Marcel Dicke: Why not eat insects?

Okay, I'm going to show you

again something about our diets.

And I would like to know what the audience is,

and so who of you ever ate insects?

That's quite a lot.

(Laughter)

But still, you're not representing

the overall population of the Earth.

(Laughter)

Because there's 80 percent out there that really eats insects.

But this is quite good.

Why not eat insects? Well first, what are insects?

Insects are animals that walk around on six legs.

And here you see just a selection.

There's six million species of insects on this planet,

six million species.

There's a few hundreds of mammals --

six million species of insects.

In fact, if we count all the individual organisms,

we would come at much larger numbers.

In fact, of all animals on Earth,

of all animal species,

80 percent walks on six legs.

But if we would count all the individuals,

and we take an average weight of them,

it would amount to something like 200 to 2,000 kilograms

for each of you and me on Earth.

That means that in terms of biomass,

insects are more abundant than we are,

and we're not on a planet of men,

but we're on a planet of insects.

Insects are not only there in nature,

but they also are involved in our economy,

usually without us knowing.

There was an estimation,

a conservative estimation, a couple of years ago

that the U.S. economy

benefited by 57 billion

dollars per year.

It's a number -- very large --

a contribution to the economy of the United States for free.

And so I looked up what the economy was paying

for the war in Iraq

in the same year.

It was 80 billion U.S. dollars.

Well we know that that

was not a cheap war.

So insects, just for free,

contribute to the economy of the United States

with about the same order of magnitude,

just for free, without everyone knowing.

And not only in the States,

but in any country, in any economy.

What do they do?

They remove dung, they pollinate our crops.

A third of all the fruits that we eat

are all a result

of insects taking care of the reproduction of plants.

They control pests,

and they're food for animals.

They're at the start of food chains.

Small animals eat insects.

Even larger animals eat insects.

But the small animals that eat insects

are being eaten by larger animals,

still larger animals.

And at the end of the food chain, we are eating them as well.

There's quite a lot of people that are eating insects.

And here you see me

in a small, provincial town in China, Lijiang --

about two million inhabitants.

If you go out for dinner, like in a fish restaurant,

where you can select which fish you want to eat,

you can select which insects you would like to eat.

And they prepare it in a wonderful way.

And here you see me enjoying a meal

with caterpillars, locusts,

bee pupae -- delicacies.

And you can eat something new everyday.

There's more than 1,000 species of insects

that are being eaten all around the globe.

That's quite a bit more

than just a few mammals that we're eating,

like a cow or a pig

or a sheep.

More than 1,000 species --

an enormous variety.

And now you may think, okay,

in this provincial town in China they're doing that, but not us.

Well we've seen already that quite some of you

already ate insects maybe occasionally,

but I can tell you that every one of you

is eating insects, without any exception.

You're eating at least

500 grams per year.

What are you eating?

Tomato soup, peanut butter,

chocolate, noodles --

any processed food that you're eating

contains insects,

because insects are here all around us,

and when they're out there in nature

they're also in our crops.

Some fruits get some insect damage.

Those are the fruits, if they're tomato,

that go to the tomato soup.

If they don't have any damage, they go to the grocery.

And that's your view of a tomato.

But there's tomatoes that end up in a soup,

and as long as they meet

the requirements of the food agency,

there can be all kinds of things in there,

no problem.

In fact, why would we put these balls in the soup,

there's meat in there anyway?

(Laughter)

In fact, all our processed foods

contain more proteins

than we would be aware of.

So anything is a good protein source already.

Now you may say,

"Okay, so we're eating 500 grams just by accident."

We're even doing this on purpose.

In a lot of food items that we have --

I have only two items

here on the slide --

pink cookies or surimi sticks

or, if you like, Campari --

a lot of our food products that are of a red color

are dyed with a natural dye.

The surimi sticks

[of] crabmeat, or is being sold as crab meat,

is white fish

that's being dyed with cochineal.

Cochineal is a product

of an insect that lives off these cacti.

It's being produced in large amounts,

150 to 180 metric tons per year

in the Canary Islands in Peru,

and it's big business.

One gram of cochineal

costs about 30 euros.

One gram of gold

is 30 euros.

So it's a very precious thing

that we're using to dye our foods.

Now the situation in the world is going to change

for you and me, for everyone on this Earth.

The human population is growing very rapidly

and is growing exponentially.

Where, at the moment, we have

something between six and seven billion people,

it will grow to about nine billion

in 2050.

That means that we have a lot more mouths to feed,

and this is something that worries more and more people.

There was an FAO conference last October

that was completely devoted to this.

How are we going to feed this world?

And if you look at the figures up there,

it says that we have a third more mouths to feed,

but we need an agricultural production increase

of 70 percent.

And that's especially because this world population

is increasing,

and it's increasing, not only in numbers,

but we're also getting wealthier,

and anyone that gets wealthier starts to eat more

and also starts to eat more meat.

And meat, in fact, is something

that costs a lot

of our agricultural production.

Our diet consists, [in] some part, of animal proteins,

and at the moment, most of us here

get it from livestock,

from fish, from game.

And we eat quite a lot of it.

In the developed world it's on average

80 kilograms per person per year,

which goes up to 120

in the United States

and a bit lower in some other countries,

but on average 80 kilograms

per person per year.

In the developing world it's much lower.

It's 25 kilograms per person per year.

But it's increasing enormously.

In China in the last 20 years,

it increased from 20 to 50,

and it's still increasing.

So if a third of the world population

is going to increase its meat consumption

from 25 to 80 on average,

and a third of the world population

is living in China and in India,

we're having an enormous demand on meat.

And of course, we are not there to say

that's only for us, it's not for them.

