Following I’m A Celebrity – ‘Finger-licking good’ insects could be the future of food

10 celebs are currently in week 1 of a 3 week stint at Gwrych Castlle and last night Emmerdale star Danny Miller smashed the trial, overcoming all the odds against Snoochie Shy in a gruelling trial that saw him he tuck into cow’s teat, pigs brain and fermented tofu.

Celebrities can be expected to make anything from £30,000 to £600,000 for their time on the show, depending on how famous and well-known they are.

Now onto the rest of the word when it comes to eating insect grub!

‘I think everybody realises we need to change our diets,’ says expert on edible insects as global population soars.
The tacoma, which Clenkian tosses into a plastic bowl, is a delicacy in this Indigenous Arawak community of about 2,000 residents, located two hours by road from the Guyanese capital of Georgetown.

“They are buttery, high in protein and can be cooked without the need for oil,” Clenkian, a 73-year-old retired Arawak chief and military veteran, told Al Jazeera. “It’s very versatile, very tasty – finger-licking good.”
Eaten raw, sauteed, or skewered and roasted like marshmallows on an open fire, insects like this could help make food systems worldwide more sustainable, Clenkian said. As he spoke, a group of apprehensive visitors from the city tasted tacoma fried with onions.

With the world’s population set to eclipse nine billion by 2050, and as climate-changing emissions from livestock continue to rise, experts say diets must shift to ensure a sustainable future – and insects could play more than a bite-sized role.

Globally, the livestock industry is responsible for about 15 percent of all human-caused carbon emissions, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Insects are about eight times better for the planet than beef when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions, said Arnold van Huis, a professor emeritus of tropical entomology at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. He has spent much of his professional life studying the role of insects in food systems.

“I think everybody realises we need to change our diets,” van Huis, an aficionado of spicy deep-fried locusts, told Al Jazeera. “I think it’s safer to eat insects than chicken. Insects are taxonomically much further from humans than chickens or pigs.” Diseases carried by livestock, such as mad cow, are generally more dangerous to people than anything contained in insects, he added.

Producing one kilogram (2.2 pounds) of beef requires about 25kg (55lbs) of feed, van Huis said, while one kilogram of protein-rich crickets requires 2kg (4.4lbs) of food. Insects are cold-blooded, so unlike cows, they don’t expend energy on producing body heat. Livestock also requires about six times more water than what an equivalent amount of insects would need, he said.

“About 80 percent of agricultural land in the world is already used for livestock,” he added. “We have to change.”
Western aversion to bugs

In much of the Global South, eating insects is nothing new or exotic. Some two billion people worldwide savour insects in their regular meals, with approximately 1,900 edible species, according to the FAO.

There are spicy scorpions as street food in parts of China; fried termites in western Kenya; curried dragonflies in Indonesia; beetle larvae in parts of Cameroon; wok-fried tarantulas or silkworms in Cambodia; and sauce-drenched mopane worms in rural Zimbabwe.

In Mexico, crispy grasshoppers are served with lime and chili – and of course the humble tequila worm to chase down a strong shot.

In Niger, grasshoppers collected in millet fields fetched a higher price in local markets than the actual millet, according to a 2003 study.

In Guyanese Indigenous communities such as Pakuri, the tacoma worm “isn’t an everyday delicacy”, said Michael Patterson, an Indigenous chef specialising in traditional foods who runs a catering company in Georgetown.

Setting a tree – chopping it down, making the correct incisions and waiting for the bugs to grow in the decaying wood – takes several weeks, and this can’t be done too often without damaging the forest, he said.

Tacoma worms are normally prepared during cultural activities or festivals, Patterson told Al Jazeera. Their consumption, he said, “comes back to the whole basic survival mode of human beings. Mankind started with the soil; it’s back to those basic principles”.

To some consumers, however, eating insects is not just gross; it’s part of a dark, humiliating future. The opening scene of the dystopian sci-fi film Blade Runner 2049 shows the main character entering a protein farm, where a worker in a hazmat suit grows insect larvae in a toxic-looking vat of brown sludge.

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