Charlotte LR Payne
Charlotte LR Payne
  • About
  • Research
    • Traditional entomophagy in Japan >
      • An overview
      • Wild foraging and food insecurity
      • Imported insects compensate for a decline in wild foraging
    • The ‘semi domestication’ of wasps for use as food in contemporary Japan >
      • What can we learn from insect 'semi-domestication'?
    • Public health and edible insects
    • Wild and semi-wild harvesting in Zimbabwe
    • Wild harvesting in DRC
    • Gender roles in insect foraging and management
    • Edible insects in San Antonio Etlatongo, Oaxaca, Mexico
  • Publications
  • Blog
  • 日本語

Do insects actually taste any good?

1/20/2018

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I wrote an article for BBC World - a eulogy to insect-shaped insects. If that sounds like something you'd enjoy, please do take a look! 

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"This book is about optimism..."

11/23/2016

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When I got back from fieldwork in Burkina Faso, this book was waiting for me!
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It's a fairly detailed, comprehensive and up-to-date summary of the use of insects as food, covering their history, their nutritional value, their efficiency when farmed, and modern technologies for farming and processing insects. It also gives a good overview of food safety with regard to edible insects. 

Best of all, it opens with the sentence "This book is about optimism."
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I'm biased, because I co-wrote that first chapter.. But that first sentence was penned by my wonderful co-author, Florence Dunkel, who's spent the majority of her academic career working on edible insects. She edited the Food Insects Newsletter - still a great resource for anyone who's interested - and has held annual Bug Banquets for over 25 years.

She also wrote the final sentence of our Chapter, which is simply: "Enjoy!" 

I hope that everyone and anyone who reads it - or in fact everyone and anyone who is working in this exciting field - does exactly that. And if you'd like a copy of the book, do let me know, I might be able to send you something!
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Are insects ‘healthier’ than meat?

9/17/2015

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According to the media and of course the burgeoning insect industry, the answer to this question is (broadly speaking) a resounding 'yes'. Edible insects are highly nutritious, eco-friendly and may even have the potential to challenge social and gender inequality through improving livelihoods.

And, with FAO support and a concerted effort to change legislation to encourage the sale of insects as food across Europe, it looks like edible insects may be here to stay.

So, how ‘healthy’ are insects compared to meat?

This was the question that we asked in our recent research project, a collaborative effort between researchers in the UK and Japan, funded by the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation and Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation. The results were published by the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition earlier this week.

We compared the nutritional content of 10 commercially available insects with 3 commonly consumed meats.

To analyse this information we chose two objective measures of the ‘healthiness’ of foods - the WXYfm nutrient profiling model, which is used by the UK government to regulate food advertising, and the Nutrient Value Score (NVS), which is used by the World Food Programme (WFP) to inform the composition of food baskets in refugee camps.

And what were the results?

Well, while insects may indeed have environmental advantages over meat, no insects are objectively ‘healthier’ than meats in a UK context. That is, in a context in which cardiovascular disease is the greatest health problem. 

However, crickets, palm weevil larvae and mealworms were all significantly healthier than beef and chicken according to the model used to evaluate foods for refugee camps.This is because these insects have a particularly high vitamin and mineral content, which makes them ideal foods for combatting problems of malnutrition. 

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A woman scooping assorted crickets and grasshoppers into a bag for sale in Cambodia
So what is the take-home message?

Well, if you’re at risk of malnutrition, palm weevils are by far and away your best option, closely followed by mealworms and crickets. This is great news, because all three species can be farmed far more sustainably and efficiently than cows or chickens. Ah, and they’re also delicious. 

But otherwise, it looks like insects are on a par with beef in terms of health benefits. Instead, to combat rising incidence of diet-related disease, the best option that we have remains the same - to reduce the amount of animal products that we eat on a day-to-day basis. 

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For more information, please take a look at the paper, which is open access. The results of this project will also be presented in detail at an upcoming workshop on insects as food and feed to be held at the University of Oxford in December, hosted by the Oxford Martin School.
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In memory of Mr Ando: A wasp's eye view (for InTandem, on the theme of 'soil')

6/19/2015

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I was able to take these photos due to the privilege of living among people who have a deep understanding of the soils of the forests around them.

Their understanding of the soil means that they know how to find and befriend tiny, aggressive ‘hebo’ – black wasps. They know which are male, which are female, which are drones and which are new queens. They know from glancing at the forest floor around them and from checking the direction of the wind and the sun and from recalling the weather events of the current year, where these wasps are likely to have made their home.

‘Hebo’ live in the soil. Their name in japanese means ‘bee of the earth’, and every year in springtime hundreds of people with a great love and respect for these creatures seek out their nests while they are still small. Once found, they bring the nests back to their homes and raise them on a rich diet in order to eventually harvest and eat some, and preserve others. For every three nests harvested in autumn as the earth cools, one is left to ensure next year’s harvest, and thousands of well-fed new queens vacate their nest to hibernate over the winter, leaving behind their beautiful construction (the main nest shown in the picture, with its columns and caverns).

