Will the “yuck” effect put an end to insects as meat substitutes?

Insects are unlikely to help us ditch meat. “Recent attempts to encourage people” to eat grasshoppers, crickets, and mealworms as protein substitutes for meat “are doomed to failure because of the public’s deep distaste for the idea,” reports The Guardian , a new study .

Certainly, awareness of the harmful effects of meat consumption on the environment, and its contribution to climate change, is growing. The British daily continues, "We are increasingly aware of the heavy environmental toll of livestock farming, one of the main drivers of deforestation, responsible for more than half of the world's water pollution."

By 2030, meat consumption could be responsible for 37% of greenhouse gas emissions if the temperature increase is limited to below 2°C compared to pre-industrial levels... and 49% in the 1.5°C scenario, point out the authors of a study in the open-access journal npj Sustainable Agriculture published in Nature .

The scientific literature explains that insect-based proteins “are the least well-accepted among the different meat substitutes, behind cultured meat ,” the researchers explain. According to one of the largest consumer surveys conducted in Europe and the United States, “91% of respondents would be willing to try plant-based meat substitutes, but only 20% of them would consider eating insects.”

Besides the “cultural 'yuck' factor, there are also economic barriers” to developing insects for food, with most meat substitute companies “having decided to focus on breeding species such as the black soldier fly for animal consumption, rather than human consumption.”

Dustin Crummett, co-author of the study and director of the Insect Institute, concludes that “it is difficult to change long-standing culinary traditions and deeply ingrained disgust reactions.”