Entomophagy
Entomophagy (from Greek ἔντομος éntomos, "insect(ed)", and φᾰγεῖν phăgein, "to eat") is the consumption of insects as food. Insects are eaten by many animals, but the term is generally used to refer to human consumption of insects; animals that eat insects are known as insectivores. There are also some species of carnivorous plants that derive nutrients from insects.
Human insect-eating is common in cultures in parts of the world, such as North, Central and South America; and Africa, Asia, Australia and New Zealand. Over 1,000 insects are known to be eaten in 80% of the world's nations. However, in some societies insect-eating is uncommon or even taboo. Today insect eating is rare in the developed world, but insects remain a popular food in many developing regions of Latin America, Africa, Asia and Oceania.
Some of the more popular insects and arachnids eaten around the world include crickets, cicadas, grasshoppers, ants, various beetle grubs (such as mealworms), the larvae of the darkling beetle or rhinoceros beetle, various species of caterpillar (such as bamboo worms, mopani worms, silkworms and waxworms), scorpions and tarantulas.
Entomophagy is sometimes defined broadly to include the practice of eating arthropods that are not insects, such as arachnids (tarantulas mainly) and myriapods (centipedes mainly). There are 1,417 known species of arthropods, including arachnids, that are edible to humans. The term is not used for the consumption of other arthropods, specifically crustaceans like crabs, lobsters and shrimps.
Human insect-eating is common in cultures in parts of the world, such as North, Central and South America; and Africa, Asia, Australia and New Zealand. Over 1,000 insects are known to be eaten in 80% of the world's nations. However, in some societies insect-eating is uncommon or even taboo. Today insect eating is rare in the developed world, but insects remain a popular food in many developing regions of Latin America, Africa, Asia and Oceania.
Some of the more popular insects and arachnids eaten around the world include crickets, cicadas, grasshoppers, ants, various beetle grubs (such as mealworms), the larvae of the darkling beetle or rhinoceros beetle, various species of caterpillar (such as bamboo worms, mopani worms, silkworms and waxworms), scorpions and tarantulas.
Entomophagy is sometimes defined broadly to include the practice of eating arthropods that are not insects, such as arachnids (tarantulas mainly) and myriapods (centipedes mainly). There are 1,417 known species of arthropods, including arachnids, that are edible to humans. The term is not used for the consumption of other arthropods, specifically crustaceans like crabs, lobsters and shrimps.
Insect farming aims to end food insecurity in Laos
15 March, 2011
[HANOI] What is the best way to raise and cook crickets, mealworms, palm weevils and weaver ants? A research and demonstration site in Laos aims to find out, as part of a push to provide food security in the country.
Laotian farmers will be taught how to rear and process the insects, in the hope of turning a food source that is largely foraged into one that is farmed instead.
Food insecurity is widespread in Laos, and sustainable insect farming will provide income for farmers as well as food, according to the site's sponsor, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
Insects are just as nutritious as cattle and poultry, according to FAO, and farming them could also reduce greenhouse gas emissions, say researchers at Waegineng University in Netherlands.
The demonstration site, to be launched this month (28–30 March) at the National University of Laos in Vientiane, will research the best ways of raising and cooking crickets, mealworms, palm weevils and weaver ants.
Approximately 95 per cent of Laotians already eat insects, according to the FAO, and the practice is culturally acceptable.
"Many people in developing countries already eat insects, but they usually collect them from the wild," said Yupa Hanboonsong, the FAO's chief technical officer for the edible-insect project and entomology professor at Khon Kaen University in Thailand.
"It would be better if they grew insects in their gardens."
But there are many gaps in agricultural knowledge of how best to farm them that the research will attempt to address.
Research will focus on reducing production costs, assessing nutritional content and developing food-safety standards, Hanboonsong toldSciDev.Net, noting that researchers will strike a balance between cooking insects and preserving taste.
The researchers will also explore ways of grinding insects into baking powder, she said, because some consumers "don't like to see the legs" of the insects they eat.
Establishing food safety guidelines would help Laotians sell their insects both domestically and abroad, Hanboonsong said, adding that insects are already sold commercially in Thailand.
Growing insects on 20 square metres of land could net a Laotian farmer US$100 per month, said Krilert Tawekul, professor of sustainable agriculture and food security at Khon Kaen University. And insects require much less start-up investment than chickens or cows, he added.
Tawekul said that rearing insects is a "simple technology" that should be promoted in other developing countries. Khon Kaen University will host 20 African agricultural experts for a five-week study tour of Thai insect farms this spring.
Source
The case for eating insects
In the next 40 years, the world is going to need a 70 percent increase in food production to feed a population that will be billions larger and considerably wealthier than it is today.
Where is that food going to come from?
Dutch entomologist Marcel Dicke has at least a partial answer in the six-legged creatures we call insects.
Where is that food going to come from?
Dutch entomologist Marcel Dicke has at least a partial answer in the six-legged creatures we call insects.
'We should eat insects, not mammals' says Marcel Dicke
At TEDGlobal 2010, Marcel Dicke has outlined a future where humanity's consumption of mammals is replaced with consumption of insects.
The world is having difficulty feeding itself. More than a sixth of the world's population are considered malnourished, and with the global population expected to rise to around nine billion by 2050, agricultural production will need to increase by 70 percent to keep everyone fed.
Meat consumption in developed countries is about 80kg per person, per year. In the USA it's 120kg. By contrast, it's 25kg in developing countries, and China's consumption has risen in the past few years from 30 to 50kg. Pretty soon, there just won't be enough to go round, so humanity needs an alternative.
