Diy Pest Control

"Grub's Up".

I can still hear those magic words from my childhood, shouted across the football pitch by my father, to signal that 'tea' was ready and the football had to cease for the day.

I raced home to find my mother dishing-up Bangers & Mash, Shepherd's Pie or similar hearty Northern 'grub'.

These days "Grub's up" has a whole new meaning, as can be seen at a number of UK restaurants which now serve a selection of insects and their 'grubs'. It's a type of DIY Pest Control - you control their population by eating them!

Locusts, crickets, grasshoppers and caterpillars are all high in protein. In fact, pound for pound, crickets contain four times as much protein as chicken - and they grow much faster.

Insects are also very efficient at turning feed into edible meat and need 12 times less food than cattle to produce the same amount of protein.

Entomophagy, its official title, is praised by the United Nations, no less, who say that "eating more insects could help fight world hunger".

Two billion people already supplement their diet with insects - but it's still quite uncommon in Western countries.

So, eating insects is proven to be healthy, and its low carbon footprint is good for the planet - but if your children are anything like mine it's going to take more than the promise of an ice-cream to get them to eat their Greens AND their caterpillars!