Viva Brighton Issue #56 October 2017

INTERVIEW
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Edible insects
A crunchy solution to a global problem
Many people in the West eat a lot more
meat and dairy products than they really
need. In rich countries, protein is not
normally one of the nutrients that people
tend to be lacking, but if everybody’s eating
beef and pork and so on, on a regular basis,
it becomes unsustainable. It takes a lot of
resources to produce a kilogram of beef. Of
course, it depends on whether the beef that
you’re eating is fed on grain that’s produced
in Latin America, or if it’s grass-fed beef. But
either way, it’s a big animal, it’s a warmblooded
animal, so it takes a lot of energy just
to keep the animal alive in order to produce a
kilogram of meat that we can consume.
Insects are cold-blooded. This means
the conversion rate between their feed
and food that we can consume, the ratio of
input to output, is much better compared
to traditional livestock, especially large
animals like cows. In terms of their bodily
content, insects are basically meat, a little bit
of fat and some trace mineral elements, and
once you’ve taken off the hard skin, they’re
nutritionally quite good for you. In many
parts of the world, people already consume
insects as part of their diet. Not normally
a major part; it might be seasonal, it might
be very small-scale. But certainly if you’ve
ever travelled to places like Vietnam, you’ve
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