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Entomophagy, the practice of eating insects as food, has recently been receiving more widespread recognition along with growing public interest in adopting more sustainable diets. Compared with meats, edible insects taste just as good, are equally or even more nutritious, and have a significantly smaller environmental footprint. However, the adoption of entomophagy is still limited, particularly in Western countries. Considering the environmental benefits of entomophagy and its potential contribution to food security, it is important to understand factors that can influence the willingness to try edible insects as meat substitutes, and policy tools that can encourage the adoption of entomophagy.
- heuristics
- behavioural biases
- sustainability
- conservation
- food policy
1. Introduction
Climate change, food production, and human health share a vicious relationship; food production contributes to climate change which endangers human health, while exacerbating food insecurity in many parts of the world and directly contributing to the spread of infectious diseases [1]. As the global population continues to increase, expected to reach 9.7 billion by 2050 [2], the impacts of the meat industry pose a growing threat to our natural environment as well as food security. Meat production comes with a host of serious repercussions such as acid rain, climate change due to greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs), deforestation, soil erosion, desertification, loss of plant biodiversity, and water pollution [3][4]. With global meat consumption forecasted to increase by 75% from 2017 to 2050, when 465 million tonnes of meat are predicted to be consumed annually [4][5], developing alternative protein sources is crucial for a future of food production that is sustainable and secure [4][6][7].
Entomophagy, the practice of eating insects as food, has recently been receiving more widespread recognition along with growing public interest in adopting more sustainable diets [8]. Entomophagy is not a recent concept; for millennia, a variety of insects have been a part of people’s regular diets as a food naturally high in protein and micronutrients [9]. In Asia, Africa, and Latin America, over two billion people consume insects regularly [10], with approximately 2000 species recorded to have been consumed globally [11]. For example, up to 50% of dietary protein consumed in Central Africa is sourced from insects; similarly, an increasing demand for edible insects in Thailand has led to an industrial shift from collection from the wild to construction of mass-rearing facilities [9].
Although meat consumption in developing countries has been increasing fast, per capita meat consumption in developed countries is much higher, especially in North America (see Figure 6.6 in [12]). However, Western countries have been largely reluctant to adopt edible insects as human food. Insects are commonly associated with uncleanliness in many Western cultures, and most consumers are opposed to their consumption [13]. Such preconceptions are implanted through food neophobia, i.e., the fear of eating unfamiliar foods, and a culture that views insects as pests and a marker of filth when associated with food. Additionally, while there is some research on profiling consumers that are more accepting of entomophagy in European countries such as Belgium, Italy, and Portugal [14][15][16][17][18], there is limited research involving controlled experiments testing interventions to improve consumers’ attitude towards entomophagy.
2. Environmental Benefits of Entomophagy
The environmental benefits of substituting meat protein with edible insects have been demonstrated in past studies on entomophagy [4][6][7][10][19][20]. The environmental advantages of insect farming can be categorised into four areas: high feed conversion efficiency, decreased land use, reduced water use, and lower GHGs.
Traditional meat production is highly inefficient; accounting for grazing pastures and land used to grow livestock feed, livestock is responsible for 77% of farming land worldwide while producing only 18% of the world’s calories [21]. Land use of mealworms, a common edible insect, is much lower than that of chicken (130 to 185% higher), pork (157 to 249% higher) and beef (689 to 1312% higher) [20]. Similarly, the water usage of insect production is much less than that of traditional livestock. A comparison of litres of water needed per gram of protein found that insects need 56 times less water than beef, 28.5 times less than pork, and 17 times less than chicken [22]. The FAO stated that agriculture is responsible for 70% of global freshwater withdrawals [23]. While the most direct form of water usage from livestock is feed production, the consequences of water pollution cannot be understated. In the U.S., the livestock sector produces 55% of total freshwater erosion in addition to pollution by pesticides (37% of total pesticide-produced pollution) and antibiotics (50% of total antibiotic-produced pollution) [24].
Compared to that of mealworms, the global warming potentials (GWPs) per kilogram of edible protein of chicken (32 to 167% higher), pork (51 to 287% higher), and beef (452 to 1151% higher) are much greater. In comparison, for 1 kg of edible insects compared to the same amount of meat from ruminants such as beef, insects produce up to 100 times less GHGs [25]. Evidently, compared to beef, cattle, and chicken, insects have the smallest overall carbon footprint and are a protein source much more suitable for climate change mitigation. Entomophagy presents a sustainable strategy to decreasing the environmental harm of people’s food choices; research found that if meat consumption was halved and replaced with insects, this alone would free up approximately 1680 million hectares of land, equivalent to 70 times the size of the United Kingdom [10].
