Eat
more insects – UN
The
latest weapon in the UN's fight against hunger, global warming and
pollution might be flying by you right now.
14
May, 2013
Edible
insects are being promoted as a low-fat, high-protein food for
people, pets and livestock. According to the UN, they come with
appetising side benefits: Reducing greenhouse gas emissions and
livestock pollution, creating jobs in developing countries and
feeding the millions of hungry people in the world.
Some
edible insect information in bite-sized form:
Who
eats insects now?
Two
billion people do, largely in Asia, Africa and Latin America, the
Rome-based UN Food and Agriculture Organization said Monday as it
issued a report exploring edible insect potential.
Some
insects may already be in your food (and this is no fly-in-my-soup
joke). Demand for natural food colouring as opposed to artificial
dyes is increasing, the agency's experts say. A red colouring
produced from the cochineal, a scaled insect often exported from
Peru, already puts the hue in a trendy Italian aperitif and an
internationally popular brand of strawberry yogurt. Many
pharmaceutical companies also use colourings from insects in their
pills.
Packed
with protein, full of fibre
Scientists
who have studied the nutritional value of edible insects have found
that red ants, small grasshoppers and some water beetles pack
(gram-per-gram) enough protein to rank with lean ground beef while
having less fat per gram.
Bored
with bran as a source of fibre in your diet? Edible insects can
oblige, and they also contain useful minerals such as iron,
magnesium, phosphorous, selenium and zinc.
Which
to choose?
Beetles
and caterpillars are the most common meals among the more than 1,900
edible insect species that people eat. Other popular insect foods are
bees, wasps, ants, grasshoppers, locusts and crickets. Less popular
are termites and flies, according to UN data.
Eco-friendly
Insects
on average can convert 2 kilograms of feed into 1 kilogram of edible
meat. In comparison, cattle require 8 kilograms of feed to produce a
kilogram of meat. Most insects raised for food are likely to produce
fewer environmentally harmful greenhouse gases than livestock, the UN
agency says.
Don't
swat the income
Edible
insects are a money-maker. In Africa, four big water bottles filled
with grasshoppers can fetch a gatherer €15 euros (US$20). Some
caterpillars in southern Africa and weaver ant eggs in Southeast Asia
are considered delicacies and command high prices.
Insect-farms
tend to be small, serving niche markets like fish bait businesses.
But since insects thrive across a wide range of locations - from
deserts to mountains - and are highly adaptable, experts see big
potential for the insect farming industry, especially those farming
insects for animal feed. Most edible insects are now gathered in
forests.
Let
a bug do your recycling
A
€3 million (US$4 million) European Union-funded research project is
studying the common housefly to see if a lot of flies can help
recycle animal waste by essentially eating it while helping to
produce feed for animals such as chickens.
Right now farmers can only
use so much manure as fertilizer and many often pay handsome sums for
someone to cart away animal waste and burn it.
A
South African fly factory that rears the insects en masse to
transform blood, guts, manure and discarded food into animal feed has
won a $100,000 UN-backed innovation prize.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.