Eating edible insects is an idea that repels yet intrigues. Throughout human history there have been no food traditions based on insects, which are a subsistence food only in regions where food is scarce. The areas of the world where insects are considered edible are scattered patchily. In certain Asian enclaves, yes, and casu marzu – the cheese with maggots – is regarded by some as a delicacy: but that is no basis for generalising and saying that the Chinese and the Sardinians eat insects.

Curiosity and scepticism are growing in equal measure, not least because we are facing a frightening increase in the world's population and there will be a new hunt for food resources – new, unusual ones. In terms of sustainability, according to the first research examined by the FAO, insects would also be highly efficient at converting what they feed on (waste) into protein. From Wageningen University, in the heart of the Dutch food valley, one of the authors of the FAO report "Edible insects," Arnold van Huis, stated some time ago that "In the West we have a cultural bias and think that insects, simply because they are eaten in developing countries, cannot be good." Andrea Mascaretti, president of the scientific committee of the Salone cibo sicuro, told Annalisa Cavaleri during Expo Milan 2015: "Molluscs, crabs, lobsters and prawns, if we think about it carefully, don't look all that different up close from some insects. In Thailand, roasted scorpions and fried spiders are eaten and are considered genuine delicacies by the local population: they are arachnids widely found in Asian street food alongside insects such as crickets, locusts and silkworms, which are fried, roasted or stewed with spicy sauces. Termites and caterpillars are considered excellent food across much of Africa, while in Madagascar you can taste certain species of butterfly fried in batter. I could go on at length, because edible insects, according to the FAO, form part of the diet of 2 billion people – almost a third of the world's population."

Yet insects are by no means a traditional food. They are in fact considered novel food, and are therefore subject to new investigations and precautionary checks.

Insects and efficiency in protein production

Interviewed during Expo Milan 2015, Paul Vantomme, at the time coordinator and spokesperson for the FAO's Edible insects project (a position that was later, oddly, abolished within the FAO), explained: "It's not that in Africa all Africans eat insects, nor do all Chinese eat insects. Food choice is a cultural matter; there are many different cultures, including regional ones, within which the consumption of insects is accepted. In Italy, in Sardinia and in Puglia. We mustn't forget that when we were gatherers and hunters we ate insects for a million years, in all likelihood, and it never did us any harm. For European, or rather Western, sensibilities they are nonetheless unusual. The new point, for Europe, is the objectives that can be pursued. Waste reduction, new ingredients, new jobs. For example, we have enormous quantities of organic waste everywhere and don't know what to do with it, from manure to food scraps. Today it is turned into compost, which is worth two cents a kilogram. If we could use this organic waste to farm insects, we would have protein of high nutritional quality – with a yield of 20 to 30 per cent – that sells for one euro a kilogram. A fifty-fold gain."

Methods of insect farming

Also during the meeting at Expo Milan 2015, Paul Vantomme clarified: "Hunting and gathering are impossible for Europeans; they are no longer conceivable as a means of subsistence. We are talking about farmed insects. This is a new context – following the bees we domesticated long ago – that opens up new scenarios. I described the case of a Belgian company that collects fruit and vegetable waste from a supermarket chain in order to turn it into protein (only fruit and vegetable products, because it is still forbidden to use animal by-products, dairy, eggs and the like). And, today, I heard that insects can yield not only protein food additives but also good-quality fats and fibres such as chitin. In Italy too there is an enormous quantity of organic waste – you only need to walk around a supermarket to get an idea of it. By farming insects we would reduce waste, produce food efficiently and create jobs here, locally, not abroad."

Who already eats insects around the world

Not in large quantities, then, and it is rare for them to be the main dish, but people have long been eating insects. For survival (gathering tribes in Africa and in the Amazon), for gastronomic traditions that regard them as a delicacy (such as Thai cricket snacks or Mexican mezcal with a worm), or, like most Westerners, without even realising it (up to three hundred grams a year), hidden in tinned tomatoes and organic vegetables.

