2023-05-09 16:31:06
In the land of cheese and chocolate, children are encouraged to eat mealworms, grasshoppers and crickets.
Recently, students at a high school near Zurich gathered around a table laden with insect bites. Seasoned worms, crickets sprinkled with paprika and biscuits baked with flour made from ground crickets were quickly snapped up.
In 2017, Switzerland became the first European country to allow insects to be sold as human food following a lobbying campaign by edible insect startups. That was the easy part. Now companies have to win over those who have a gut feeling regarding eating insects. To do this, the industry recruits consumers who are easier to persuade to try something new: children. For the past four years companies visited Swiss schools to promote the benefits of eating insects. Young people are open to new things, and according to the companies, it is even possible that bugs will be an integral part of their diet at some point in their adulthood.
Until recently, Western civilization tried to keep insects away from food. Regulators saw them as a threat to human health. US Food and Drug Administration “pollution” classifies insects as unintended ingredients. But now more and more government officials, scientists and companies want insects to become part of the Western diet.
Insects are an environmentally friendly source of protein and vitamins and produce a fraction of the greenhouse gases associated with raising cattle, pigs and other farm animals. And according to scientists, they are safe to consume, provided they are raised in a controlled environment.
People in Asia, Africa and South America eat insects, from fried grasshoppers in Thailand to fried ants in Colombia. And now they want to introduce insect eating in the EU as well.
The European Union followed Switzerland in 2021 and has so far allowed four types of beetles for human consumption: the yellow mealworm, the wandering locust, the cricket and the small mealworm.
However, companies find it difficult to find a mass audience for their products in the West, as the majority of people are (rightly) disgusted by insects.
The insect-eating movement began in the West a decade ago, when the Food and Agriculture Organization published a 200-page report extolling the benefits of insects. Since then, investors have poured billions of dollars into insect breeding.
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