Crickets, grasshoppers, Thai giant water bugs, silkworms, Chinese millipedes, and mealworms. Since 1 January 2018, insects on Europeans' plates - be they exotic or homegrown - are allowed and totally legal. And not just them. With the entry into force of the EU directive on "novel food" (actually approved in autumn 2015 but only operational today), on the tables of EU countries, among the shelves of the supermarket or in the restaurant, you will be able to find a series of foods until a few years ago unknown to European culinary habits. Such as algae, spirulina, some types of mushrooms, vegetables with modified molecular structures or other foods belonging to distant gastronomic traditions.
The directive, to be precise, speaks of any "food that has not been used to a significant extent for human consumption in the European Community before the 15 May 1997".
Until now the authorization for consumption and trade of these products was left to the individual states of the Union, but from the 2018 it becomes a community decision. In practice, an official list has been drawn up in continuous updating, to which each operator in the sector can request, through a specific procedure, the insertion of new foods.
In states such as Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium or France, some of these foods, including various species of insects for human consumption, have actually already been produced and sold for years. And are we ready in Italy? This will be discussed in February during the Food Journalism Festival.
