Subscription 790/year or 190/quarter

Are insects the new meat? 

Insects we once watched with disgust are now being highlighted as the solution to the world's food shortages. Can insects really save the world?




(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)

Bugs
Directed by Andreas Johnsen

 

I Bugs we follow Ben Reade and Josh Evans on a world-wide journey into the tasty world of insects. Based in Copenhagen, at Noma chef Rene Redzepi's Nordic Food Lab, they set out on the mission to find out how to prepare some of the 1900 edible insect species that exist, and create delicacies worthy of a top-notch restaurant. The backdrop is also political: Insects are constantly emerging as a sustainable alternative to meat, and as something we both should and must eat more of in the future. So Josh and Ben, who later leave the project and are replaced by Roberto Flore, taste their way through caterpillars, termite queens, flies and grasshoppers, find everyday foods and delicacies, hunt for ant cubs and squeeze honey straight out of the bale of African wild bees. From feeling the agony of eating insects, they eventually fork over everything they come across, fearless and curious – and along the way they ask themselves whether it is true that insects are the sustainable source of protein in the future. Because if insects are also introduced into the current food system driven by big companies with dollar signs in their eyes – will it still be sustainable food?

396b88bc-3f11-4fa2-9daf-cbe46bb80b52Problematic. It is a thought-provoking journey to witness. From the enthusiasm and outbursts of joy to discovering a whole new world of flavors and consistencies, to the disappointment and disillusionment that strikes them as they realize that for most players it is still about money first and foremost, and that the insect industry is as little ethical as the rest of the food industry. In Kenya, they get to go with insect hunters at work. A young boy of twelve shows them into a large structure where bright lights should attract locusts. Here he goes hunting between seven in the evening and seven in the morning. The bright light hurts their eyes, and the next morning they wake up with a severe case of snow blindness. When they come to the hospital, young, blind men stand in line – and, well, at home in the lab in Denmark, the conclusion is that they cannot uncritically recommend people to eat more insects when production currently harms people. They are constantly debating the dilemma, and are uncertain whether they can defend lifting insects to a gastronomic delicacy when it is likely to help normalize it as food and increase demand. For who will stand in line to profit from it, and at what human and organic cost?

There is something deeply human that happens in the meeting between the indigenous peoples' practical knowledge and the master's technical finesse.

A learned aversion. There is no hallelujah mood to track when it comes to the insects that provide the solution to the ecological challenges of food production. But still, there is something life-threatening about the film. There is something deeply human that happens in the meeting between the indigenous peoples' practical knowledge and the master's technical finesse. The pursuit of food has been a part of our existence for as long as we have existed. It's not long since we started going to the store to buy imported garden blueberries instead of going out into the woods and picking them ourselves, when the woods are full. I myself grew up partly self-sufficient, and the food came from the kitchen garden, the forest and the sea.

After a tour around the Earth, Ben is back in Europe, more specifically the Netherlands. He and Josh are going to cook with farmed insects, and as he squeezes out black rubbish from some of them and cleans them thoroughly with his hands, he tells of the journey they have been on. "Once, I was food poisoned," he says. "That's when I ate a burger in Australia. And when I think about it, that burger is the most unnatural I ate on the whole trip. "

He never got the insects sick. But it is nevertheless the ones we are disgusted with, despite the fact that we eat bees (honey) without thinking about it, or consider snails from the French kitchen to be a delicacy. And what about shrimp, sea insects? They go downhill on every pier along Norway, every single summer. Our western aversion to insects is revealed as learned and paradoxical. You don't get sick of insects, but you've seen the junk food documentary Supersize Me, you know what the Western fast food diet can do to your body in no time. We are affected by lifestyle diseases and obesity, while consuming enormous resources to produce nutrient-poor foods that trigger the brain's addiction center. The fear of helping to make a sustainable food source like insects into something alluring for an industry and a food system they can't go for is a clear and growing concern for the chefs.

It is great to see a sustainability documentary that does not insist on finding the solution.

It's the economy, stupid. It is great to see a sustainability documentary that does not insist on finding the solution. For the truth is that it is not the food we need to change – but how we produce and distribute it. Exactly, it is such a complex issue that one documentary is hardly enough. When diversity disappears in favor of large monocultures – be it soy, corn or large industrialized breeding of cows and pigs – we are left with a vulnerable food dish and an ecosystem on the brink of collapse. Insects are sustainable as food only as long as they are a natural part of a diet based on local ingredients and local conditions. And while the FAO – the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization – insists that we need to increase food production by 70 percent by 2050 to saturate the world's nine billion, the UN Food Program says we already have enough food to feed 12 billion people – the is just completely misdirected.

So it's not about insects versus meat. It's about profit versus sustainability. Nestlé, Monsanto, Kraft Foods and General Mills cannot make insects a sustainable food – because the bottom line for them money is not the future of the planet.

Are insects the sustainable food of the future? In an ideal world: Yes, as a natural part of a varied, diverse and locally based diet. In the real world? We'll see.

gideonsen@gmail.com
gideonsen@gmail.com
Works with environment and ecology.EPost hannegide@gmail.com

You may also like