Will insects really be the “food of the future”?

• Nearly 2 billion people regularly consume more than 2,000 different species of insects, according to our partner The Conversation.

• However, scientific studies focusing on the environmental potential of insect consumption remain mixed in their conclusions.

• This analysis was conducted by Tom Bry-Chevalier, doctoral student in environmental economics at the University of Lorraine.

When we talk about the food of the future, a subject regularly swarms in the media: that of the consumption of insects.

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so many titles suggesting that "posterity" rhymes with "locusts".

Outside the West, entomophagy (that is to say the consumption of insects by humans) is not futuristic: nearly 2 billion people regularly consume more than 2000 species of insects different.

But if in our regions we are thinking more and more about crunching these critters, it is not so much for the search for new taste sensations as for the interest we attach to them from an environmental point of view.

According to a 2013 FAO report – no stranger to the recent buzz around entomophagy – insects are extraordinarily efficient at converting food into body mass.

In addition, they could feed on by-products not valued by our food systems, and their breeding would emit only small quantities of greenhouse gases.

So many tantalizing promises to address the very real environmental problems caused by meat production.

However, despite the media hype, scientific studies looking at the environmental potential of eating insects remain mixed in their conclusions.

So it's time to kick the anthill and see why, despite what we hear, insects may not be the food of the future.

​Replace meat… or rather feed it!

Insects are often presented as a six-legged alternative to meat.

Yet this is not the web that the industry is weaving.

So French companies Ÿnsect and InnovaFeed (raising $372m and $165m respectively in 2020, more than the entire industry in all previous years combined) breed insects for… animal feed.

And these two examples are not isolated.

The breeding of insects does not therefore seem set to replace intensive breeding, but rather to provide it with enough to subsist.

Without even mentioning the question of the ethical and health issues related to traditional meat farming, it is important to emphasize that this approach potentially poses more problems than it solves.

On the one hand, because the environmental impacts of meat are not limited to that of animal feed.

On the other hand, because the production of insects is not necessarily more favorable for the environment than conventional animal feed.

According to a 2020 life cycle analysis (i.e. an assessment method for carrying out a multi-criteria and multi-stage environmental assessment of a system): "a comparison with conventional foods has highlighted the environmental drawbacks of current insect-based food production models (especially when compared to plant-based foods)”.

Same observation for this study on

, the species used by the French company Innovafeed: "produced on a pilot scale, the protein concentrate (insect meal), while being competitive with the original products animal (whey, egg protein, fish meal) and microalgae, has a greater environmental impact than concentrates of vegetable origin”.

Another study on mealworms, the hobby company Ÿnsect, also finds them to have a greater environmental impact than soy or fish meal.

In summary, if the use of insect meals can sometimes be more ecological than concentrates of animal origin to feed farm animals, it does not however manage to compete with concentrates of vegetable origin.

Moreover, if the promoters of insects praise the use of agricultural by-products (wheat and corn gluten, brewers' spent grains, beet pulp, etc.) to feed them, we realize that in the reality is that many companies prefer to use cereals, which are more nutritious, safer, and sometimes even less expensive.

That is to say, resources that could just as well be consumed by farm animals, or even by humans.

However, feeding insects corn before feeding them to chickens is inherently less effective than simply feeding corn to chickens or humans.

The potential of insects to feed on agricultural by-products thus comes up against the laws of the market and competition for the same resource.

Because agricultural by-products, far from being waste, can be used in many ways, whether for animal feed or for human food.

Moreover, even if food waste were used to feed farmed insects, the climate benefits would be highly uncertain.

Finally, insects need to be kept in a warm environment.

Otherwise, they risk growing much more slowly, or even simply not surviving.

However, heating millions of insects in the factory requires a lot of energy.

As the latter is not necessarily carbon-free, this can have a decisive influence on the carbon footprint of the final product.

In short, and although this is currently the path taken by the industry, the environmental potential of insects as a wonder ingredient for animal feed seems limited.

​Entomophagy, a far from miraculous solution

But what about entomophagy itself?

Because it is indeed this buzz that is discussed in the media, works of fiction, and even some school textbooks.

At first glance, there would be something to be reassured.

Several studies agree on the lower environmental impact of insects compared to chicken, which itself has a lower environmental impact than other types of meat.

A life cycle analysis from 2012 finds that broilers are associated with 32% to 167% higher emissions in CO2 equivalent than mealworms, and that they require two to three times more land and 50 % more water.

The problem is that these studies have almost all been carried out on small-scale farms (as in Thailand or Korea, under optimal or impossible conditions to reproduce in the West on a large scale).

However, it can be very difficult to maintain these environmental benefits with the transition to industrial scale, which is necessary to reduce costs.

Many questions remain, for example concerning the food used to feed a large breeding of insects, and the possible health risks.

This is how a study focusing on the European context came to the conclusion that insect farming does not necessarily emit less greenhouse gas emissions than chicken.

An alternative that suffers from competition

If the performance remains honorable, we must not forget an essential detail: insects are not the only ones that can replace meat.

However, to judge the potential of a solution, it should be compared to all the other solutions, and not only to the one that suits us.

One thinks in particular of vegetable proteins, already widely available on the market.

And on the environmental level, there is no photo: it is better to eat lentils and soybeans rather than insects.

For an alternative to have potential, it must also be successful with consumers.

And on this point we can not say that the insects hit the mark.

For example, a recent study by the Food Standards Agency finds that six in ten respondents (60%) are willing to try plant-based proteins, compared to only a quarter (26%) willing to try edible insects.

Worse still, of those unwilling to try any of the meat alternatives offered, 67% said there was nothing to entice them to try eating insects.

Our "FOOD" file

In short, not only are insects not a better alternative to vegetable proteins from an environmental point of view, but they are also much less accepted by consumers.

For the title of “food of the future”, it might therefore be wise to leave our six-legged friends alone and look instead to vegetable proteins, and why not mycoproteins or cultured meat.

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This analysis was written by Tom Bry-Chevalier, PhD student in environmental economics/cultured meat and alternative proteins at the University of Lorraine.

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