it's not new.

Many people around the world are already eating insects, but in recent years, there's been a bit of a buzz about insects as a green alternative to meat.

So what's stopping us here in the UK?

We're going to hear why we might put them on the menu, whether they're good for our health, and crucially, do they actually taste good?

Let's introduce our panel.

So my name is Erin Thomas.

I'm one of the co-founders of a company called Yumbug that turns crickets into meat.

And my name's Dr.

Emily Porter.

I'm a gut specialist dietitian.

And Peter Smithers, you are an entomologist, someone that studies insects.

You're also interested in, I've never come across this word before, entomophagy.

Entomophagae, yeah.

The practice of eating insects, entomophagae, entomophagy, it doesn't matter how you say it, believe me, they are good.

Round of applause for the panel!

Peter, before we put them on the menu, can you give us a little glimpse into the often hidden world of insects?

So how many of them are there?

How important are they to humans?

How many insects are there?

Well the embarrassing truth is that we don't know.

There's about one million species of insect have been identified and recorded and now we estimate that there are probably somewhere between eight and twelve million insects that we haven't yet discovered.

And in terms of abundance somebody once calculated how many insects might be alive on the planet at any one time and they came up with a 10 followed by 19 zeros.

I had to ask a mathematician to say, right, you know, what is this number?

And he said, it's a quintillion.

So there's just shed loads of insects.

And it just goes to show that some people should just get out more.

As to what they do, well, they are the caretakers of the world in which we live.

They do all the dirty work behind the scenes.

They are the ones that clear up all the poo that larger animals leave behind.

They clear up all the dead plant material.

When trees fall over, they break them down.

And they're a wonderful food source for a whole range of other animals.

So they are a vital part of Earth's ecosystems.

No insects, we really are in trouble.

And Peter, I want to know when was the point when you swerved from looking at insects to deciding to put one in your mouth?

I'd read that the museum in Liverpool had had this day where they offered insects to people and they'd been overwhelmed with people wanting to try.

So I ran a a day, and we were overwhelmed with people.

And I was then hooked, and I've been looking at insects as food ever since.

And this is a good point to bring Erin in because you are in that world.

For the last few years now, I have been making various forms of edible insect food, most recently, insect forms of meat.

So, the tacos and tostadas you'll be trying later on today are made using a cricket brisket.

But before that, I met a co-founder in about 2018, and we basically started in a garage, much like every startup story, cooking edible insects and creating content, teaching people how to cook with insects because most people around us weren't even aware of edible insects or knew how to prepare them.

We didn't really know either.

We were just winging it at the time.

But people seemed to like what we did.

And just to mention, the reason why we're in a garage, by the way, was because his mum wouldn't allow us to be in the kitchen and use all of her pans.

Emily, you don't have a story that links you to how you started eating insects, right?

No, I don't at all.

We phoned her up and said, Hey, can you look into the nutrition and what did you find out for us?

Like, if I only ate insects, would I be healthy?

So, obviously, I'm never going to advise that anybody eats just one type of food for the rest of their life.

One, it would be very boring, and two, we need that diversity in there to keep us nice and healthy.

We still don't know enough about insects to say whether they would be good for us if it was our sole source of food.

But the research that is there does look really interesting in terms of their potential to be a rich source of protein, they're a great source of fibre, they've got a really good profile when it comes to the types of fats that they contain, as well as the vitamins and minerals that are in there.

But I guess the million-dollar question is: if you just eat insects, are you an entomotarian?

An enterian?

What do we think, Marnie?

Bugatarian.

A bugatarian.

I like that one better.

Peter, we're a bit behind the curve in the UK, so there are different bits of the world where eating insects is a huge part, everyday part of people's diet, right?

So Mexico, China, Australia.

And this isn't, you know, if times are hard.

It's not, oh, we've run out of food, we've got to eat those insects.

It's, wow, it's time to harvest those caterpillars, time to harvest those crickets.

Gray, get the wok on.

Can you give us some examples?

All around sub-Saharan Africa, caterpillars are a big thing.

And it's mainly the caterpillars that feed on bushes and trees.

And these are collected in great basketfuls.

And the guts are squeezed out and then they're dried and either in the sun or or else over a fire and then they're stored and these are a storable protein source that then can be added to food over the year.

Around the Great Lakes of Africa

these lakes have amazingly huge populations of tiny midges called phantom midges and when the adult midges emerge they form these huge clouds and when Victorian explorers first encountered them, they thought the lakes were burning because it looks just like clouds of smoke drifting across.