The eating of insects is nonetheless fairly widespread around the world

There are 1,400 species of insects considered edible and nearly a hundred countries where they are eaten: as many as 36 in Africa, 23 in the Americas, 29 in Asia and even 11 in Europe, according to the National Geographic Society; and there are at least 3,000 ethnic groups around the world that regard insects as a traditional food source.

The practice of eating insects is most common in the tropics, where insects are more abundant and easier to collect. They are consumed both as adults and as larvae. Depending on local custom, they are eaten alive, roasted, fried, coated in savoury and sweet sauces, or ground up to add protein to soups and other preparations.

Read also: insects — a delight for the palate and for sustainability

Edible species of insects

These are the main families of insects eaten around the world:

• Coleoptera (beetles, cockroaches)
• Orthoptera (locusts, crickets, grasshoppers)
• Rhynchota (bugs, lice, scale insects)
• Trichoptera (caddisfly larvae)
• Arachnida (spiders, scorpions)
• Diptera (flies)
• Homoptera (cicadas)
• Hymenoptera (ants, bees, wasps)
• Isoptera (termites)
• Lepidoptera (butterflies, moths)
• Odonata (dragonflies)
• Mantodea (mantises)

The most widely eaten around the world are beetles, at various stages of growth. Locusts are a common dish in Africa. Giant water bugs are the most prized insect in Asia, being used in human food in China, Japan, India and throughout South-East Asia, from Indochina to Indonesia.

The flavour of edible insects

Among the insects that, for those who have tasted them, prove least unpleasant are ants — sweet, with a flavour similar to peanuts — bugs, which taste of apple, and certain moth larvae, which tend towards spiciness. However, there are also larvae that taste of rotten wood and sawdust. There are, of course, harmful and inedible insects as well. It is like mushrooms: some are poisonous. The same goes for mammals: there are no mouse farms. We only raise animals that have yielded better returns, with a good flavour. Insects number ten times more species than mammals, so an enormously wide range of choices could open up before us.

The first requirement for establishing the consumption of a new food is that it must be delicious. Unfortunately, however, as anyone who has been invited to various insect-tasting events must admit, they will rarely have found them good. This may not be the insects' fault, but rather the cook's. The same is true of any ingredient, when all is said and done. Even new ones — and all the more so jellyfish, which merely absorb the flavour of the sauce and seasonings.

How insects are eaten in Asia

Thailand is the right destination for anyone intrigued by the idea of tasting insects. Larvae, centipedes, red ants, scorpions and butterflies are used in the kitchen for both savoury snacks and sweets. In Japan, in the mountains, boiled wasp larvae are considered a delicacy, as are the larvae of many aquatic insects.

How insects are eaten in Africa

In Africa too, the ancient tribal practice of collecting insects has made its way into local cuisines. Fried winged termites mixed into bread dough, moth caterpillars, red palm weevil larvae, ants.

How insects are eaten in the United States

The use of insects is sporadic. Dried locusts, crickets and grasshoppers were used as a medium of exchange by some Native American tribes. Customs that have all but disappeared along with the peoples who carried them.

How insects are eaten in Latin America

Grasshoppers are widely consumed throughout southern Mexico, served roasted and flavoured with garlic, lime juice and salt. There is also "insect caviar" — ant eggs harvested from agave plant roots, boiled or fried in butter — eaten in tacos or presented in a bowl with a side of tortillas for the popular dish known as escamoles. In Taxco they hold the Jumil festival, during which stink bugs are collected and eaten. In Venezuela, the Piaroa people consider Goliath tarantulas (or bird-eating spiders) a true delicacy: they can reach the size of a dinner plate, with eight enormous legs that are enough to feed a large family, and are roasted over an open fire. The flavour: something between crab and hazelnut. In Colombia and the Amazon, "big-bottomed" ants are roasted like popcorn.

How insects are eaten in Australia and New Zealand

In New Zealand, longhorn beetle larvae found by digging into the rotting wood of trees are eaten both raw and pan-fried. In Australia, honeypot ants — which have a belly swollen with nectar, as large as a grape — are consumed raw as a sweet treat by Aboriginal peoples.