Beetles and flies are becoming part of the agricultural food chain

SOME VISIONARIES hope that insects will play a big role in future human diets. Insects are nutritious, being packed with protein. Unlike hot-blooded mammals and birds, which use a lot of energy to keep themselves warm, they are efficient converters of food into body mass. And in some parts of the world they are, indeed, eaten already.Well, maybe. But it will take some serious marketing to persuade consumers, in the West at least, that fricasseed locusts or termiteburgers are the yummy must-haves of 21st-century cuisine. The visionaries might nevertheless prove correct that insects will contribute to human nutrition—just not in the way they imagine.