Cookery Kit By Scottish Student Encourages People To Include Insects In Their Diet

Insects such as beetles and caterpillars are food staples in many countries across the world. However, many Western countries refrain from including low-calorie and high protein insects in their everyday meals. To encourage more people to include creepy-crawlies in their diet, a student from Edinburgh, Scotland, has designed a special cookery kit.

Courtney Yule, 22, designed the “starter cookery kit” as a part of her degree work. Yule is pursuing a course in product design at Edinburgh Napier University. Yule says that the concept of entomophagy encouraged and inspired her to design the kit. Entomophagy refers to the practice of consuming insects to feed the increasing global population. Her goal is to break the mindset that prevents people from consuming insects.

Yule says the same people who don't think twice while eating seafood, typically react differently to the notion of consuming crickets and grasshoppers. Yule's “Entopod” is designed to look like an insect. It provides all the support required to prepare insect-based recipes, including the chocolate insect fondue.

“The main barrier is obviously getting consumers to accept the idea of eating insects. Before I began this work I didn’t even like to touch them, but I don’t have any problem with eating them now and it is a practice which is growing in popularity every day,” Yule told the Edinburgh Evening News.

Insect harvesting is considered eco-friendly and requires much less resources than traditional livestock farming. Insects are commonly consumed across the world, including in regions of Asia, Africa, New Zealand, the Americas and Australia. Nearly 80 percent of the countries across the world consume some 1,000 varieties of bugs.

Contact the writer at: emailtoguneet@gmail.com.