Eating insects - A plate of locusts

The UN report published yesterday that suggested eating insects could help fight obesity may not have an immediate impact on the health of Irish people.

Our food fetishes, cultural, assumed, or merely fashionable — like adolescent girls’ vegetarianism — are so ingrained that most of us are more than reluctant to eat anything outside of what we regard as the ordinary. The reaction to the horsemeat scandal suggested that these positions are not always rational. That we can be so choosy suggests an ongoing affluence.

Nevertheless, anyone struggling with the debilitating consequences of obesity might be more than happy to flash-fry a caterpillar or make a stew of grasshoppers if it might help them lose weight. The proposal is, after all, no more bizarre than many of the snake oil diets that promise to change your life in three weeks.