• Question: we ate meal worms in lesson, do you think in the future people will be eating insects for protein?

    Asked by anon-176049 to Stephen, Jenny on 14 Jun 2018. This question was also asked by anon-176052.
    • Photo: Jenny Shepperson

      Jenny Shepperson answered on 14 Jun 2018:


      Wow that’s a pretty cool lesson!!! How did they taste??
      I don’t know much about this – but, as far as I known, it takes less resources (e.g. we need less food) to create the same amount of protein from insects than we need for conventional meat like cows, sheep, and pigs. It can also be better for the environment because it produces less greenhouse gases then farming animals. So – from an environmental perspective, it would be great if we started eating insects for protein!
      I have never eaten insects though – I think one challenge might be persuading people that they are tasty??
      Some have also suggested we might start eating more seaweed and more jellyfish in the future – I once tried dried jellyfish – it wasn’t bad actually!

    • Photo: Stephen MacKenzie

      Stephen MacKenzie answered on 15 Jun 2018:


      Hi there, great question. Jenny is right about the resources needed to produce insects. To be honest it seems more likely to me that insects will be widely used in feed for livestock animals rather than directly for humans, lots of research is going on at the moment to try and make this a commercial reality. There are definitely parts of the world where people already eat insects, but it seems unlikely to me that western societies will really go for this any time soon. There doesn’t seem to be much evidence that people want to….

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