They have the same share that we have.

Now to start with, I should say

that we are eating way too much meat

in the Western world.

We could do with much, much less --

and I know, I've been a vegetarian for a long time,

and you can easily do without anything.

You'll get proteins in any kind of food anyway.

But then there's a lot of problems

that come with meat production,

and we're being faced with that more and more often.

The first problem that we're facing is human health.

Pigs are quite like us.

They're even models in medicine,

and we can even transplant organs from a pig to a human.

That means that pigs also share diseases with us.

And a pig disease,

a pig virus, and a human virus

can both proliferate,

and because of their kind of reproduction,

they can combine and produce a new virus.

This has happened in the Netherlands in the 1990s

during the classical swine fever outbreak.

You get a new disease that can be deadly.

We eat insects -- they're so distantly related from us

that this doesn't happen.

So that's one point for insects.

(Laughter)

And there's the conversion factor.

You take 10 kilograms of feed,

you can get one kilogram of beef,

but you can get nine kilograms of locust meat.

So if you would be an entrepreneur,

what would you do?

With 10 kilograms of input,

you can get either one or nine kg. of output.

So far we're taking

the one, or up to five kilograms of output.

We're not taking the bonus yet.

We're not taking the nine kilograms of output yet.

So that's two points for insects.

(Laughter)

And there's the environment.

If we take 10 kilograms of food --

(Laughter)

and it results in one kilogram of beef,

the other nine kilograms are waste,

and a lot of that is manure.

If you produce insects, you have less manure

per kilogram of meat that you produce.

So less waste.

Furthermore, per kilogram of manure,

you have much, much less ammonia

and fewer greenhouse gases

when you have insect manure

than when you have cow manure.

So you have less waste,

and the waste that you have is not as environmental malign

as it is with cow dung.

So that's three points for insects.

(Laughter)

Now there's a big "if," of course,

and it is if insects produce meat

that is of good quality.

Well there have been all kinds of analyses

and in terms of protein, or fat, or vitamins,

it's very good.

In fact, it's comparable

to anything we eat as meat at the moment.

And even in terms of calories, it is very good.

One kilogram of grasshoppers

has the same amount of calories

as 10 hot dogs, or six Big Macs.

So that's four points for insects.

(Laughter)

I can go on,

and I could make many more points for insects,

but time doesn't allow this.

So the question is, why not eat insects?

I gave you at least four arguments in favor.

We'll have to.

Even if you don't like it,

you'll have to get used to this

because at the moment,

70 percent of all our agricultural land

is being used to produce livestock.

That's not only the land

where the livestock is walking and feeding,

but it's also other areas

where the feed is being produced and being transported.

We can increase it a bit

at the expense of rainforests,

but there's a limitation very soon.

And if you remember that we need to increase

agricultural production by 70 percent,

we're not going to make it that way.

We could much better change

from meat, from beef,

to insects.

And then 80 percent of the world

already eats insects,

so we are just a minority --

in a country like the U.K., the USA,

the Netherlands, anywhere.

On the left-hand side, you see a market in Laos

where they have abundantly present

all kinds of insects that you choose for dinner for the night.

On the right-hand side you see a grasshopper.

So people there are eating them,

not because they're hungry,

but because they think it's a delicacy.

It's just very good food.

You can vary enormously.

It has many benefits.

In fact, we have delicacy

that's very much like this grasshopper:

shrimps, a delicacy

being sold at a high price.

Who wouldn't like to eat a shrimp?

There are a few people who don't like shrimp,

but shrimp, or crabs,

or crayfish,

are very closely related.

They are delicacies.

In fact, a locust is a "shrimp" of the land,

and it would make very good into our diet.

So why are we not eating insects yet?

Well that's just a matter of mindset.

We're not used to it,

and we see insects as these organisms that are very different from us.

That's why we're changing the perception of insects.

And I'm working very hard with my colleague, Arnold van Huis,

in telling people what insects are,

what magnificent things they are,

what magnificent jobs they do in nature.

And in fact, without insects,

we would not be here in this room,

because if the insects die out,

we will soon die out as well.

If we die out, the insects will continue very happily.

(Laughter)

So we have to get used to the idea of eating insects.

And some might think, well they're not yet available.

Well they are.

There are entrepreneurs in the Netherlands that produce them,

and one of them is here in the audience,

Marian Peeters, who's in the picture.

I predict that later this year, you'll get them in the supermarkets --

not visible, but as animal protein

in the food.

And maybe by 2020,

you'll buy them just knowing that this is an insect that you're going to eat.

And they're being made in the most wonderful ways.

A Dutch chocolate maker.

(Music)

(Applause)

So there's even a lot of design to it.

(Laughter)

Well in the Netherlands, we have an innovative Minister of Agriculture,

and she puts the insects on the menu

in her restaurant in her ministry.

And when she got all the Ministers of Agriculture of the E.U.

over to the Hague recently,

she went to a high-class restaurant,

and they ate insects all together.

It's not something that is a hobby of mine.

It's really taken off the ground.

So why not eat insects?

You should try it yourself.

A couple of years ago, we had 1,750 people all together

in a square in Wageningen town,

and they ate insects at the same moment,

and this was still big, big news.

I think soon it will not be big news anymore when we all eat insects,

because it's just a normal way of doing.

So you can try it yourself today,

and I would say, enjoy.

And I'm going to show to Bruno some first tries,

and he can have the first bite.

(Applause)

Bruno Giussani: Look at them first. Look at them first.

Marcel Dicke: It's all protein.

BG: That's exactly the same [one] you saw in the video actually.

And it looks delicious.

They just make it [with] nuts or something.

MD: Thank you.

(Applause)