Insect Dishes Creeping up to Food Menu

You must have seen flying termites swarming around the bulb lit in your drawing room, and lizards gulping them to have their fill for the day during the monsoon. But it is not a delicacy for them only, it also tickles the palates of those of us who love animal proteins.

Traditional Japanese dish Sushi, which is prepared with rice and raw fish, was in the initial stages baulked at by the sophisticates but now it is a much sought-after dish all over the world, including in our country.

Sushi with cooked fish is also an option here, keeping in view the cultural do’s and don’ts. It may surprise you and create a nauseating feeling when you read this story that a host of insects and flies, which are being eaten by different communities, are also making their way to the menus at restaurants across the world as an alternative source of proteins to poultry, beef, pork and mutton.

As climate change is affecting the rearing of livestock due to shrinking cultivation of fodder, insects are likely to replace them on the plate in the time to come.  Insects require less space, water and other resources to produce the same amount of protein. Besides, insects can easily be insulated from changing temperatures.

Insects eating buffs say that it is healthy, good for the environment and their taste is out of this world. The insect food industry has developed into a global market of millions of dollars. It was estimated at $1.35 billion dollars last year and is expected to grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate of 25.1% between this year and 2030, says US consulting firm Grand View Research.

As many as 2,300 insect species are edible. People get most of them in their prey. But a few of them are cultivated in a big way in the U.S., France, Thailand, Denmark, China, South Africa, Canada and Delhi in other countries. 

Changes in perceptions of body care and the need for proteins have opened up a vast potential prospect for insect foods, with a high percentage of protein in them, for consumption by humans, say nutritionists.  

For example, an Indian weaver ant has 55.27% protein, while beef 26%, chicken 27 % and rabbit 33%. Lobeno Mozhui, a zoologist from Nagaland University with a Ph.D in the nutritional value and medicinal uses of edible insects, told The Hindu, “In traditional Naga societies, insects are alternative protein and energy sources. They are considered more valuable in terms of nutrient content than any other conventional meat source. For instance, after heavy manual labour, the tribal people consume cooked dragon nymphs and water larvae to rejuvenate themselves.”

She emphasises how SDG 2 (Sustainable Development Goal 2), a branch of the United Nations that focuses on eradicating global hunger, is today seriously looking into edible insects as an answer to rising malnutrition, and its Food and Agriculture Organization has already started advocating edible insects The focus is not only on insects, but the entire traditional food system — to achieve food security, improved nutrition, and sustainability. “So, we all need to come out of the disgust factor and focus on what is healthy,” says Mozhui.

But in India, the insect food culture faces too many taboos with vegetarianism on the rise in the last few years. Politics of vegetarianism dominate the food scene. Vigilante groups force meat vendors to down their shutters on Hindu festivals. Governments are also promoting vegetarianism based on their perception that meat is a non-Hindu food.

When Mumbai-based Geetika Saikia’s show titled Menu Okese was streamed on the Netflix five years ago in 2020, there was a huge protest asking her to remove the videos of edible silkworm pupae from her Facebook page and telling her “To go back to China to eat these insects”.

Though Hindu law book Manusmriti recommends eating of meat, particularly during the Shradha rite, and even Hindutva idealogue Veer Savarkar says that there is no harm in eating animal flesh. Hindus should choose their foods, veg or non-veg on the basis of the needs for their bodies, not otherwise, Savarkar says.

Also, insect eating has long been part and parcel of our food culture. It may be surprising for those who have cocooned themselves into their own worlds, as many 500 varieties of insects are eaten in Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Tamil Nadu and the Andaman Islands, says Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE). 

Winged termites, weaver ants, adult bees and bee larvae, wasps, crickets, silkworm pupae and larvae, beetles, grasshoppers, locusts, snails and giant water bugs are on their menus.

The U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization in a paper published in 2013 titled ‘Edible Insects: Future Prospects for Food and Nutritional Security,’ says that insects have the potential to become one of the staple foods of the future.

Another study by life science consulting firm Halloran has found that edible insects not only fulfil daily energy and nutrient needs, but also contain essential amino acids, polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fatty acids, zinc, iron, and fibre, and functional components like chitin, phenols, antioxidants, and antimicrobial peptides, which have potential benefits for immune support and disease prevention in humans.

However, nutritionists in India are still to catch up with the new protein alternative discourse despite the tribes in different parts of the country eating insects with a variety of recipes for a long time.

How much time insect proteins will take to travel from the traditional communities’ kitchens to the starters and main course of the 21st Century foodie can only be speculated. But the journey has begun. The last four decades have seen huge changes in the choices of foods adolescents and youths make, with foreign fast foods occupying prime space on their plates. Insects' foods will get there as well, once people live down their religious and cultural taboos to them.