In recent years, human population growth, coupled with the climate crisis, environmental pressures, and current production and consumption patterns, has driven the search for alternative food sources. With 1,611 insect species listed as edible, organizations such as the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) have proposed insects as a sustainable food source.

However, despite the fact that hundreds of millions of people already consume them, Western societies continue to show aversion to entomophagy. While this rejection may have a cultural basis, its origin remains unknown.

To explore its roots, a study by the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE), a joint center of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and Pompeu Fabra University (UPF), has used genomic analyses to reconstruct insect consumption over the past thousands of years.