Sustainable cooking means getting creative.
In 2013, the United Nations published a voluminous report that delivered a stark warning about the future of the planet — and proposed a surprising solution. |
To feed a fast-growing population and take pressure off the natural ecosystem, the study said, the global food system urgently needed an overhaul. "We need to find new ways of growing food," it declared. |
And one of the most sensible ideas for change, the authors proposed, was right under our feet: insects. Specifically, eating them. |
The report, "Edible Insects: Future prospects for food and feed security," argued that raising and consuming bugs offered some environmental advantages over conventional animal protein sources and could help to address the intersecting crises of environmental degradation, climate change and food insecurity. |
The report has inspired a wave of edible-insect entrepreneurs banking on a future in which insects are a mainstream food, not only for humans but also for pets and farm animals. |
And in recent years, the warnings about the need to overhaul the global food system and our diets, especially to help curb soaring greenhouse gas emissions, have only gotten louder and more urgent. |
In an Opinion video today, we explore the arguments for eating insects and take a look at the small but growing industry that has sprung up around this notion. It's the third in a series of films that examines our troubled food system and the need to modify it. |
Rearing insects for food and feed is just one of a suite of systemic and behavioral changes that we should consider if we're going to have any hope of reducing our food system's impacts on climate change and the environment, not to mention improving global nutrition. But no matter how rational the bug-eating argument might seem, there's of course an enormous obstacle standing in the way of widespread adoption: disgust. In much of the world, people are repulsed by the idea of insects, and even more so by the idea of putting them in their mouths. |
As the video shows, however, dietary preferences are, in part, a cultural construct and can change. (Raw fish, anyone?) |
Watch the video and — who knows? — the next time you spot a cockroach ambling across your kitchen counter, instead of reaching for your can of Raid, you may find yourself firing up your wok. |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
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