But what the locals have done for a long, long time, they row out in boats, they've made a bit like a butterfly net, and they row out and they sweep them through these huge clouds, and then they squidge all the midges down into a pate ball at the bottom of the net.

And then these balls are collected, taken back to shore, and then they're deep-fried.

And this harvest is eagerly anticipated.

And I know in several of the countries around the Great Lakes, there are nursery whims that the children chant, encouraging their mothers to come on, get their bug balls on the table.

We're hungry.

Can I just check?

Has anyone here had a holiday ruined by midges?

You should have eaten them, yeah.

The vegetarians might want to cover their ears here.

You've probably all eaten insects without realising, right?

Absolutely.

Insects are are the great invaders.

Every time we harvest a crop, any sort of food that we harvest in store, insects are very adept at breaking in.

So if you think you wouldn't eat insects, you've done it since you were weaned.

I looked up in the food defects levels handbook and you're allowed up to 30 insect fragments, I'm assuming that's legs or wings or bits, per 100 grams of peanut butter.

Yeah, one maggot per can of mushrooms, I believe.

Oh,

yes.

Um, Emily, is eating insects safe?

I mean, presumably, yes, because we're already doing it.

So, one of the things that we look at when we're talking about insects is to bring it back to a serious point for a little bit: is the risk of allergens.

And this is because insects are a type of arthropod, so they're very similar to other animals like crustaceans or shellfish that people are often allergic to.

What we know is the Food Standards Agency have actually done reports looking at the risk of you being allergic to insects if you don't have that high reactivity to shellfish.

And we think if you're not allergic to shellfish, then actually the risk of an allergic response to insects is fairly low.

Now, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, although we didn't make pudding, we made tacos.

We are in a kitchen, in a house in the middle of the festival, and Aaron is labouring over a stove, stirring in a wok in the pan, bubbling away.

They look like bits of beef.

Yep.

They are not bits of beef.

They are not bits of beef.

They are made out of crickets.

They're sort of dark and shiny.

That's the bubbling barbecue glaze on them.

They look good.

It smells good too.

And that's not the radio that we've got on in the background, the stage.

The main stage is just behind us.

This looks like the final plating up.

This is indeed.

We have some crunchy tostadas which will be topped with the charred sweet corn, the cricket brisket, and then we've got some pickled red onion and parsley.

And I have to share these, right?

You have to share these, yeah.

And the good stuff's going on?

The good stuff is going on.

This really does look quite delicious.

I think it's ready for our audience.

Let's go.

So, who's ready to eat some insects?

Excellent.

Okay, handing it out to the panel.

I mean, it doesn't look like an insect, does it?

It's also larger pieces of meat than I thought it would be, I'll be honest.

But if that's from one insect, that's a massive insect.

How do you make this?

It's simple in the terms of what equipment you need.

So, there's no crazy science that goes into it, no ultra-processing, etc.

But what you do is you mince the crickets down and you bind them into a mince meat, effectively, and you bind it together a little bit with either wheat flour or pea protein, and that's about it.

And then you can form it into whatever you want.

So, we form it into mince so we that you'd cook a lasagna with or we form it into what we call a brisket or we might mince it down and bind it together with pea protein and turn it into meatballs and smash burgers and you name it actually recently made a sausage so the the possibilities are pretty much endless and it reacts very similarly to other animal based meats because it is still an animal so i think that's partly why you don't have to add all of these ultra-processed technologies to it to make it feel like meat because it already is meat.

I was trying not to eat too much of it so that I'm not crunching crunching when I'm talking.

It's chewing.

However, you eat all the crunch, come on.

It's delicious, so it's a little bit chewy, obviously, some delicious seasoning on there as well.

But honestly, if you didn't tell me it was cricket, I'm not sure I would have known.

The texture is really interesting.

We generally say that the meat, because it's when you make cricket meat, because crickets themselves are brown, the meat ends up being quite brown, which means that we more liken it to something like beef or lamb or people say duck.

But generally, the flavour is relatively neutral.

This is going to sound quite stupid, but tastes quite meaty for meat.

Right,

who's willing to try some?

Volunteers.

That's a very high hand up.

Come on.

Thoughts?

Yeah, delicious.

It's salty.

Nice.

How's that one going?

I don't really like it.

Fair enough.

That's a very cautious bite.

It's my first ever bug bite.

It's delicious.

Really like it.

Uh, it was nice.

It was yummy.

I grew up eating eating insects.

This is amazing, and it's this is a cricket, right?

We in Cameroon, there's a saying that goes like this: the thing that stands on the hill and calls for its death.

What is it?

