The programme starts with two friends from the Copenhagen-based Nordic Food Lab stocking an airline service trolley with dung beetle grub stew and noodles fried in black soldier fly fat. It only gets weirder after that…
BUGS is a documentary that follows the gastronomic adventures of chefs and researchers Josh Evans, Ben Reade and Roberto Flore as they travel the world to see why 2 billion people are eating insects and why, on the whole, Westerners aren’t.
When they’re travelling, foraging, farming, and tasting insects, it seems that it’s going to be a pretty light-hearted show, focused on dispelling the automatic ickiness that comes to mind when many of us think about eating insects. And for the most part that’s exactly what the documentary is.
The chefs wonder why sushi went from a distasteful idea in the West to a high-end product that now lines supermarket shelves, and why insect products have yet to surf a similar wave of public approval. They consider how insects might slot into UN projections that humanity needs to be making 70% more food by 2050. But most of all, the chefs revel in the flavours of insect foods that are not only a staple of many communities around the world, but are often considered delicacies.
In Australia, they go looking for termite queens. After smashing open the nest, they find the throbbing maggot-looking queen to have exploded under the collapsed weight of mud, a travesty Ben describes as tantamount to digging for five hours in search of a subterranean foie gras duck, only for it to get run over by a lorry. (When at last they do get their hands on a queen, fry it and serve it on a bed of mango, the resemblance to sausage is uncanny!)
In Uganda, they hunt for the “orgasmic” tasting African stingless bee. Following the experience of “squeezing honey out of mud–magic mud!” the chefs are left wondering how a species defending anything so delicious ended up without a sting.
In Mexico, it’s ant filled torillas. And not just any ants. Supposedly, these are ants that smell like young blue goat’s milk cheese and taste like nutty avocados.
The Italian-inspired incubation of cheeses in a bag full maggots, though, was deemed a step too far, prompting the verdict that “To be honest, I would rather have a normal Camembert”.
But highly venomous Japanese hornets, slapped out of the sky upon emerging from their nests into a bucket of alcohol, and then fashioned into garlicy kebabs: apparently delicious.
Fun aside though, this documentary has some pretty dark undertones that are very thought-provoking but also sometimes confusing. At the beginning of programme, I thought that the chefs were advocating that insects become more of a centrepiece in future diets. This is something parroted by the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation as part of securing more sustainable protein alternatives. Further benefits of ramping up the insect component of diets are also alluded to during their time in Uganda, where a lady rearing crickets describes the potential role these insects can have in combating zinc deficiencies in young children.
But as the programme progresses, the documentarians stance on eating insects starts to become a bit more chequered, and they become disillusioned with how big companies might start to monopolise the emerging edible insect market. They also worry about how intensive insect farming (presumably in factory settings) might not be sustainable.
I was a bit lost about what they meant by the word “sustainable”. At times they seemed to downplay the potential of insects to provide protein at lower environmental costs than meat, instead calling for a complete overhaul of of how we get our food. But wouldn’t an integral part of any such overhaul involve phasing out foods with disproportionate environmental damage (e.g. beef) with foods that can be produced with a lower environmental imprint (including insects, plants, or cultured meat)?
It also seems that Ben in particular was advocating for the adoption of more traditional insect farming/ production methods, and was very much against business (e.g. Nestle) attempts to monetise edible insects. In some cases though, I’d say business involvement is very much needed to scale-up insect production, particularly as a food source in countries where protein deficiencies are still a problem? And certainly better harvesting methods are needed for insects like the long-horned grasshopper, currently being trapped using powerful floodlights, which sometimes cause blindness in those people tasked with gathering the insects. Couldn’t well-regulated business help improve how such insects are caught or bred?
That said, I share concerns that if edible insects do end up breaking western markets or if edible insect manufacture becomes dominated by a few powerful actors or corporations, areas relying on insects already (or areas that would benefit most from increased insect nutrition) might not reap the rewards, and could end up worse off if insects are redirected towards more lucrative markets. There would have to be some strategy in place to ensure that food is distributed towards areas that need it, and that insect protein is also not just supplementing overly greedy diets but is genuinely substituting more environmentally damaging foods.
I would say that I need to rewatch BUGS, and if you haven’t seen it, I would definitely recommend it. The fact that it’s made by chefs gives a fresh perspective on the potential future of edible insects, and it’s a perspective that is important to discuss. Indeed, perhaps the most critical fact the documentary underscores is that if insects are going to become an important part of food security, then a big emphasis has to be on making sure that they taste good.
