The Importance Of Entomophagy

Each year millions of people are added to the world’s population and concern is increasingly growing about shortages and environment. As the Organisation of the United Nations frequently reminds us, global population is expected to reach 9 billion inhabitants by 2050 and current food production will have to double to feed all of us. What can be done to prevent hunger? This is a question that numerous food security experts have in mind. According to them, expanding agriculture is not a good idea because farming requires a great surface of land as well as large amounts of water but both are scarce. Therefore, another alternative needs to be found and they have discovered one: entomophagy. As defined in the Oxford Dictionary, entomophagy is “the practise of eating insects, especially by people”. This is not a joke, edible insects may be the future of food and entomophagy may be the key to food security and environment issues. We would certainly gain significant advantages from integrating insects in our daily diet.

First of all, what are insects? Following the description given by the Encyclopaedia Britannica, insects are arthropods that have a segmented body divided onto three parts: the head (bearing the eyes and the antennae),

Indeed, breeding insects is more eco-friendly than breeding animals. The Economist published a graphic showing the green side of insect cultivation. The graphic compares the amount of food that insects consume with the amount of food they produce. The ratio obtained clearly shows that insects are a much more efficient food source than ordinary livestock. For example, cows need 8 kilograms of food to produce 1 kilogram of meat whereas crickets only need 1,7 kilograms of food to produce the same amount of meat. Insects are also deemed green because they also require less land and less water, which results in lower greenhouse emissions (Davis,