Insects are not food for the poor

When we talk about food it’s not just about survival, but also about justice, social equity, distribution, and use of the planetary resources. A planet that belongs to none of us and to everyone at the same time.
But once again it seems that this “everyone” is not homogeneous, that there are at least two blocks even when it comes to the issues concerning the edible insects market and economies around it: the increasing of world population, the food production system and the war against hunger.
There are many more or less interesting considerations that can be made. One that looks quite interesting to me follows.
Edible insects are an excellent source of protein, their breeding is relatively simple and the nutritional intake they can ensure is certainly useful for fighting -through the direct consumption- food deficit in underdeveloped or developing countries. In the developed ones that deficit does not exist, but there are other huge problems related to food production, such as overexploitation of sources, concentration of the stocks in places and ways incompatible with their psychological well-being, environmental pollution, preventive use of drugs and the composition of feed.
After these few lines, it is simple to understand which are the two blocks I referred to earlier.
The employee who works in a cricket breeder company in Rome, producing cricket flour and products containing it as an ingredient –such as pasta and bars, for example- cannot afford to buy the products he contributes to produce, which are in fact outside of an average household budget if not as a one-time purchase to satisfy curiosity. It is also true that the same worker can find, in Rome, hundreds of less-expensive alternatives to get proteins.
The truth is that this food revolution in the West can initially only be fed (sorry for the pun) by an enlightened “upper-class” of consumers who could inject economic resources into the market, creating profits for companies and the increasing of demand needed to bring prices down and making edible insects products accessible to a consumer group as large as possible. If these products do not reach a mass diffusion, then we could not talk about a revolution, but only about the creation of another niche for a different kind of expensive sushi.
There are changes which cannot be imposed with pitchforks and sticks, they involve cultural aspects in which awareness, education and economic possibilities play a crucial role in driving certain social phenomena.
In other words: insects are not food for the poor.