How eating insects became a conspiracy theory
Today many people in Latin America, Asia and Africa consume insects regularly. In Mexico, for example, boiled and fried grasshoppers, "chapulines", are a popular bar snack and increasingly served in gourmet restaurants.
But not everyone's biting. Though insects have long been considered inexpensive, healthy and sustainable sources of protein, they remain largely absent from American and European diets.
In recent years, this reluctance has been exacerbated by a web of conspiracy theories claiming that "global elites" are forcing the public to abandon meat in favour of bugs.
Aniano, who has been researching this theory at the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism for years, says it neatly fits into existing fears about the "depraved decline of Western civilisation". What began as a semi-sardonic meme on an online forum has now seeped into the fringes of politics in both Europe and the US.
In the Netherlands, Thierry Baudet, lawmaker and leader of the far-right Forum for Democracy party, gave an anti-European Union (EU) speech in March 2023, yelling, "No way!" as he poured golden mealworms out of a bag. Baudet later posted a photo of that moment on X, with the caption "WE WILL NOT EAT THE BUGS".
Lega per Salvini Premier, an Italian far-right party, paid for a billboard in Conegliano, Italy, with the words, "Let's change Europe before it changes us" and the dates of the 2024 EU election – next to a close-up of a person consuming what appears to be a locust, conflating entomophagy with a loss of traditional values. In this imagery, food functions as a provocative harbinger of change, tapping into fears of European cultural erosion.
Tucker Carlson's final special on his streaming show Tucker Carlson Originals, was a half-hour programme called "Let Them Eat Bugs". Examining climate-driven food policies, Carlson claims "the people in charge" are pushing bugs onto the public's plate. The episode featured Dutch far-right activist Eva Vlaardingerbroek, who called insect consumption a "compliance test" from an overreaching government and doubled down on her support for farmers' protests amid proposals of livestock cuts.
Other right-wing American conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones and Candace Owens, along with influencer Jack McGuire have also proliferated the "I will not eat the bugs" conspiracy theory.
But where did this fabricated fear of being force-fed insects originate?
In the spring of 2020, the World Economic Forum (WEF) – the international, non-governmental organisation behind the annual Davos conference in Switzerland – introduced "The Great Reset" initiative, an effort to reduce global inequality and advance environmental initiatives during the Covid-19 pandemic. But to conspiracy theorists, the Davos conference was "proof" that the world's wealthiest people were trying to use the Covid-19 pandemic as an apparatus to reorganise societies into globalist-totalitarian regimes at the expense of ordinary people, according to the ADL's Center on Extremism.
"I will not eat the bugs" first appeared on 4chan, an anonymous forum site, as early as August 2019, but its popularity surged after it merged with The Great Reset conspiracy during the Covid-19 pandemic, says Aniano.
The EU approved four insects as novel foods in January 2023, allowing limited insect species to be used as ingredients in the EU market under certain conditions of use. The four approved insects are the house cricket, larvae of the grain beetle, the migratory locust and the dried larvae of the flour beetle. That decision caused an outcry on social media.
French right-wing politician Laurent Duplomb criticised the EU's new food permission, saying: "We cannot allow the French to eat insects without their knowledge." This false claim suggests that the EU does not require insects to be clearly labelled when they are combined with other ingredients. Under EU law, the presence of insects in a product must be clearly and explicitly declared on its label.
In January 2025, the European Commission approved UV-treated yellow mealworm powder as a novel food. Under these regulations, the EU authorised up to 4% of its use in bread, cheese and pasta – with the requirement that it be clearly listed among the ingredients on product labels. Still, Eurosceptic accounts denounced this approval and regulation. "Out of ecological madness, they are taking the risk of poisoning an entire continent [Europe] in order to compete with livestock farming," said Florian Philippot, founder of French nationalist party Les Patriotes, in a video on X. He made the false claim that there would be "up to 4g per 100g" of larvae in "our bread, compotes, pastas" making a similar, incorrect claim as Duplomb: that those in power are using climate change as an excuse to make the average European person eat bugs without their consent.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250...acy-theory
Today many people in Latin America, Asia and Africa consume insects regularly. In Mexico, for example, boiled and fried grasshoppers, "chapulines", are a popular bar snack and increasingly served in gourmet restaurants.
