Should we be eating insects?

"Eighty per cent of the people on the planet regularly consume insects from a range of over 2,000 species. They eat sago grubs in Papua New Guinea, grasshoppers in Mexico and dragonflies in Bali. In Western Europe, however, our aversion to ingesting bugs has a long tradition.

"Generally speaking, insects are high in protein and essential fatty acids and low in cholesterol. Despite our cultural distaste for entomophagy, in recent years the idea that we should eat bugs has been gaining currency. A 2004 UN report promoted insects as an environmentally friendly food source: low impact, consuming very little in the way of feed, easy to harvest, with no special measures required for their husbandry.

Insects are arthropods, like lobster, crab and shrimp. They are plentiful, and account for over half of the known species on the planet. We spend billions of pounds trying to control or eradicate them, when we could just be eating them. So why don't we?" guardian.co.uk