FRIENDS DON'T LET FRIENDS EAT INSECTS

Somehow we're still on the insect-eating thing. Now we're on to a group project. For this project, we started by adopting the perspective of the prompt article. Then, assuming everything in the article to be accurate and honest – and that we know better than our learners – we employed the teacher-centred hypodermic (cognitivist-behaviourist) model as a means of achieving behaviour modification.

Nobody was asking for any of this, least of all our interviewees, and there is little evidence forwarded in the prompt article for why anyone would. (This is why the FAO and others speak of the need to “create demand” for the eating of insects.) In the case of this assignment, insect eating is an ideological preference, based on essentially no information or even any dialogue, but is instead one simply foisted upon our would-be learners by people acting like they know better.

Asking questions, about any aspect of this insect-eating business, yields either critical contradictions or crisp, indubitable refutations. If we had gone through a design process, which we did not, it may have been possible to conclude that our learners were ill-informed about the eating of insects but there’s no chance we would have concluded (with our starting premise [the premise of the article]) that eating insects is both a need and should be desirable (…for anyone who isn’t obviously a xenophobic imperialist.)

Perhaps most ridiculous is the framing of western culture’s distaste for insects being at best irrational or ignorant or otherwise an ill-concealed form of racism. This is, to put it plainly and academically, bullshit. Mosquitoes, fleas, flies, ticks, termites, cockroaches, bedbugs, and lice (most of the insects humans regularly encounter) are severe pests that have plagued our species and countless others since time immemorial. Many are key vectors harbouring some of the most pestilent pathogens ever known. Those that don’t are commonly poisonous or venomous, will sting or bite, or will otherwise release an irritant odour or other material – because (why?) they don’t want to be eaten (!) Further still, as you move away from those equatorial and warm Mediterranean regions (where insects are more commonly eaten) insects are smaller, congregate in fewer numbers, and are typically present only seasonally. None of this encourages harvesting or consumption (Van Huis, et al, 2013, p. 36-37). And, even according to entomophagy proselytizers, most bugs don’t… actually… taste good… and are best consumed with their taste and texture altered or entirely concealed by being ground into a powder to be added as protein filler to smoothies and baked goods.

Worst of all, none of the nutritional claims I’ve been able to find in journals, op-eds, or insect food websites are corroborated by outside, unbiased, or even just publicly available sources such as Health Canada or USFDA data. And the ethical claims seem to be equally dubious and are refuted by pedestrian reason as well as by agencies concerned with ethical treatment of non-human animals.

In what sense, exactly, is killing and eating one animal (such as a goat or cow, who provides a tremendous spectrum of invaluable resources humans have cultivated for eons) worse than creating new industrial-scale ventures and “public demand” for the killing of uncountable gazillions of animals to get merely what is said to be the equivalent protein? (To me, this is like implementing a recycling program for “waste reduction” by first sending everyone in town new, non-recycled plastic buckets, boxes, cans, and bags; adding dozens of new diesel trucks, the largest on the road, to every home in the city; building a giant sorting plant (or maybe three) where a forest used to be or on top of a bog; and in doing so promoting more consumption. Same feel.)

If we’re attempting to be honest, “[e]ven between and within countries in the tropical zone, there can be large differences among ethnic groups on which insects are considered edible” (Meyer-Rochow, 2005). And “[t]he frequency of insect consumption around the world is poorly documented” (Van Huis et al., p.15, 2013). As far as I can tell, in places with the highest insect consumption that we know of, such as among indigenous tribes on the edge of the Congo in the Central African Republic, nearly 100 insect species are eaten; though this is a seasonal phenomena resulting from an absence of other options and still amounts to only 15% of these people’s protein intake (Roulon-Doko, 1998). And this is where you have an established culture, tradition, practice, and habitat for insect eating.

REFERENCES

Lundy ME, Parrella MP (2015) Crickets Are Not a Free Lunch: Protein Capture from Scalable Organic Side-Streams via High-Density Populations of Acheta domesticus. PLoS ONE 10(4): e0118785. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0118785

Roulon-Doko, P. (1998.) Chasse, cueillette et cultures chez les Gbaya de Centrafrique. Paris, L’Harmattan

Van Huis, A., Van Itterbeeck, J., Klinder, H., Mertens, E., Halloran, A., Muirand, G., & Vantomme, P (2013). Edible insects Future prospects for food and feed security - Food and Agriculture Org of the UN. Retrieved from: http://www.fao.org/3/i3253e/i3253e.pdf