But not everyone's biting. Though insects have long been considered inexpensive, healthy and sustainable sources of protein, they remain largely absent from American and European diets.
In recent years, this reluctance has been exacerbated by a web of conspiracy theories claiming that "global elites" are forcing the public to abandon meat in favour of bugs.
Aniano, who has been researching this theory at the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism for years, says it neatly fits into existing fears about the "depraved decline of Western civilisation". What began as a semi-sardonic meme on an online forum has now seeped into the fringes of politics in both Europe and the US.
In the Netherlands, Thierry Baudet, lawmaker and leader of the far-right Forum for Democracy party, gave an anti-European Union (EU) speech in March 2023, yelling, "No way!" as he poured golden mealworms out of a bag. Baudet later posted a photo of that moment on X, with the caption "WE WILL NOT EAT THE BUGS".
Lega per Salvini Premier, an Italian far-right party, paid for a billboard in Conegliano, Italy, with the words, "Let's change Europe before it changes us" and the dates of the 2024 EU election – next to a close-up of a person consuming what appears to be a locust, conflating entomophagy with a loss of traditional values. In this imagery, food functions as a provocative harbinger of change, tapping into fears of European cultural erosion.
Tucker Carlson's final special on his streaming show Tucker Carlson Originals, was a half-hour programme called "Let Them Eat Bugs". Examining climate-driven food policies, Carlson claims "the people in charge" are pushing bugs onto the public's plate. The episode featured Dutch far-right activist Eva Vlaardingerbroek, who called insect consumption a "compliance test" from an overreaching government and doubled down on her support for farmers' protests amid proposals of livestock cuts.
Other right-wing American conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones and Candace Owens, along with influencer Jack McGuire have also proliferated the "I will not eat the bugs" conspiracy theory.
But where did this fabricated fear of being force-fed insects originate?
In the spring of 2020, the World Economic Forum (WEF) – the international, non-governmental organisation behind the annual Davos conference in Switzerland – introduced "The Great Reset" initiative, an effort to reduce global inequality and advance environmental initiatives during the Covid-19 pandemic. But to conspiracy theorists, the Davos conference was "proof" that the world's wealthiest people were trying to use the Covid-19 pandemic as an apparatus to reorganise societies into globalist-totalitarian regimes at the expense of ordinary people, according to the ADL's Center on Extremism.
"I will not eat the bugs" first appeared on 4chan, an anonymous forum site, as early as August 2019, but its popularity surged after it merged with The Great Reset conspiracy during the Covid-19 pandemic, says Aniano.
The EU approved four insects as novel foods in January 2023, allowing limited insect species to be used as ingredients in the EU market under certain conditions of use. The four approved insects are the house cricket, larvae of the grain beetle, the migratory locust and the dried larvae of the flour beetle. That decision caused an outcry on social media.
French right-wing politician Laurent Duplomb criticised the EU's new food permission, saying: "We cannot allow the French to eat insects without their knowledge." This false claim suggests that the EU does not require insects to be clearly labelled when they are combined with other ingredients. Under EU law, the presence of insects in a product must be clearly and explicitly declared on its label.
In January 2025, the European Commission approved UV-treated yellow mealworm powder as a novel food. Under these regulations, the EU authorised up to 4% of its use in bread, cheese and pasta – with the requirement that it be clearly listed among the ingredients on product labels. Still, Eurosceptic accounts denounced this approval and regulation. "Out of ecological madness, they are taking the risk of poisoning an entire continent [Europe] in order to compete with livestock farming," said Florian Philippot, founder of French nationalist party Les Patriotes, in a video on X. He made the false claim that there would be "up to 4g per 100g" of larvae in "our bread, compotes, pastas" making a similar, incorrect claim as Duplomb: that those in power are using climate change as an excuse to make the average European person eat bugs without their consent.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250...acy-theory
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