3. Improving Food Security through Entomophagy
With more than two billion people worldwide that are malnourished, global hunger is a serious challenge that is expected to worsen as population growth coupled with climate change undermine the planet’s ability to fulfil the nutritional needs of the human population [26]. Furthermore, protein deficiency is a longstanding issue that disproportionately affects low-income people worldwide [8]. Entomophagy could be a potential component of the planet’s strategy to resolving the global climate crisis.
While nutritional composition varies by insect species, data from 236 edible insect species demonstrated that they sufficiently fulfil humans’ requirements for energy, protein, amino acids, lipids, and several minerals and vitamins; in particular, insects contain a high iron and zinc content compared to ruminant meats, especially valuable in improving the issue of malnutrition in developing countries, which experience significant levels of zinc and iron deficiencies [11][27][28].
In comparison to Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF) such as milk powder that must be imported and is rarely locally available in malnourished communities, insects can be reared directly at the country where relief is needed. Particularly in regions where cultivation of vertebrate livestock is infeasible or unaffordable, edible insects are less resource-intensive and more resistant to drought and disease than more traditional livestock [8]. Consequently, entomophagy presents both a low-cost and efficient method of improving livelihoods and regular diets among vulnerable people [11]. There is precedent of substantial production systems used to produce insects for biological control, the technology of which could be applied to develop systems to produce edible insects on a large scale without much difficulty [29].
However, consumers in Western societies are generally detached from the immediate and severe need for nutritional security in other parts of the world. More than seven times the grain directly eaten by the entire U.S. population is used as feed for livestock just in America [30]. By 1997, 85% of the world’s grain supply was being produced and imported for livestock feed in industrialised nations [31]. It is unrealistic to assume that food insecurity in less-developed countries is simply a distribution problem [7]. If we do not alter our food choices and choose to continue to ingest meat at the current rate, by 2050 we will need to have increased meat production by 73% to feed the potential population of 9.7 billion, an impossibly dangerous feat considering the environmental consequences [26]. Appealing to Western consumers’ environmental consciousness and improving their awareness of the potential for entomophagy may be an effective strategy to sensitise the benefits of eating insects as a substitute for meat, providing a direct and personal connection between consumer action and environmental impact through food choices.
4. Factors Influencing the Willingness to Try Entomophagy
The current literature has contrasting results on the subject of Western countries’ attitudes towards consuming insects. For example, a study in Belgium in 2011 found that there was little to no acceptance in eating insects as a protein food source, with a mere 5% of the sample being willing to eat insect protein [32]. In contrast, 19.3% of a sample of 368 Belgian meat consumers were willing to adopt insects as a “foodstuff” and while this is not the majority, it revealed that there was a portion of the consumer population that expressed readiness towards entomophagy [14].
The differences in the findings regarding people’s attitudes on entomophagy in Western countries can be attributed to a few potential factors. First, past studies with results wherein the majority of participants expressed aversion to edible insects did not include tasting sessions and subjects formed their opinions based solely on non-experimental information such as emotions, memories, or self-purported knowledge [32][33]. Megido, Gierts, Blecker, Brostaux, Haubruge, Alabi and Francis [17] identified knowledge of entomophagy and prior experience as two major factors affecting subjects’ acceptance of insect-based food products. Therefore, consumer knowledge and experience construct significantly impacted general attitudes towards insect-based food, consistent with previous theories in consumer research [18].
Second, general attitudes were found to be a strong indicator and key factor of participants’ willingness to buy edible insects, reflecting Northern and Central European participants’ lack of exposure to insects as a novel food [18]. For instance, Verbeke’s research identified food neophobia and meat-related attitudes as influencers for the willingness to try entomophagy for people in Belgium [16]; Florenca, Correia, Costa and Guine [16] found that food products containing processed insects had a greater chance of being accepted compared to whole insects, which aligned with consumers’ attitudes to traditional animal meats.
The current literature also illustrates the effects of environmental consciousness on people’s food choices. Consideration of environmental impact is one of the key determinants of consumer acceptance of novel foods [34]. While there is limited research in this area, a few studies indicated that motivation towards sustainable food consumption was a notable influence on people’s adoption of edible [11][14][35]. While Mancini et al. [36] inferred that a seminar on edible insects mitigated feelings of disgust, this research did not have a control group to ensure whether the change was caused by the intervention; additionally, the seminar was a combination of the ecological, health, and gastronomic aspects of entomophagy, making it difficult to conclude that the results were a direct result of environmental information [36]. Further investigation is needed along this promising line of research.
