To save our planet, it’s ‘six legs good, four legs bad’
CREEPY-crawlies and grasshoppers could help to save the world from climate change – if only people could be convinced to eat them.
People should stop being squeamish and chow down on insects to cut greenhouse gas emissions dramatically, food waste group BusinessWaste.co.uk said.
But Tree Council of Ireland vice president Éanna Ní Lamhna said Irish people won’t be easily convinced.
She told the Irish Daily Mail: ‘I don’t think you’re ever going to be able to sell insects to brainwashed Irish and British people.
‘Delicious is in your brain. What you might consider to be delicious, somebody else might consider to be absolutely appalling. So delicious is a brainwashed concept.’ She continued: ‘Insects are eaten all over Asia. They’re eaten in Africa and eaten in Central and South America. And the people there eat them all the time and like them.
‘We won’t eat horses or won’t eat donkeys. Italians have donkey sausages and French people eat horses and in Ireland and Britain we think this is outrageous.’
Meanwhile, Massimo Reverberi, founder of insect food start-up Bugsolutely, said making an argument for environmentalism was the wrong approach. He said people should be convinced that they can enjoy the same delicious meals with insects as ingredients, while health and environmental benefits are a bonus.
Mr Reverberi said: ‘It’s very hard to convince people to eat something if they think it doesn’t taste good. And actually, insects taste good, they taste really good. I’ve tried a lot of them.’
The BusinessWaste report said two billion people eat
Tasty: Cricket anyone?
bugs every day in Asia, Africa, and South and Central America. The report added that by 2050 the global population will grow by to 9.7billion, leaving us with two billion more mouths to feed, and bugs could be a solution as there are 1.4billion insects to every person. BusinessWaste spokesman Mark Hall said eating insects would help the environment. ‘Farming bugs for food takes up a lot less space and is greener than regular meat production. With evidence like that, bring on the beetle bolognese,’ he added.