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A brief history of eating insects in the West.

How did we lose our taste for insects, and now that we value nutrition more are insects coming back?

In Europe, the small humble insect had been regarded as a pest, the annoyance we spray on when eating our cabbage to prevent a hole’d salad. God forbid! However back to biblical times, far before the advent of modern fertilisers and straight cucumbers, we had a far different relationship with our farmyard adversaries. 

Here is a brief history of Insect eating in the West.(2000BC - 2019)

As the big Empires of Rome and Greece took us out of our hunter gatherer days where eating insects was part of daily diet, the first knowledge of insects as an ingredient emerge. 

Aristotle, with the smack of the lips, says of the female locusts, caught before the depositing of their eggs, and fried in sweet oil: “Quo tempore gustu suavissimo sunt”— “at which time they are very sweet.” 

The bible contains reference to an insect eating past. In Leviticus 11:22, it says "Even these of them ye may eat; the locust after his kind, and the bald locust after his kind, and the beetle after his kind, and the grasshopper after his kind." Interestingly to this day insects are not listed in the blacklisted dietary requirements of any religion on earth.

As the empires fell and western civilisation fell into darkness and servitude, needs and tastes became that of the landowners. Hunting was the rage and big banquets with big catches impressed tables greater than the small insect. Shooting game and showing off!  

By now, the transition to an agricultural society was well upon us. We found ways to prevent insects and other so called pests from affecting the crop such as burning insects to discourage others or even lighting fires to scare them away. Tastes and appetites were changing and quietly the insect had no market in the diet of Europeans. The glutinous Victorians were busy filling their bellies with spoonfuls of meat and it’s fat in a time where one’s wealth was displayed by ones girth. The great planes of the Americas played host to cattle and all Europe began to incorporate exotic spices into many of the dishes we know today. 

During the colonial times, opinion of insects was mostly that of the malaria giving mosquito, remedied at the time by the consumption of Gin and Tonic. Insects were more of an annoyance than a curiosity to eat, very unlike the peoples they were colonising where the practise of eating insects had been normal for millennia.

Globally today 2 billion people eat insects regularly. So how did we turn off eating something the rest of the world still enjoys? By the end of the 20th century eating food out of necessity was gone. The culinary heritage of Europe was more accessible to everyone than ever and it was marketed and available to everyone. Naturally everyone wanted to eat it. What is different now? The world we inhabit has changed and limited land and resources are a new reality and challenge. Our dietary needs are also different, we are drinking less, eating less meat and less sugar. We understand the connection between what we put in our bodies and how we feel. As such the west is embracing insects as a normality once more now that their nutritional benefits are clear.

With insect farms popping up all over Europe and the States, especially in the Netherlands, the industry is ripe for revolution with the cost of production to decrease with the ever increasing demand. An interesting change after a thousand year break. Today Cricket Flour is available with high quality protein and nutritional benefits, often at a higher percentage to the industrialised equivalent. 

Tom from the Cricket Hop Co mentions “minimising the environmental impact and maximising the natural nutritional benefits is a formula people are turning on to.” British chefs Tom and Hayden produce their edible cricket protein flour in Vietnam where the climate allows the most protein dense insect in the world to be produced. 

Hayden said “ Crickets are the most efficient delivery vehicle for protein, which is why we believe they are the future of the edible insect industry. They also taste great, the Aberdeen Angus for the insect connoisseur” 

Very soon could you be buying your next Sainsbury’s baguette with Cricket Flour?

You can buy their Cricket Flour powder on Amazon UK and learn about their process here - www.crickethop.com/home

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