Opinion Express View: Can worms give a new lease of life to the junk food industry?

Worms, it is well-known, punch well above their weight in keeping life on Earth running. The earthworm, for instance, may not have the charisma of a tiger, blue whale or elephant. But as Charles Darwin wrote, “It may be doubted if there are any other animals which have played such an important part in the history of the world” as the earthworm. The venerable sage of evolution spent close to 40 years studying how “these lowly organised creatures”, munched leaves, digested earth and pooped out soil-enriching nutrients. Minutely cataloguing the worms’ responses to light, heat, smells, and even sounds of the piano, Darwin suggested that though these creatures cannot see or hear in a human sense, they obtain “a general notion of the form of the object” by moving their bodies over it.

It turns out that worm behaviour comes close to another human trait — the pursuit of pleasure. A study published in Current Biology has shown that the creatures develop a longing for high-calorie eatables after consuming cannabis, much like a person high on weed shows a preference for a cheese-burst pizza or chocolate pudding over healthier options. Worms like high-calorie stuff anyhow. Under the influence of cannabis, some of their neurons seek out sinful stuff more zealously. Humans and nematodes shared a common ancestor more than 500 million years ago. But the evolutionary distance does not seem to have affected their primal proclivity for hedonism.

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The study has opened up a huge range of possibilities for the medical and neural sciences. But could the gluttonous worm also be what the doctor ordered for the junk food industry, weighed down today by the evangelism of healthy eaters? Could a diet of the much-maligned munchies and cannabis make the creature work even harder on soil? The piece of research that could complete this jigsaw would have to affirm that worm droppings remain as nutrient-rich after a meal of junk.