Breakfast?
The other day on the radio, a scientist was making a convincing case for the fact that we should all eat more insects.
You can listen to the programme again here. The basic premise is that for the majority of the world, which is to say everyone who doesn’t live in the developed West, the main source of protein is six-legged: the likes of deep-fried bee larvae, baked termites and mealworm meatballs.
Hmm. They’ve got a bit of a PR mountain to climb before they convince us all to give up our lamb chops in favour of cockroach sandwiches.
But they’ve also, surely, got a point. I use up a couple of acres of good grassland to raise my sheep, and they provide us, plus maybe a couple of other families if lambing goes well, with about a year’s worth of meat. The same amount of land could grow vegetables for a small village; and hold hundreds, if not thousands of insect farms, feeding hundreds of people, not just half a dozen. It’s much more efficient, too: 10kg of feed produces 1kg of cow, but 7kg of insects. They even poo more cleanly, with all that implies for greenhouse gases and climate change.
Makes you think, doesn’t it?
Then I came across Helen Howard’s Kent-based snail farm at the Edible Garden Show and discovered a whole new way of replacing protein in our diet in super-efficient, space-saving ways.
You can eat snails’ eggs, too: they’re known as snail caviar
Farmed snails grow twice as fast as garden snails (even though they’re the same species), reaching maturity in six months. You can keep six in a box the size of a propagator, and the only maintenance they need is a quick spray with water and a powdered feed mixed with chalk once a day.
Before you want to eat them, just remove the food for a few days, then drop them in boiling water, slow cook for at least 1 1/2 hours and there you go: escargots on toast. They’re particularly good on pizza, apparently.
Snails at home in their propagator-sized case
You can start your own snail farm for £30, which buys you a breeder pack of six snails, food and housing. Add a cage full of crickets and a bag of mealworms and you can be self-sufficient from your spare room. As long as you can get over the yuck factor, that is.
Sally Nex 
I’ve just interviewed someone for a local mag who does invertebrate days at Schools. I was offered some mealworms whilst talking to her. They’re surprisingly tasty!
There was an awful lot of gleeful munching on bee larvae going on in that programme, too. I once ate a live honey ant in Australia – once you got over the wriggling it was really very nice. I think it’s probably better if you kill your insects first ;D
When I was a kid we lived in Tanzania for 4 years. One day, everybody suddenly got really excited at our boarding school because a specific kind of grasshopper had arrived in big swarms, we all raced around with nets and caught some that were then fried up and we ate them, I remember it as being extremely tasty. Would I do it today? I don’t know. I def know I would not want to eat snails, just doesn’t appeal to me. But your article definitely has a point.
boiled snails on pizza – that sounds like perfect grounds for a full refund andI’llnevereatthereagain!
I’ve eaten mealworms, ants, silkworm larvae and mole crickets. The first two were fine, the second two were icky. The bigger they are, the harder it gets, as they look more like insects. I think most people would struggle with crickets!
Larger insects like locusts are said to taste like prawns; a thought provoking post, as you say the yuck factor is the problem. Christina