But back to the springtime. Finding the entrance to a springtime wasp nest is hard enough, but this is only the beginning. The nest may be as small as a ping pong ball, and the entrance tunnel may be several inches long. And the nest itself is fragile and papery; the soil itself is its main source of protection. The next task, then, is to feel your way into the soil, through the tunnel and any tributaries, and to carefully dig out the nest without harming the wasps.
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This composite image for InTandem is dedicated to a man who was famed for his ability to do just this. His name was Mr Keiji Ando, he was a teacher by profession, and I as his unofficial student (one among many) learnt a great deal from his love and understanding of the ‘bees of the earth’ and the ecosystem in which they lived. He was the elected leader of the national wasp society in Japan, and just three months ago he told me with his usual infectious enthusiasm that once again in June this year he was looking forward to seeking out the nests in the forests surrounding his home.

Unfortunately this wasn’t to be – I think he knew this, and was voicing his dreams in full knowledge of their fragility, something that isn't easy – and he passed away from a very aggressive and swift cancer in April, when the wasps had barely emerged from their hibernation.

Thanks to Mr Ando I was able to see the world from a wasp’s eye view, and with this image I invite you to do the same.
Mr Keiji Ando, you were an inspiring and unforgettable friend and teacher. Thank you for everything, and I hope that I can do some justice to your enthusiasm for life and generosity of spirit in my own life and work.

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June

7/8/2013

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Another highlight at the beginning of the month was a soba/insect party at Professor Nonaka's house. We made soba from scratch using a large grinding stone (far right), and cooked some Giant hornets, which are definitely the tastiest insect I've tried in Japan so far (the photo to the near right shows the party menu, and the frozen hornets waiting to be cooked.





Party dishes (photos left to right): Kaki-age (vegetables, usually thinly sliced onions and carrots, fried in a light batter) using the final instal of the giant hornet larvae; Taki-komi-gohan (a bit like risotto - the rice is steam cooked with other ingredients) using the youngest larvae, which are softer in texture.
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I also went on a field trip during the week-long conference about a topic that I find really interesting - even though it has little or nothing to do with edible insects. 

The field trip was about the Fuji-ko pilgrimage tradition. When people began to climb Mt Fuji they had to walk for days just to reach the foot of the mountain before beginning their ascent. Climbing to the summit was considered to be a kind of 'living death', and various purification rituals were observed along the way. Yet, women were considered inherently unclean and forbidden from climbing to the summit. This began to change in the mid-19th century, as more and more pilgrim groups began to accept women as fellow climbers.


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Umagaeshi, the point at which horses could go no further up the mountain
June began with the annual meeting of the Japan Vespula society. 

(Photos clockwise from top left) Rice fields and mountains on the way to the meeting; The meeting, with 22 attendants representing different villages across 4 prefectures (no female members other than myself); A hive made specially for Vespula and on sale for 8000JPY at a shop in Higashishirakawa (Professor Nonaka bought it for me, so I will have a brand new hive to keep hornets in this summer); Lunch after the meeting: sashimi, locally grown vegetables, and hornet sushi.



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Later in June we presented a poster at the 14th Global Conference of the International Association for the Society of the Commons (IASC), which was held at the foot of Mount Fuji.


Photos (clockwise from top left): A view of Mount Fuji on the way to the conference; Offering people the chance to try hachi-no-ko (hornet larvae prepared with soy sauce and mirin) at our poster presentation session; A couple of figures used on the poster handout showing (1) the annual life cycle of 'hero' (hornets) and how humans practice a form of 'semi-domestication' for part of the year and (2) a map of insects consumed across Japan drawn by Yanahara Nozomi and also used in an article written by Professor Nonaka; The poster that we presented.




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The path between umagaeshi and the first station.
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After the conference, I went on a research trip to look at small scale fisheries on the coast of the Boso peninsula, in Chiba prefecture. Again, not directly connected to edible insects, but fish are a natural resources that are harvested for food in Japan and in some cases 'semi-domesticated' (well - cultivated). 
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We visited fish markets (which don't smell of fish) to see how the fresh catch is auctioned off as soon as the boats come to shore. 

In order to make sure they are getting the best price, buyers at different local markets communicate with each other  to compare catch and prices. Some of them also have a network of friends on the fishing boats themselves, so they know the quantity and quality of fish to expect even before they land. This is all done over the internet or by mobile phone. 

We visited an Abalone cultivation farm: In order to preserve abalone stocks, young abalone are raised and then released into the wild. Some are raised to maturity and sold as farmed abalone, although wild abalone reach a higher price.

Abalone are traditionally caught by divers known as 'Ama' who are mostly women and who do not use any diving equipment - they hold their breath, and dive deep, as far down as 80ft, to find abalone, an expensive delicacy. There are still many women divers today and the use of diving equipment by abalone divers is banned in many areas. However, the number of divers is decreasing as the perception of jobs in fisheries is fairly negative among young people.

Photos (above, clockwise from top left): A buyer checking the morning's catch at a fish market; The head of the local fisheries cooperative showing us his semi-cultivated young abalones; A live abalone waiting to be cooked; The tuna auction at Tsukuji, Tokyo; Karaoke around an indoor barbecue.
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