Go ahead and guess: What would a cooked scorpion taste like? If you guessed shrimp with nutty undertones, you’d be correct. 

Despite its villainous talon and fierce claws, a delectable meat, laden with protein and nutrients lies beneath the scorpion’s segmented shell. The scorpion isn’t the villain of desert nightmares but potentially a hero in our agricultural future.

The path to sustainable food production in an increasingly resource-constrained world appears unpopular but revolutionary: insects and arachnids, eight-legged creatures such as scorpions and spiders. While just about everyone calls spiders, “insects,” this idea isn’t exactly correct. Insects and arachnids are both arthropods, but insects have six legs and three body parts, while arachnids have eight legs and two body parts, with no antennae or wings.

The problem “at steak”

Our current agricultural system, particularly the meat industry, is facing a crisis of sustainability. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, livestock production and grazing occupies approximately 30% of the Earth’s ice-free land surface and accounts for 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions. A single pound of beef requires up to 1,800 gallons of water to produce — a staggering figure when compared to other protein sources.

“We’ve been raising cattle for thousands of years, and (edible) insects for only the past decade commercially,” said Nathan Laurenz, an entomologist and edible insect enthusiast based in Singapore. “There’s a lot of learning left to do.”

The uncomfortable truth is that our appetite for traditional meat is putting immense pressure on planetary resources. As the global population rises toward 10 billion by 2050, our current agricultural model simply cannot scale without devastating environmental consequences. Deforestation, water scarcity, and climate change are already accelerating due to conventional livestock farming.

According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, meat production is expected to double by 2050, growing from 258 million tons in 2006 to around 455 million tons. This projected growth comes at a time when we desperately need to reduce, not increase, our environmental footprint.

“In time, we’re going to run out of land for cattle, and we’re going to have to replace that protein with something. Insects are a good replacement,” said Jim Louderman, assistant collector at The Field Museum and a beetle enthusiast with over 70 years of experience studying insects.

Insects: A historical delicacy

What many Westerners don’t realize is that insect consumption, known as entomophagy, has been a normal part of human diets throughout history and across cultures.

“All sorts of Indigenous cultures around the world have been eating insects for as long as humans have been around. It’s probably one of our first meat sources as a species,” Laurenz said. The selection is wide and diverse. In Thailand, grasshoppers, giant water bugs, and bamboo worms are a common street food. For Mexico, it’s aphids and beetles. In China, silkworms are the traditional rage. 

Cultural norms have a lot to do with what we label a good meal. Consider the lobster, now a luxury seafood. In colonial America, lobsters were so abundant they were considered “poor man’s food,” often fed to prisoners and servants. Massachusetts servants famously complained about being eating lobster too frequently. Today, we pay premium prices for the same crustacean.

The 2021 emergence of Brood X cicadas in the eastern United States provided a recent glimpse into the potential for insect cuisine in Western contexts. Restaurants and home cooks experimented with cicada tacos, tempura, and even desserts – demonstrating that with the right preparation, insects can appeal to modern palates.

The cultural hurdle

The “yuck factor” remains the biggest obstacle to the widespread adoption of insect protein in Western diets. This aversion is entirely cultural, not biological: a learned response rather than an innate rejection.

“People in big cities tend not to be fans,” Laurenz said about insect consumption in Southeast Asia. “There’s some stigma attached to it that it’s like a poor person’s food or a village food.”

Louderman echoed this sentiment. “How do you convince people who are scared of insects or think insects are nasty to eat, something they don’t even want to touch?”

The challenge becomes as much about marketing as it is about production. Companies like Cricket Energy Bars target specific demographics, from environmentally conscious consumers to fitness enthusiasts seeking alternative proteins. By segmenting the market and addressing specific communities, these products can gradually normalize insect consumption.

Interestingly, most people already consume insects unknowingly. The FDA allows certain levels of insect fragments in common foods. Chocolate, for instance, can legally contain up to 60 insect fragments per 100 grams.

The average person consumes about one to two pounds of insects annually through these trace amounts, according to the FDA’s Food Defect Levels Handbook. It doesn’t stop there. For the regular grocer, insects are consumed through daily necessities: canned tomatoes (up to 10 fly eggs per 500g), ground cinnamon (up to 400 insect fragments per 50g), or wheat flour (up to 75 insect fragments per 50g), also per the FDA handbook.

The production challenge

Beyond cultural acceptance, the practical challenge of scaling insect production remains significant. The industry has gone through several boom-and-bust cycles, starting with crickets, then mealworms, and now black soldier flies. Laurenz works at the core of the industry, at the startup named Karang Foodie. Their mission is to raise black soldier flies for aquaculture feed. 

“You need to be importing tens or hundreds of tons of raw material every day and then exporting tens or dozens of tons of insect protein every day,” Laurenz said, highlighting the scale required to compete with conventional agriculture.

Louderman adds that crickets and mealworms are currently the most viable insect protein sources because they can be dried and ground into protein powder, making them more palatable to Western consumers. When cooked, he explains, insects congeal to a texture similar to lobster or shrimp and usually have a nutty flavor. Larger insects and arachnids such as  scorpions, tarantulas, and beetles are often peeled like shrimp in cultures where entomophagy is common.

“It’s so expensive because most people in the United States won’t do it. It’s not being done on a big enough scale to bring the price down,” Louderman said, highlighting the chicken-and-egg problem of cost and adoption.

Environmental benefits: The advantage of insects

Despite these challenges, insects offer remarkable advantages as protein sources. Black soldier flies, for instance, can convert food waste into protein with noteworthy efficiency, growing to harvestable size in just two to three weeks while consuming “whatever slop you have lying around,” Laurenz said.

Their environmental footprint is minimal compared to traditional livestock according to Agronomy for Sustainable Development:

• Insects require significantly less land and water.
• They produce fewer greenhouse gases.
• They can convert feed to protein much more efficiently.
• Select species can be raised on monitored organic waste streams, creating circular economic opportunities while adhering to strict food safety protocols.

“Without insects, our food wouldn’t get pollinated. When things die in the forest, they don’t decompose, and the soil becomes infertile. Without insects, the trees die, we run out of oxygen, and we run out of food,” Louderman said, highlighting insects’ crucial role in our ecosystems beyond just being a food source themselves.

The path forward

However, Louderman cautions that there are some health considerations. People allergic to shellfish may also be allergic to insects and arachnids that have exoskeletons or shells (arthropods). He also emphasizes the importance of consuming farm-raised rather than wild-caught insects to avoid potential contamination issues.

The best chance for mainstream acceptance in Western countries, according to Louderman, is through products like cricket flour in familiar foods such as cookies, chips, and protein bars, rather than whole insects. This gradual introduction of insects, which would have to be included on product labels, could help overcome the cultural barriers while delivering the environmental benefits of insect protein.

Even committed vegans like Northwestern sophomore Mia El-Yafi offer nuanced views on insect consumption. “If there was bug powder in something, that would bother me less than if there was lard or gelatin,” she said, suggesting insects occupy a different ethical category for some plant-based eaters. 

Non-vegetarians like Casey Bond exhibit cautious curiosity about insect protein. “I would support it, but I’ve never eaten insects… If they were made like a bug burger, maybe I’d eat it,” he said, drawing a comparison to more familiar food presentations: “It’s like eating fish versus when fish is served whole with the head on.” In the future, presentation may be crucial for mainstream adoption.

As we face the dual challenges of feeding a growing population and mitigating climate change, entomophagy offers a solution that’s been hiding in plain sight, buzzing and crawling around us all along. The question is not whether insects will become part of our dietary future but when and how we’ll embrace this sustainable  and substantial protein source.