Bugs

Spoken: English. Subtitles: Dutch.

In 2013, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization argued that as the global population increases, we will need to find new and more sustainable methods of food production. Their recommendation—bugs! Three cooks from the Nordic Food Lab travel the world looking for delicious new morsels to diversify their dishes: Japanese wasps, African termite queens, Italian cheese made with fly larvae, and Mexican ant eggs. But as the three cooks travel around the world, ethical concerns arise: if industrially produced insects become the norm, will they be as delicious and as beneficial as the ones in diverse, resilient ecosystems and cuisines around the world? And if the consumption of insects becomes scaled up, who exactly will benefit from this? Are insects a mirror that reflects our broken food systems, or the silver bullet that will fix them?