Over 1,900 species of insects are eaten and are part of the diet of two billion people
"Waiter, waiter! There's a fly in my soup!" I say, pointing at the contents of the spoon I've just dipped into my bowl of soup. Strictly speaking, the long, thin orange-brown limbs sticking out of the bowl belong to a grasshopper. But I allow myself a certain poetic license.
Ellis, the waiter, reassures me with a polite smile. Obviously, being one of the first diners in the establishment, I am also the first person to utter that time-honored phrase to him. And since he works in a restaurant recognized as Britain's first eatery serving insect dishes, I suspect I won't be the last from whom he hears a complaint about a fly in the soup.
The restaurant Grub Kitchen (literally "Larva Kitchen"), which opened in November 2015 near the village of St. David's in Pembrokeshire, West Wales, was the first in the United Kingdom to include insects in many of its menu items. Although this may seem strange to most Westerners, eating insects is common in many countries. As the world's population grows very rapidly, and the demand for meat and fish even faster, the voices of those who argue that the current human diet is inefficient are growing louder. It's no wonder that ideas once considered radical are now being taken quite seriously.
Danish chef René Redzepi has been extolling the virtues of eating insects for several years at his restaurant Noma in Copenhagen; London's Arhipelago, specializing in exotic cuisine, also offers several insect-based dishes. Can dishes at Grub Kitchen, such as hummus with mealworms, beetle burritos, or cricket cocktail with chili sauce, be the solution? Are they novelties best left for TV competition contestants, or can they actually feed the world? And finally (a question that cannot be answered by theoretical research alone), what do they taste like?
I booked a table to get to the bottom of it.
Grasshopper Soup with Garlic
For my first course, I got a fiery soup of red pepper, tomatoes, and grasshoppers fried with garlic. The eyes staring at me from under a basil leaf were mildly disconcerting. However, the insects had a pleasant taste, most reminiscent of hazelnut. Their crunch complemented the smoky flavor of the pepper.
"As a chef, insects give me a good opportunity to try some innovations with ingredients that others don't use," says Andy Holcroft, founder and head chef of Grub Kitchen. "I want to demonstrate that they can be tasty and nutritious, and also become an alternative and more reliable source of protein than intensive livestock farming."
Prices for high-protein feed based on soy and fish have skyrocketed, and the livestock industry already emits more greenhouse gases than airplanes, cars, and all other forms of transport combined. Insects could provide a solution. They are high in protein, fat, minerals, and vitamins.
A report published in 2013 presents data showing that crickets are two, four, and twelve times (respectively) more efficient than chickens, pigs, and cattle in terms of the ratio of feed required to produce a given amount of meat to the final output. Moreover, insects can be fed with expired food and agricultural waste. They require very little water and emit far fewer greenhouse gases than traditional cattle.
The question is different: will we be able to convince people to eat them?
Worms in Wine Sauce
The next course: a puff pastry pie with seasonal vegetables, mealworms (also known as buffalo worms), and crickets in a wine sauce. Although I consider myself a food adventurer, I instinctively recoiled at the sight of mealworms floating on the surface of the gravy: they looked like fly larvae, only three times longer. This "yuck factor" (or disgust factor) is what clearly divides the visitors to Grub Kitchen.
For example, Lisa Reeves, a methodist from a local school, compares grasshoppers to crispy bacon. But her daughters beg to leave them alone. "I'm not eating that," says eight-year-old Alana. "They're so gross." Thirteen-year-old Megan is even less communicative; instead of answering, she pulls a knitted hat over her eyes.
However, researchers believe tastes can change quickly. "Not so long ago, sushi was a strange and disgusting Japanese mess that no sane English person would touch," says entomologist Peter Smithers from the University of Plymouth, who studies edible insects. "If you explain to people in an engaging and educational way that insects are eaten all over the world, many will be willing to try them."
Insect Burger
Out of scientific interest, I tried the main course. Grub Kitchen's signature dish is the insect burger, which includes mealworms, crickets, and grasshoppers wrapped in a focaccia bun. It is served with polenta chips and ant mayonnaise. It resembles a veggie burger and boasts a variety of interesting flavors and textures. Its uniqueness comes from a citrusy taste and the popping sensation you get when chewing the ants. Although I enjoyed the dish, the sensations it provokes will not appeal to everyone.
Therefore, some believe that insects can play an important role in the human diet, but should be one step further away from us in the food chain and serve as livestock feed. Agribusiness companies in many countries, including the United States, Canada, France, the Netherlands and South Africa, are creating large insect farms to produce protein for feeding more traditional domestic animals.
In other parts of the world, consumers are less bothered by the issue of directly eating insects. Ants are served with sticky rice in Southeast Asia, dipped in chocolate in Brazil, and added to soups in China. Grasshoppers are deep-fried in Thailand and served with toast, chili and lime in Mexico. Australian Aborigines consider fat butterfly larvae a delicacy.
In total, more than 1,900 species of insects are used as food and are part of the diet of at least two billion people on Earth. This data is provided by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.
However, in Britain, such practices almost disappeared with the departure from the historical scene of the Saxons, who collected and ate the larvae of cockchafers, also known as May bugs. With the development of agriculture, the habit of hunting insect larvae gradually lost its meaning, especially in temperate latitudes, where they grow more slowly than in tropical climates.
“One of the reasons why people eat insects more often in the tropics is that they grow faster there. At the same time, in lower temperature conditions in regions with a temperate climate, there is no excess mass of insect material that would make their collection profitable,” says Smithers.
Rocky Road
Perhaps that is the case, but insect material was definitely present in the form of a six-legged creature in the dessert “Rocky Road” that the waiter had just placed before me. But the subtle taste of grasshoppers and mealworms was overpowered by the sweetness of chocolate and marshmallows.
Currently, Andy Holcroft and other entrepreneurs selling insect-based foods are limited in their range and can only offer consumers dried crawling creatures from countries such as Holland and Canada, where commercial breeding of arthropods has been established on a small scale. Raising insects for human consumption is now perfectly legal in the United Kingdom, but no enterprise is known to be doing this yet.
Experts are divided on whether existing legislation governing traditional livestock breeding applies to insects. Holcroft hopes that one day he will be able to grow the insects he needs on his own farm.
“At present, we have to obtain our insects frozen or dried from abroad,” he says. “If we could use fresh insects, they could be prepared differently, for example, sautéed to achieve various flavors.”
Others doubt the profitability of insect farming in the United Kingdom due to the climate. Skeptics also point to the cost of raw materials as another serious obstacle. The wholesale price of the cheapest mealworms is £45 per kilogram, which is 10 times the cost of ground beef. Crickets are twice as expensive as mealworms, and locusts are twice as expensive as crickets.
It is quite likely that the price of traditional meat will rise in the future. But it is currently impossible to calculate how much insect protein will cost if enterprises producing it on an industrial scale are created. For now, Andy Holcroft hopes to attract enough gastronomic adventurers to turn Grub Kitchen into a commercially successful establishment.
“The main problem, not only for my business but for the entire edible insect industry, is not getting people to try them. The trick is to get the customer to come back – just for the food.”