Objectives and research hypothesis

Widely spread in the world, insect consumption has been studied in some spots by entomologists or ethnobiologists, but so far very few studies have highlighted how this consumption is ingrained in cultural conceptions, imaginary, social status and practices. The objective of this project is to study, in a systematic comparison, the representation of insect consumption in different multicultural Latin American countries (Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil), focusing on traded species consumed both in rural and urban areas. It also questions how, at a local level, gathering, processing, trade and consumption of insects may constitute a biocultural heritage and, at a wider level, which actions of heritagization involving edible insects are taking or not taking place. Eventually, how does this consumption reveal tensions between social classes and ethnic groups?

 

By analysing environmental and culinary knowledge, threats on insects’ environment and nutritional quality of insects, it finally aims at valuing this heritage, supporting local stakeholders in sustainable exploitation and food security and co-constructing with them knowledge to respond to food issues for the future.

Insects have been consumed since Pre-Columbian times (Ramos-Elorduy & Pino 1989). Inherited from indigenous people, this food habit, originally rejected by most European colonizers, has actually been adopted in some areas by a wider range of the population. Since insects are mainly captured from the wild, this practice is ingrained in traditional knowledge on the environment, but as some species are traded, the consumption is not limited to rural areas. It also varies according to countries or regions and is constantly evolving, either visible or hidden, despised or valued. In some cases, insects are now served in restaurants, processed into new products and traded in new settings such as touristic sites, organic fairs or supermarkets. In other cases, they keep being traded at a local level, following traditional channels, with little visibility.

In previous projects, members of the consortium studied food heritage and heritage policies in Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador and Brazil (see references below), reviewed the literature on edible insects in Latin America (Costa-Neto 2015, Katz 2016) and explored regions where highly appreciated insects are collected (by indigenous and non-indigenous people) and traded: central Mexico (mainly ants and grasshoppers), Santander province in Colombia (ants), Quito and neighbouring valleys in highlands Ecuador (beetles), Napo province in the Ecuadorian Amazon (palm weevil), Northeast Brazil (ants).

Some members worked on edible insects in Africa (Muafor et al. 2015) and Asia (Césard et al. 2015), taxonomy and genetics of insects, industrial food processing of insects (Azagoh et al. 2015 ) and insect farms (Muafor et al. ibid.). The originality and the challenge of this project will be to ally three different disciplines, social sciences, entomology and food science, focus on the new questions and proceed to a systematic comparison, using similar methodologies. The contrast between different countries should help to understand better the position of insect consumption in relationship to the mainstream food systems and therefore to unveil the way that the different national conceptions of heritage and multiculturality are actually applied.