There are crossing pathways on every journey and my first dreaded time to choose one starts here: when you immerse yourself in literature and media reports- you can’t help but question the “unquestionable”- who to believe?
While insect eating may not be the most controversial of topics, it is undoubtedly a very varied and somewhat mysterious one: even those best informed as anthropolgists, food educators, entomologists, scientists, nutritionalists, ecoologists, academics and even business owners cannot agree on what role insects will play in our diets in the future- and in saying “our” I mean Humans as a whole. But perhaps rather than asking if entomophagy will sink or swim in the diets of the future, we should be attempting to stop it from being thrown in the deep end.
Before jumping to any conclusions- investigations into cultural eating habits through both time and space are essential. And before you go off and stuff your face with chocolate (as I probably will at some point today) let me leave you with this lingering thought: what is it that makes you eat what you eat, when you eat, how you eat? A grumbling stomach? those television adversts? just plain routine? the prospect of indulging in something quite delicious? We need to start by identifying what it is that controls our food habits if we hope to even imagine changing them.