It's it's actually a riddle, and it's a cricket because people go out at night when the cricket is chirping, you can hear the noise, and they hunt them down, they follow the noise.

So, this was a good cricket.

I'm gonna have to tell my mom.

Thank you.

At Azure Standard, we believe healthy food shouldn't be complicated.

That's why we've spent 30 years delivering clean organic groceries and earth-friendly products to families who care about what goes on their plates and into their lives.

From pantry staples to wellness essentials and garden-ready seeds, everything we offer is rooted in real nutrition, transparency, and trust.

Join a community that believes in better naturally.

Visit Azure Standard.com today and discover a simpler, healthier way to shop for the things that matter most.

Suffs, the new musical has made Tony award-winning history on Broadway.

We demand to be home.

Winner, best store.

We demand to be seen.

Winner, best book.

We demand to be quality.

It's a theatrical masterpiece that's thrilling, inspiring, dazzlingly entertaining, and unquestionably the most emotionally stirring musical this season.

Suffs, playing the Orpheum Theater, October 22nd through November 9th.

Tickets at BroadwaySF.com.

So, who

liked it?

Cheer?

Who's still where?

Oh,

interesting.

So, Aaron, how do you kill them?

Oh, good question.

Okay.

So, the farming process basically takes place inside large warehouses.

Inside those warehouses are boxes.

When it's ready for harvest, those boxes will be placed into a cold room and that simulates the natural winter conditions for an insect.

So they would go into a state like hibernation.

So they effectively fall asleep.

And then whilst in that state, they would be put into a freezer and they would die of the cold.

And then they get shipped to us like that, frozen.

Anyone else?

Why do you freeze the bugs instead of killing them like all of the other animal products?

I think it's probably the most humane way because they're already asleep.

Some people in countries have simply put them straight into a massive blender, which I don't particularly agree with.

But there are lots of different ways that people have historically processed insects.

But we feel like the most humane way is to make them fall asleep and then put them into a freezer.

Otherwise, you just have to kill them one by one with a tiny bit of a

tiny hammer.

Loads of time.

Yeah.

Yeah.

How sentient would you say insects are?

That is a very good question.

Basically, at the moment, we're not entirely sure.

The general feeling amongst entomologists is that insects don't have a particularly complex nervous system, but as we're not sure, we should find out.

So there's a lot of research going on at the moment looking at insect sentience, and that will lead on to how we manage insect farms and how we treat them.

Is it ethical to freeze crickets to death?

There are numerous interpretations of what ethics could mean in relation to food.

What I would say is that consuming insects seems to be a much more ethical way to get your protein if you still want to eat animal meat.

And Emily let's talk about that protein and what else is in there.

I mean can you talk us through the nutritional value?

So insects such as crickets contain our essential amino acids.

So these are basically our building blocks for protein.

So what we need to keep our muscles healthy, healthy, what we need to produce, enzymes and hormones within the body.

Plant-based protein sources don't tend to be complete protein sources.

So they don't contain all these essential amino acids.

Insects are also, especially crickets, again, if we're having whole crickets, are quite unusual in terms of being an animal-based protein that contains fibre, and that's from their exoskeleton, from the cyotin.

And fibre is really important for our digestion, but also for things like our cardiovascular health as well.

Another way that insects don't fit with what we might typically think about animal-based proteins is that they're a source of omega-3s, so are some of the

healthy fats that we need in our diet to help with things like our joint health, our brain health, and omega-3s have really, really strong anti-inflammatory benefits as well.

Normally, we get omega-3s from oily fish, but I think an interesting question is to

where we put insects in that gradient between animals, fish, and plants, perhaps.

So, can we contrast the cricket brisket that we've just tried with beef brisket?

What's the difference?

So, if we took 100 grams of crickets and we took 100 grams of beef, in terms of protein content, they're almost identical.

Where crickets come out on top is in terms of that fat profile.

So, insects contain more unsaturated fats, so more of the healthy fats that we want in our diets.

Insects would also come out on top for some of the micronutrients.

So, on paper, it looks as though crickets have higher iron levels than we would find in red meat.

Oh, that's really interesting.

I know, but

there's always a butt when it comes to nutrition research.

What is interesting in terms of the iron that we find in insects is how well our body is able to use it.

So, iron that we find in insects, we think is absorbed in a similar way to iron that we would find in plant foods, which is at much lower levels than how well we're able to absorb iron from meat products.

Okay, so you're going to get more

iron from 100 grams of beef?

Probably, but a little bit more research we need to do about that.

