LEPSIS

We consume more food than we produce, and things have to change. It’s no secret that food shortages send food prices spiraling stratospherically; while people in the developed world will just have to get used to extortionate prices, people in the developing world will suffer from chronic hunger, if not famine, as food becomes increasingly unaffordable.

Grasshoppers, like houseflies, grow exceptionally fast. Not only are grasshoppers great sources of protein, they are environmentally significantly less taxing than other meat production. The problem in introducing, let alone popularizing a diet consisting of grasshoppers has little to do with convincing people of their nutritional value or the environmental benefits, but rather challenging established ideas of what is edible.

LEPSIS: The Art of Growing Grasshoppers is an attractive kitchen appliance for breeding grasshoppers domestically. It is a vessel optimized for neatly breeding, feeding, harvesting and killing grasshoppers, before turning them into food. Grasshoppers require little room and few resources to grow; they grow to edible maturity in about 1.5 months, and lay plenty of eggs before the die. As for the taste? Well, people are willing to pay hundreds of dollars at Danish restaurant Noma for a taste, and that’s saying something.

LEPSIS sends an important message: we must reconsider what is edible, and challenge our culturally-bound responses to novel food items. What is noteworthy is that when presented with grasshoppers, children happily play with and eat them. This suggests that our learned disgust is a result of culturally established notions of what to and what not to eat, rather than the taste.

Like it or not, what we can guarantee is that this design is only the beginning of a new culinary era.