Foreword: Books about edible insects in different languages

The estimated two billion people in the world who eat insects live in Africa, Asia, Central and South America where English is not the first language. The languages spoken in these regions can be the pre-literate traditional languages of the original peoples or an adopted language from former colonial times (predominantly English or French in Africa and Asia, or Portuguese or Spanish in Latin America). In contrast, the use of insects as human food is lowest in western countries (DeFoliart, 1999; Van Huis et al. , 2013) where English may be the first language (but acknowledging that different European languages are also used in westernised societies). English has become the dominant language in discussing edible insects as evidenced by its use as the language of presentation at the 2014 Insects to feed the world conference , and that most of the journals relevant to this topic are published in the English language.