I've had this little book for a number of years now, ever since I attended an evening lecture run by the Natural History Museum in the late 1990s. The book was written by Vincent M Holt and first published in 1885 by the Museum itself.
The lecturer, whose name I've forgotten I'm afraid, made the very valid point that insects and other invertebrates outnumber us backboners by millions to one. And yet, on the whole, this vast source of protein is almost entirely unused. I say almost ... because we do eat some. In the UK, we eat crabs and prawns and lobsters, squid and octopus, cockles, scallops, mussels and oysters. But, for some unexplained reason, if it hasn't come out of the sea we go all weird and abhor the idea of popping it in our mouths.
Why this prejudice against land-based invertebrates? The lecturer (and I'll have to paraphrase here) made this very point:
'Prawns and locusts share a common ancestry. They are both arthropods with external skeletons and almost identical internal arrangements. However, one evolved to live on land and in the air; the other to live in the sea. Locusts eat grain and corn and green leaves and fruit. Prawns eat fish crap, bacteria and micro-organisms and quite frequently hang around near sewage outfalls. So which would you rather eat? They taste pretty much the same.'
And they do. I can vouch for that. This wasn't just a lecture, you see. It was a tasting. And during the evening I munched my way through deep fried honey ants, a wasabi-favoured giant water beetle, a kind of black pudding made from flies (kunga cake), chocolate coated crickets, a locust cocktail and various other treats. And they were all delicious. They really were.
I repeated the experience a couple of years ago during a sleep-over 'Dinosnores' event at the museum, thanks to an invite by my lovely friend, fly scientist Dr Erica McAlister. We munched our way through a smorgasbord of invertebrates and they were all really tasty.
On this occasion we were told that there would be far less famine in some Third World countries - particularly in Africa - if people started eating insects again. They used to be a staple part of the diet, like they still are in poorer parts of the Far East. However, this source of valuable protein has been lost to them ever since Christian Missionaries managed to persuade them that eating bugs was dirty and disgusting. A prejudice, incidentally, that was foisted onto most of you too.
Food prejudices are a curious phenomenon. Why are we so oddly particular in this country? We'll eat a lamb or a calf or a cow or a pig. But we won't eat a horse or a dog and most people will no longer eat healthy low-fat rabbit or squirrel - which is plentiful and cheap - and sales of delicious offal have crashed. Fish sales have also plummeted leading to a loss of fishmongers and a curiously blinkered palate. The vast majority of Brits eat nothing but cod, with an occasion bit of salmon or tuna. And yet, fish like John Dory, mackerel, gurnard, pollock and hake are fantastic.
And, incidentally, what's with the idea of 'dolphin-friendly tuna'? Why does no one seem to give a toss about the tuna? It's rampant species-ism.
It's no great surprise that the WWF chose a charismatic warm-blooded mammal - the giant panda - for its logo is it? Yet if you look at the list of critically endangered species (as opposed to just endangered) what do we find? The Antiguan Racer Snake, the Spotted Handfish, the Australian Ant, and the Southern Blue Fin Tuna. It seems that the closer something is related to us on the great evolutionary tree of life, the more we treasure it and the less we want to eat it.
So why not eat those creatures furthest from us?
Back in July I wrote a blogpost about my relationship with meat (see here). The fact is that we all need to eat less of it - both to help the planet and to improve animal welfare. I've cut my meat consumption considerably, which has also saved me money. So I'm definitely not averse to the idea of insects making up some of my diet.
Many edible insects are extremely nutritious. Mealworms - larvae of the darkling beetle - contain anything between 44% and 69% protein. That's more than either beef or chicken. And insects can be farmed at relatively low economic and environmental costs; they uses a fraction of the land and produce 1000-2700g less greenhouse gas emissions per kg than conventional livestock. Plus they breed incredibly quickly and have thousands of offspring with every generation. So, if we embraced the bug as a foodstuff, we'd not only have an almost endless supply of cheap, nutritious food but we'd also be helping to save the planet (and ourselves).
Insects alone (I'm not counting any other invertebrates) make up a huge proportion of the planet's total biomass; ants and termites alone make up over a quarter. There are, at this moment, around 200,000,000 insects for every human on Earth (a recent article in The New York Times claimed that the world holds 300 pounds of insects for every pound of humans). With so much potential food all around us there is no reason why anyone in the world should go hungry.
I suspect that our aversion to eating these things is partly based on appearance. But that can be quickly sorted out - after all, a monkfish tail doesn't look like the angler fish it came from and a sausage doesn't look like a pig.
Just changing the name can make a difference. Sales of Chilean sea bass went up significantly when they stopped calling it a Patagonian toothfish. And another fish, the orange roughy, sells much better now than it did when it was a slimehead. Even the humble megrim, a type of flatfish found in British waters, has recently been rebranded as 'Cornish sole'. That said, you'd need a good PR man to make this guy sound appealing.
Incidentally, I once saw bison sweetmeats (testicles) listed on a North Carolina menu as 'swinging beef'. That's creative marketing.
The trendsetting Mr Holt obviously figured this out for himself. He included recipes and suggested menus in his little green book using French names to make them sound like fine dining. Who could resist the lure of Boeuf aux chenilles (braised beef with caterpillars), Larves de guepes frites au rayon (wasp grubs fried in the comb), or the ultimate supper dish of Phalenes au parmesan (cheesy moths on toast)?
There is absolutely no difference between a prawn and a locust yet you'll pay for one and turn your nose up at the other. A lobster is just a giant woodlouse. And the snails you pay so much for in France are the same species as the ones in your back garden. Exactly the same - they're just bred to be a bit bigger and meatier.
So get out the garlic butter and tuck in.
You have nothing to lose but your species-ism and prejudices.
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