2011-01-24

Insects: Food of the Future

Eat insects, up food security (Science Alert)



Dining on crickets, locusts, or even cockroaches, instead of cattle or pigs, could ease both food insecurity and climate change, according to researchers.

Insects caught in the wild are already eaten widely in the developing world. Now a study says that farming them on a large scale for food would damage the environment far less than equivalent livestock production.


Save the planet: Swap your steak for bugs and worms | Reuters

(Reuters) - All you need to do to save the rainforest, improve your diet, better your health, cut global carbon emissions and slash your food budget is eat bugs.
Mealworm quiche, grasshopper springrolls and cuisine made from other creepy crawlies is the answer to the global food crisis, shrinking land and water resources and climate-changing carbon emissions, Dutch scientist Arnold van Huis says.

The professor at Wageningen University in the Netherlands said insects have more protein than cattle per bite, cost less to raise, consume less water and don't have much of a carbon footprint. He even has plans for a cookbook to make bug food a more appetising prospect for mature palates.




Discovery News

'Insect Pizza,' 'Bug Mac' Foods of the Future? : Discovery News

THE GIST
  • Insects are abundant, produce less greenhouse gas and manure and do not transfer any diseases.
  • So some argue we should start eating them.

Someday your burger could be made up of ground worms


"There will come a day when a Big Mac costs 120 euros ($163) and a Bug Mac 12 euros, when more people will eat insects than other meat," head researcher Arnold van Huis told a disbelieving audience at Wageningen University in the central Netherlands.