But again, insects come out on top if we look at things like calcium, which they've got again from their exoskeletons, and we don't find any, or not very much, calcium in beef.

Peter, if anyone's inspired to go back and start eating insects from their back garden,

should they?

Are there any insects we absolutely can't eat?

There are many insects that we certainly shouldn't eat, and I really wouldn't recommend eating them from your back garden.

It'll take take you ages

to gather a basket of insects.

That's really why we don't eat insects in the West.

If we went out and tried to gather insects to feed our families, it would take us all day, we'd use more energy than we gained from actually the food we ate.

But coming back to are there insects that we shouldn't eat?

Yes, there are many insects that protect themselves by storing toxic substances from the plants plants that they eat.

So there are many poisonous plants and the insects graze on these and they store these toxins in their body so that if anything tries to eat them, they'll become sick.

And they advertise this by being brightly coloured.

Or there are insects that are very hairy and the hairs are very toxic, so you wouldn't want to eat those.

It's over a thousand that we know are edible, but with so many to choose from that we just haven't tried most of them.

So there's a whole galaxy of possibilities waiting for us.

Potentially, but at this point the BBC disclaimer is BBC Radio for Inside Science is absolutely not suggesting that anyone should eat insects in their back garden.

You're listening to BBC Inside Science with me, Marnie Chesterton, and a panel of experts talking about insects and whether they could be a food of the future.

Next month we're going to be doing a show on lab-grown meat and we'd love your comments and thoughts on whether you'd eat lab-grown meat.

Please do send them to insidescience at bbc.co.uk.

I think he's just turned the banjo up.

It's fine.

Fine.

We can shout louder than him.

Back to insects.

Just because we can do it doesn't mean we should.

Why should we want to consider eating insects?

Well, I think it's because the population of the globe is growing and we're going to find it more and more difficult to provide the necessary protein to feed them.

By the time we get to 2050, it's going to be 9 billion people.

At the moment, 50% of the usable land mass of our planet is used for agriculture.

If we keep expanding that, we're going to damage the natural systems that support the planet and it's going to be disastrous.

So we cannot do that.

So we need to find more efficient ways.

So lab-grown meat, algae, and just vegetables are going to be staples in the future.

But insects are an important part of what we will eat in the future.

Can we talk numbers?

I mean, you can pick up a chicken to feed a family in the supermarket for a fiver.

How much would it cost to feed your family on crickets?

At the moment, it's an expensive option.

On the occasions that I've had insect food events, I've bought two kilograms of crickets and it's cost me 40 quid.

That would feed a family, but that's an expensive meal, isn't it?

So at the moment, they're expensive.

But as we move into the future, as the insect farming industry grows, the prices will come down.

Aaron?

I agree that it is expensive right now.

I could get steak for 40 quid.

Yeah,

two kilograms of dried crickets, if that's what it was, is a lot of food.

That's 1.4 kilograms of protein in that meal, which is way more than a family would need.

But from our perspective, we use frozen fresh crickets, and the price is still about £6 per kilogram, which is more similar to something like a top-range beef, but is still not competitive with something like chicken from Aldi or another budget supermarket.

So, there's a bit of a way to go, I think, in terms of building the scale necessary in the infrastructure around insect farming.

What are the other challenges?

It's really the demand for this type of food and just kind of like innate squeamishness that is holding people back, but that can be easily overcome.

And we've seen that today with some of you guys that are maybe apprehensive about trying it, but once you've tried it, actually, you've said that wasn't too bad, actually, that was was quite tasty.

Alongside that is about regulations of edible insects in the UK.

So insects are classed as a novel food in the UK which means that they need scientific backing to show their safety as food.

Basically what that requires is a bunch of time and resources from the industry to be able to prove the safety of edible insects.

Is that why your crickets you currently import them from Lithuania?

What we've found is actually shipping insects from abroad, places like Lithuania or Vietnam where they have very large farms are actually more sustainable even with shipping them across the sea in a frozen cargo than getting them from the UK.

And that's actually true of quite a lot of other protein options in your diet.

Lady over there, I'm just wondering what you would say to a vegan or a vegetarian about whether there are values which might drive them to become an insect eater.

It's a very difficult topic and I think everyone has their own specific reasons for why they choose what they eat and some of it is logical and some of it is emotional.

What I would say if you if you're a vegetarian or a vegan for purely sustainability reasons then insects make a lot of sense because the brisket that some of you guys tried today is about 15 times less greenhouse gas to produce than beef.

Sustainability-wise, it's really, really good, but also you're getting loads of nutrition.

So it fills a bunch of different gaps.

