Four Western Myths about Eating Insects

Posted on February 25, 2015 by insectrecipes No comments

Insects have always been viewed as a taboo food in Western cultures. Reality shows like Survivor and Fear Factor dare people to eat beetles, worms, termites, etc. However, these challenges are lost on a large portion of the world’s people who eat insects on a regular basis.

Like most taboos across cultures, Western fears of eating insects are fueled by myths. Here are a few common misconceptions that keep insects a creepy crawly aversion in America today.

Humans weren’t meant to eat bugs.

If the more than 2 billion people around the world who eat insects aren’t enough to convince you, then take it from our hunter-gather ancestors. Insects were a common part of the foraging diet for 100,000 years before we invented agriculture. As we switched to mostly farming for food resources, most aspects of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle became viewed as primitive, including having insects in the diet. Compared to how long humans have been around, agriculture is actually a pretty recent invention. Our stomachs evolved on an insect diet, and are still adapted to it today.

Insects carry more disease than other foods.

Western fears of insect disease are pretty understandable, especially because of the scary ones out there like Lyme’s disease from ticks. We even have a medical specialty dedicated to the study of invertebrate disease. However, of the millions of insect species in the world, only a miniscule fraction of them are responsible for spreading disease. Compared to the most common farm animals (beef, pork and poultry), insects actually have a very low likelihood of disease transfer.

Insects are a last resort food for starving people.

People often see insects as an inferior food source compared to common meats. Because of this misconception, Westerners associate insect consumption with living on the edge. People who are starving eat insects as a last resort when better food sources are unavailable. On the surface, beef looks like a very hearty and nutritious food, but in reality, insects outperform traditional food sources in nearly every way. Insects are more nutritious in terms of protein, other vitamins, and minerals. The only category where traditional meats prevail is in amount of saturated fat. In reality, it’s the bug eaters who are getting the higher quality diet.

I never have and never will eat bugs!

This is the biggest myth of all. You have absolutely eaten insects before, and you definitely will again. USDA rules work to prevent large-scale ‘contamination’ of foods, but you’d be surprised how much allowance these regulations have. For example, the USDA currently allows 2 maggots per 100 grams of canned tomato juice and 10 flies (and 35 eggs) in an 8oz box of raisins. With macaroni, they’re pretty vague: no more than 225 insect pieces per 225 grams. Have you ever worn red lipstick or eaten red colored candy? These products are made from cochineal, a South American insect used to produce red dye.

We can fight against the insect diet all we want, dreaming up and believing misinformation to keep it taboo. No matter what we do, at the end of the day, we’re still going to have some bugs in our mouths.