As the global population grows and climate change places increasing pressure on food systems, researchers and policymakers are looking more closely at alternative sources of nutrition. Insects are one possible option. A total of 1,611 insect species are classified as edible, and organizations including the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) have highlighted insects as a potentially sustainable food source.
Even so, many Western societies remain strongly resistant to entomophagy, or eating insects, despite the fact that hundreds of millions of people around the world already include insects in their diets. Culture may help explain that reluctance, but scientists have not known how far back it goes or what other forces may have shaped it.
Researchers from the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE), a joint center of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and Pompeu Fabra University (UPF), have now used genomic evidence to reconstruct patterns of insect consumption stretching back thousands of years. Their findings, published in Science Advances, indicate that eating insects was probably occasional and accidental in Europe, Central and East Asia, while it appears to have been more common in tropical regions and among Neanderthals. The work offers new insights into human evolution, ecology, and modern attitudes toward insect-based foods.