And I think the biggest question for people will be around what their ethical stand is on it.

And I understand for a lot of people that's very personal, and people have all sorts of different moral frameworks around it.

So it's difficult to argue someone into that in a short conversation.

So you're saying that crickets belch less than cows?

Exactly.

And it's possibly easier and more ethical to kill them.

Yeah.

Okay, so have we converted anyone?

Yeah.

A couple of hands.

That's a maybe.

That's a maybe.

We'll come back to that.

We'll give you more time to digest.

They won't know that it's in the same place.

I guarantee.

That was off mic, but someone said if you put it out there after a couple of beers, people won't know.

Emily, what is it about insects?

I mean, what is it about their bodies, their makeup, the way that they use energy that makes them all killer-no-filler?

We know that crickets and other insects are cold-blooded, so they're not having to use that extra energy regulating their body temperature.

So they're able to turn all the food that they're eating into protein really efficiently, which has benefits for us, as far as I understand.

Am I right?

Aaron's nodding at me.

I'm on the right track with that.

In terms of what makes them so good for human health, there's some really interesting research coming out showing that eating insects is really good for our metabolic health.

So, how well our body's able to regulate our blood sugar levels and how well we're able to regulate our weight.

Scientists have also found some other really exciting compounds in insects, so things like antioxidants, which protect our cells against any damage, and compounds in insects that might even help with things like lowering our blood pressure.

But again, the research is still

in quite early days for insects, and we need more studies to be done to show how the presence of these compounds in insects actually translates back to benefits for human health.

We can't not ask about gut health because that's your expertise.

And you know, is there anything that you've found that you can tell us about that?

Studies have shown that if people eat insects every day for two weeks, for example, we see changes in their gut bacteria, and not just changes in the bacteria but also beneficial changes within that bacterial ecosystem that lives in our gut.

So, if people have eaten cricket flower every day for 14 days, we see higher numbers of beneficial bacteria, but not just the bacteria themselves, we also see the health-promoting compounds that they produce increase as well.

In around 100 grams of crickets, we've got the same amount of fibre that we'd find in two pieces of wholemeal bread.

And we've talked about how important it is to keep diversity within our diet.

Each type of bacteria in the gut likes a different type of fibre, and adding insect fibre into a balanced diet is just one more way that we can add in that diversity and reap some of those gut health benefits.

So, at the moment,

if you want insects in your diet, there are some restaurants that you can go to.

When are we going to start seeing

these products appearing in the supermarkets?

Not hiding in jars of peanuts.

Yeah, exactly.

Our goal at the moment is to really partner with large brands in the UK, restaurants that are seen as credible mainstream sources of food that people would generally go to, to build the credibility around this edible insect movement.

So, hopefully, you can see it in some mainstream restaurants in towns close to you guys, hopefully, over here in Wales at some point.

Or, I've heard cricket popcorn at the cinemas.

There might be some cricket popcorn popping up later on this year.

Peter, are we going to be able to pick this stuff off the shelves?

Lamb prawns in the freezer section.

It is going to happen in the very near future.

So, watch this space.

Insect food is coming to a restaurant, a cafe, or a supermarket near near you very, very soon.

So audience, I asked you at the beginning who would try insects and who still wouldn't touch them with a 10-foot pole.

And I'm going to ask you the same question again.

Who would now eat insects?

Give me a cheer.

And who reckons, nah, not so much.

Maybe just stick with the vegetables?

Give me a cheer.

Vegan Corner says, Yeah,

but you are outnumbered, I'd say.

We've

got quite a willing or insect of possibly self-selecting people who came here for the tacos.

We need to double-blind this experiment.

Thank you so much for coming and hearing about insects and what part of our futures they will be.

Can I give you, because you've been so good at cheering, can I ask you to cheer yourself for being such a great audience?

Cheers for yourself.

You have made Radio 4 happen in a field in South Wales.

And cheers also for our lovely panel.

We've had Emily Porter, Erin Thomas, and Peter Smithers.

Big round of applause for them.

I'm Marnie Chesterton.

I'm off to eat the rest of the free samples from the test kitchen.

Thank you from beautiful Wales.

Goodbye from me.

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Suffs, the new musical has made Tony award-winning history on Broadway.

We the man to be honest.

Winner, best score.

We the man to be seen.

Winner, best book.

We the man to be quality.

It's a theatrical masterpiece that's thrilling, inspiring, dazzlingly entertaining, and unquestionably the most emotionally stirring musical this season.

Suffs!

Playing the Orpheum Theater October 22nd through November 9th.

Tickets at BroadwaySF.com.