Consumption of insects as food has a long history and has been documented by many researches. Globally, it is extensively practiced in Africa, Asia, Australia, and Latin America as traditional food providing nutritional, economic and ecological benefit for rural communities. In today's world, edible insects are limelight by many researchers and industrialist due to the presence of enormous nutrient potential as well as bioactive compounds. This review mainly focuses on the potential of edible insect for its diverse nutraceutical properties, production and processing as a functional food and its acceptance and boost in the market trends in global scenario. The consumption of edible insects is purely based on ethnic traditional knowledge of the local communities. Previous studies on edible insects have shown their potential as source of nutraceuticals with promote health benefit and can be an alternative source of protein. Most of the edible insects are rich source of protein, energy, vitamins, essential fatty acids and minerals. Beyond these insects can be a source of bioactive compounds especially peptides, which can be applied in functional food industry. In many countries, the traditional knowledge of entomophagy is being applied for production of value-added products using modern technology.

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Entomophagy, the practice of eating insects, has a great deal of importance and history with many countries of the world however, its consumption species of insects and their value differ from community to community. Here, we aimed to study the ethnic traditional practices of entomophagy and its uses in traditional ethno-entomology practiced by the Mao-Naga tribe and the Poumai-Naga tribe from Senapati district of Manipur, Northeast India. We conducted individual semi-structured questionnaire surveys from different villages of both the tribes with ages varying from 22 to 70 years. The respondents comprise village elders, house makers and the youth. The study shows a total of 53 and 51 species of insects being consumed by the Mao-Naga and Poumai-Naga tribes respectively consisting of 9 orders and 18 families. The order Hymenoptera has the maximum number having 20 edible insect species from both the tribes. The order Diptera, Isoptera and Mantodea has the least edible insect of 1 species each from both the tribes. Besides entomophagy, some insect’s species were believed to have ethno-entomological uses.

Insects are important bioresources as they supply numerous tangible and intangible benefits to humans. Day-to-day livings of many communities in the world are associated with insects as food, medicine, social beliefs, livelihood and other aspects. Many communities from immemorial time traditionally practice insects as food (entomophagy). People consumed insects for delicacy and nutritional purposes. However, some entomophagy species have medicinal value and many traditional healers used them for the treatment of various health ailments like sore throat, mouth ulcers, jaundice, body ache, wound healing, etc. In India, such traditions are widely practised in Northeast India more than other states of India. The focus of this research is on the traditional knowledge of entomophagy species having medicinal properties and social beliefs that are practised by the Tangkhul, Mao and Poumai ethnic community of Manipur, northeast region of India. Review literature was conducted through published journal paper, books and other electronic resources along with questioner’s survey. The present study recorded nine entomophagy species and four species having social beliefs according to the local people. This traditional knowledge is inherent from generation to generation, and to conserve such precious indigenous knowledge, proper documentation is necessary. The documented information on the ethnic therapeutic knowledge of the important entomo-therapeutics species of the local community can be transferred to modern pharmacology.