Each year, around 70 million people are added to the world’s population - and while KFC is trying its level best to keep up - there are just not enough budget boneless banquet bargain buckets to feed everyone. Something’s got to give. Apparently by 2050, the population of the planet is set to reach a staggering 9 billion… And if they all want breakfast at the same time, all hell’s going to break loose. One way around this is if everyone starts eating insects as one of their five a day. Global food production is currently on a knife-edge - we in the ‘developed world’ are largely cushioned from this problem but the fact remains that we use 70% of agricultural land to raise livestock, our oceans are overfished, environments are becoming polluted and climate change and disease threaten crop production. We already live in a world where almost a billion people are already chronically hungry - but perhaps our multi legged pals might be able to help us out. Insects are actually pretty nutritious, with high fat, protein, vitamin and fibre content that are comparable with fish or livestock. And they are better for the environment too - they are more efficient at turning feed into edible body mass and require less land to farm. The most commonly eaten bugs are beetles, caterpillars, bees, wasps and ants. When you think about it, they are no less strange to eat than prawns - with their waving arms and exo-skeletons and their creepy little black eyes staring unemotionally at you from inside their pink skulls… And anyway whether you are aware of it or not, we are already unwitting entomophagists (insect eaters) - with most of our food and drink, from flour and beer to fruit juice and curry powder containing some insect matter as an unavoidable part of the production process. The only thing standing in our way, it seems, is that cultural barrier. In the west we can’t imagine absent-mindedly scoffing down a bowl of crickets with a glass of red wine in front of an episode of Friends - but in many other parts of the world that is exactly what they do. Unbelievable isn’t it? To many of us living in the developed world, the thought that Friends would still be on the telly after all these years is difficult to comprehend.