The Human Use of Insects as Food and as Animal Feed

Edible insects are afood resource tbat continues to be tapped extensiuely by populations in tbe rural Third World, wbile continuing to be ignored by food and agricultural scientists. Tbe unfounded V'estern auersion to insects asfood sbould no longer stand in the way of attempts, tbrougb ad-L)ocacy, research, and extetzsion, to increase tbe contribution tbat insects can make to buman nutrition. OST EUROPEANS AND NORTH AMERICANS are barely, if at all, a'ware that insectS have played an important role in human nutrition. The older literature contains numerous accounts provided by explorers, naturalists, anthropologists, and assorted travelers describing the use of insects as food by the indigenous peoples of most of the world. The desert loclst, Scbistocerca gregaria (ForskAl) (Orthoptera: Acrididae), well-known as a destroyer of crops, was itself in earlier , times a maior source of food in northern Africa and the Middle East. the following account from Algeria: The natives are well disposed to carry out orders for the destruction of the locusts, since they use them for food. Around Tougourt every tent and house has prepared its store of locusts , on the average about 200 kilo to each tent. Sixty camel loads (9000 kilo) are the quantities of locusts accumulated daily in the Ksours of the Oued-Souf. They are a valuable resource for the poor population. To presen'e them, they are first cooked in salt water, then dried in the sun. The natives collect and prepare such considerable stocks that apart from their own needs, they have some for trading on the markets of Tou-gourt, Temacin, etc. I have in my hands now two boxes of ireshly prepared locusts and I convinced myself that they are quite an acceptable food. The taste of shrimps is verv pronounced ; with time they lose their quality Although few insects other than the desert locust were used as food in northern Africa, hundreds of species have been used in central and southern Africa, Asia, Australia, and Latin America. the reported total approximates 500 species in more than 260 genera and 70 families of insect. The actual numbers are probably far greater than the numbers reported, howeveq for two reasons, both attributable to the well-known Vestern coolness toward the idea of insects as food. In his study of the food habits of the Yukpa of Colombia and Ven-ezuela, Ruddle (1973,95) stated: "Foraging for insects has generally been overlooked bv most visitors to …