In years past, while working as a journalist in south-east Asia, I encountered many people for whom insects were a normal part of their diets.
I met Cambodians who caught and ate insects to survive the near starvation of the Khmer Rouge genocide. In Thailand’s lively night markets, street vendors sold deep-fried grasshoppers, crickets, worms and other bugs as snacks. I met a Thai entrepreneur whose start-up produced fried insects in modern, branded packaging for grocery stores.
But it wasn’t until Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni’s government began publicly railing about the urgent need to protect Italian consumers from the menace of “cricket flour” that I realised Europeans were also developing an appetite for edible insects.
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