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From Rabbi Dr Harvey Belovski, rabbi of Golders Green Synagogue and CEO of University Jewish Chaplaincy:

 A few years ago, I was speaking at a Jewish food festival when a member of the audience asked me what I know about kosher insects.  I joked that I’d return to speak about locusts, which, would you believe, are considered a kosher food by the Bible.  But the organiser of the event held me to my promise and I found myself back there a year later with a box of live insects, an apprehensive audience and some crunchy canapés.  By then, I’d also bought some books about locusts, read an American grasshopper novel, spoken to a world-famous rabbi about eating them and learned to cook them.  And if you’re wondering: they are bred in the UK as food for reptiles.

I’m an Ashkenazi Jew, which means my family come from Europe, where it’s too cold for locusts, so our communities long ago lost the tradition as to which varieties are kosher.   But in north Africa and Yemen, locusts were often on the menu and Jews who lived there knew which type they could eat.  It’s called the Desert Locust or for the geeks, schistocerca gregaria.  I’ve based my locust consumption on the Yemenite tradition, which has taught me how to identify them and given me a couple of recipes.

Which raises an obvious question – why would anyone want to eat a locust even if it is kosher?  The American author Herman Wouk points out that ‘locusts devour the crops; the protein and carbohydrate are in them; the people recover their food supply by roasting or pickling the creatures and eating them’.  Prior to pesticides, and even today, locust swarms can cause utter devastation and threaten the economies of entire countries.  A desert locust swarm – like the one that hit ancient Egypt in the book of Exodus – can cover 450 square miles, include 70 billion insects and consume almost 200 million kilograms of plants per day.  Permitting locusts for food saves lives and allows agriculture to recover from the onslaught.

I’ve now presented my locust show many times.  It’s a fun, educational and slightly disgusting event, but it does have a serious message for today.  With increasing carbon emissions and pressure on space, might the Bible just have the answer to the struggle to feed our expanding population – the ultimate low-cost snack?