Should We Start Eating Insects?

Lesson overview

This advanced ESL lesson explores why eating insects triggers such strong disgust in Western cultures while being perfectly normal protein sources in other parts of the world. C1 students read a BBC article examining the psychology behind food revulsion, discuss sustainability arguments for insect consumption, and debate realistic dilemmas about cultural food practices and environmental responsibility. The lesson includes vocabulary focused on food psychology and cultural conditioning, sentence-building practice, and conversational activities that challenge students to examine their own arbitrary food preferences.

💡 Teaching tip: Send your students a podcast recap after class. Listening to the material again feels way less like studying and way more like a friendly review that actually helps them remember and feel more confident.

Level	Vocabulary	Reading Time	Lesson Time
C1 / Advanced	10 words	6 min / 1117 words	60-80 min

Teaching guide

Lead-in, Questions

This opening activity hooks C1 students immediately by challenging their assumptions about food through mystery descriptions of controversial delicacies like foie gras, durian, and surströmming. Students must identify each food based on vivid, somewhat disgusting descriptions that highlight cultural relativity in food acceptance. This ESL warm-up naturally leads into broader questions about food innovation, personal experience with initially revolting foods, and cultural food norms. The discussion questions are deliberately lengthy (15+ words each) to encourage advanced-level thinking about future food production, cross-cultural eating experiences, and the psychology behind food preferences. This segment typically takes 10-15 minutes and establishes the lesson’s central theme: why insects trigger such strong reactions in Western cultures while being perfectly normal protein sources elsewhere. The activity works equally well for one-on-one lessons, pairs, or small groups, as students share personal anecdotes about trying unfamiliar foods abroad.

Vocabulary preview, Definitions

The vocabulary section introduces ten essential academic and descriptive terms that appear throughout the BBC article about eating insects and food psychology. Words like “livestock,” “visceral,” “wariness,” “arbitrary,” and “revulsion” are crucial for C1 students to discuss environmental sustainability, cultural food practices, and psychological responses to novel protein sources. The definitions are intentionally concise (six words maximum) to encourage students to expand on meanings during discussion rather than passively memorizing dictionary entries. This preview-then-define approach helps advanced ESL learners recognize which terms they already know and which require deeper study before reading. Teachers should allocate 5-7 minutes for students to self-assess their vocabulary knowledge, then review the shortened definitions together, providing context examples from food culture, sustainability debates, or personal experiences. The vocabulary directly supports comprehension of the article’s main arguments about disgust, habituation, and cultural conditioning around insect consumption.

Article, Pros & Cons, Discussion

The reading phase centers on the BBC article “Why so many people find eating insects disgusting,” which explores psychological, cultural, and environmental dimensions of entomophagy at an advanced level (1117 words, 6-minute reading time). Students are tasked with identifying three specific examples of how cultural background influences attitudes toward eating insects, which requires active reading and critical analysis rather than passive comprehension. Following the article, the pros and cons activity asks students to evaluate five arguments supporting insect consumption (lower carbon footprint, complete protein, resource efficiency, food security, cultural acceptance) against five barriers (psychological disgust, infrastructure gaps, regulatory uncertainty, visible whole insects, current pricing). Students assign seriousness scores (1-3) to each point, then calculate totals to determine whether insect eating is ultimately beneficial. The discussion section presents two provocative statements from the article with follow-up questions that push C1 learners to examine assumptions about food norms, cultural conditioning, and the arbitrary nature of dietary preferences.

Practice

The vocabulary practice section features two complementary activities that reinforce the lesson’s ten key terms through sentence manipulation and open-ended exploration. In the first task, students combine pairs of simple sentences (maximum 15 words total) into single sophisticated sentences using target vocabulary like “visceral,” “livestock,” “wariness,” “arbitrary,” “revulsion,” “connotations,” “elicit,” “habituation,” “deviance,” and “alter.” This exercise develops syntactic complexity and ensures students can actively deploy these terms in natural contexts rather than simply recognizing them passively. The second practice activity consists of five open-ended questions that encourage deeper vocabulary exploration: describing environmental problems from livestock farming, identifying situations where food wariness is protective, analyzing connotations of insect-related words, sharing personal habituation experiences, and categorizing insect-eating as deviance or progressive choice. These questions work particularly well for advanced ESL students because they require nuanced thinking, personal reflection, and the ability to discuss abstract concepts related to food culture, sustainability, and social psychology.

Suffixes

This focused language activity introduces twelve common words using the -ible/-able suffix pattern, expanding on the word “edible” which appears frequently in the article about eating insects. Students encounter terms like “audible,” “sensible,” “eligible,” “legible,” “tangible,” “credible,” “feasible,” “reversible,” “compatible,” “vulnerable,” “plausible,” and “negligible”—all useful for C1-level academic and professional communication. The task asks students to discuss meanings with partners, then create original sentences connecting each word to food, eating, or sustainability topics, which reinforces both the suffix pattern and the lesson’s thematic content. This activity serves multiple ESL teaching objectives: it builds morphological awareness, expands productive vocabulary, and demonstrates how understanding word formation patterns helps students decode unfamiliar terms independently. Some words like “eligible” and “negligible” are slightly trickier because their meanings aren’t immediately obvious from their roots, which creates productive cognitive challenges for advanced learners. Teachers should allocate 10-12 minutes for this section, encouraging students to identify which words they already know and which patterns emerge across different -ible/-able formations.

Dilemmas

The dilemma scenarios present three realistic situations that force C1 students to apply lesson concepts while defending positions on controversial issues related to insect consumption and food ethics. In “The Restaurant Revelation,” students must decide how to respond after unknowingly eating crickets in an expensive meal—do they accept it was delicious regardless, demand refunds, or leave negative reviews about labeling transparency? “The Sustainability Mandate” asks how students would react to mandatory insect-based cafeteria options at work, exploring tensions between environmental responsibility and personal autonomy. “The Cultural Exchange” creates genuine ethical conflict when refusing insect delicacies would offend hosts who’ve prepared them as an honor. These scenarios are intentionally complex with no clear “right” answers, encouraging advanced ESL students to consider competing values (respect, autonomy, sustainability, cultural sensitivity, consumer rights) and practice sophisticated argumentation. The activity works flexibly across different teaching contexts: in one-on-one lessons, the teacher challenges the student’s position from multiple angles; in pairs or groups, students debate and attempt to persuade each other.

Optional video

The optional video extension provides motivated students with additional exposure to the topic through a 4:56 BBC REEL documentary titled “Should we all be eating insects?” This supplementary resource isn’t required for lesson completion but offers deeper exploration for learners interested in sustainability, food innovation, or cross-cultural food practices. The video features interviews with entomophagy experts, footage of insect farming operations, and discussions of both environmental benefits and psychological barriers; content that reinforces and extends the written article’s main arguments. Teachers should position this as genuine optional enrichment rather than homework, acknowledging that advanced C1 students often appreciate having resources for independent learning beyond structured lesson time. The video works particularly well for flipped classroom approaches where students watch before or after the main lesson, or as conversation material for subsequent classes. Including optional extensions respects different learning speeds and interest levels while providing pathways for students who want to engage more deeply with contemporary issues around food security, climate change, and cultural food evolution.

Podcast

The podcast is AI-generated audio discussion centered on the lesson topic. Featuring clear, high-quality voices, it’s designed as an optional study tool. Students may listen before class for preview purposes or after class for reinforcement, based on their learning preferences.