Grubs up? How insects become food in Aotearoa, New Zealand

Grubs up? How insects become food in Aotearoa, New Zealand : A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Lincoln University

(Lincoln University, 2025) Hyde, Caitlin

The consumption of alternative proteins is often proposed as a means to alleviate global problems such as environmental degradation and food insecurity. However, achieving such changes remains challenging. To explore this issue, this thesis presents an in-depth case study of the edible insect sector in Aotearoa, New Zealand, a small novel food sector that emerged in the mid-2010s before rapidly declining. This thesis explores the sector’s decline by examining what leads to a thing becoming food. Through this process, the conceptual category of food is also interrogated.

This thesis mobilises a sub-field of geography, sometimes referred to as the ‘becoming food’ literature, a relational approach to food which attends to the embodied practices that lead to a thing being eaten. To better understand the differences between practices and their implications, this literature was brought into conversation with the concept of multiplicity from material semiotics. While both approaches are relational and attend to practices, material semiotic approaches conceptualise relationality differently, not drawing a boundary around where relations end. Their integration enables analysis to extend beyond the relations of eater-eaten to explore broader aspects of production and consumption while maintaining a focus on embodied practice.

To attend to differences, this study incorporated various 'site types' including edible insect research projects, restaurants, farms, food events, and retail outlets. Following the emphasis on practices common to becoming food studies and material semiotics, the methods of participant observation and autoethnography were employed, alongside semi-structured interviews and document analysis.

This thesis examines how insects become food by articulating several enactments of edible insects that have emerged in the Aotearoa sector. Insects were variously enacted as 'good food' (positioned as solutions to various problems), as novelty items (contradicting industry efforts to normalise them), and as pests (in tension with their status as food). The tensions between these enactments and the ambiguity in the status of insects as food led to their decline in the Aotearoa market. Unless edible insects performed a distinctive function, they were replaced with less difficult alternatives that could fill the same role.

While edible insects did become food in many situations, the edible insect sector was largely unsuccessful. Becoming food and market success has typically been equated in the becoming food literature. However, by drawing on multiplicity, this thesis demonstrates the need to treat these as distinct phenomena, contributing to a more nuanced understanding of the becoming food process and providing insight into food transitions and novel food acceptance. Although edible insects have not yet fulfilled their initial promise of reducing hunger and environmental pressures, their potential to transform our food system may lie not in mass consumption but in their power to challenge our assumptions about what food is.