Marcel Dicke is an agricultural entomologist who believes that the answer is simple: bugs. 80 percent of the creatures on Earth are insects, and there are 200 kilos of insect biomass per person on the planet. Speaking at TEDGlobal 2010, Dicke outlined a future where humanity's consumption of mammals is replaced with Entomophagy -- the consumption of insects.
He gave several reasons why this would be a good idea. Firstly, growing insects for food is extremely efficient, compared to more traditional meat sources. 10 kilograms of feed will generate just 1kg of beef, 3kg of pork, and 5kg of chicken. It generates 9kg of locusts.
As well as efficiency, that also means less waste to deal with -- manure isn't generated in anywhere near as great a quantity, and the waste that does result from the process is lower in ammonia and greenhouse gas emissions than equivalent manure from mammals.
Then could also health benefits, Dicke suggests. Insects are rich in all the proteins, fats, and vitamins that are crucial to our diet. One hundred grams of giant silkworm moth larvae provide 100 percent of the daily requirements for copper, zinc, iron, thiamin, and riboflavin. Crickets are high in calcium, and termites are rich in iron. With six million species to choose from, picking a diet is easy.
By the way, you already eat insects
If you're squirming in discomfort at that last paragraph, you probably won't want to read this next one either: Humans in the western world already eat an average of 500g of insects per year. The sources are predominantly processed food -- soups, noodles, etc.
Dicke offered up tomato soup as an example. Tomatoes that look good and fresh are sold whole, but those with insects in are pulped and made into soup. So long as the minimum standards for safety are met, it's entirely fine.
Plus we might not have any choice. 70 percent of the world's agricultural land is already used for livestock, and the potential for growth of the total is slim, and involved cutting down rainforests. Insects can be farmed in considerably smaller spaces.
Feeling queasy? Dicke reminded the audience that other invertebrates such as crabs, oysters and shrimps are essentially just underwater insects. "A locust is a shrimp of the land," he said. Also, insects are eaten widely in developing countries -- more than 1,000 different species are chowed down on around the world.
Source: www.wired.co.uk
Marcel Dicke: Why not eat insects?
Marcel Dicke makes an appetizing case for adding insects to everyone's diet. His message to squeamish chefs and foodies: delicacies like locusts and caterpillars compete with meat in flavor, nutrition and eco-friendliness.
Marcel Dicke wants us to reconsider our relationship with insects, promoting bugs as a tasty -- and ecologically sound -- alternative to meat in an increasingly hungry world.
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The Six-Legged Meat of the Future
By MARCEL DICKE and ARNOLD VAN HUIS
At the London restaurant Archipelago, diners can order the $11 Baby Bee Brulee: a creamy custard topped with a crunchy little bee. In New York, the Mexican restaurant Toloache offers $11 chapulines tacos: two tacos stuffed with Oaxacan-style dried grasshoppers.
Could beetles, dragonfly larvae and water bug caviar be the meat of the future? As the global population booms and demand strains the world's supply of meat, there's a growing need for alternate animal proteins. Insects are high in protein, B vitamins and minerals like iron and zinc, and they're low in fat. Insects are easier to raise than livestock, and they produce less waste. Insects are abundant. Of all the known animal species, 80% walk on six legs; over 1,000 edible species have been identified. And the taste? It's often described as "nutty."
The vast majority of the developing world already eats insects. In Laos and Thailand, weaver-ant pupae are a highly prized and nutritious delicacy. They are prepared with shallots, lettuce, chilies, lime and spices and served with sticky rice. Further back in history, the ancient Romans considered beetle larvae to be gourmet fare, and the Old Testament mentions eating crickets and grasshoppers. In the 20th century, the Japanese emperor Hirohito's favorite meal was a mixture of cooked rice, canned wasps (including larvae, pupae and adults), soy sauce and sugar.
Will Westerners ever take to insects as food? It's possible. We are entomologists at Wageningen University, and we started promoting insects as food in the Netherlands in the 1990s. Many people laughed—and cringed—at first, but interest gradually became more serious. In 2006 we created a "Wageningen—City of Insects" science festival to promote the idea of eating bugs; it attracted more than 20,000 visitors.
Over the past two years, three Dutch insect-raising companies, which normally produce feed for animals in zoos, have set up special production lines to raise locusts and mealworms for human consumption. Now those insects are sold, freeze-dried, in two dozen retail food outlets that cater to restaurants. A few restaurants in the Netherlands have already placed insects on the menu, with locusts and mealworms (beetle larvae) usually among the dishes.
Insects have a reputation for being dirty and carrying diseases—yet less than 0.5% of all known insect species are harmful to people, farm animals or crop plants. When raised under hygienic conditions—eating bugs straight out of the backyard generally isn't recommended—many insects are perfectly safe to eat.
We continue to make progress in the Netherlands, where the ministry of agriculture is funding a new $1.3 million research program to develop ways to raise edible insects on food waste, such as brewers' grain (a byproduct of beer brewing), soyhulls (the skin of the soybean) and apple pomace (the pulpy remains after the juice has been pressed out). Other research is focusing on how protein could be extracted from insects and used in processed foods.
Though it is true that intentionally eating insects is common only in developing countries, everyone already eats some amount of insects. The average person consumes about a pound of insects per year, mostly mixed into other foods. In the U.S., most processed foods contain small amounts of insects, within limits set by the Food and Drug Administration. For chocolate, the FDA limit is 60 insect fragments per 100 grams. Peanut butter can have up to 30 insect parts per 100 grams, and fruit juice can have five fruit-fly eggs and one or two larvae per 250 milliliters (just over a cup). We also use many insect products to dye our foods, such as the red dye cochineal in imitation crab sticks, Campari and candies. So we're already some of the way there in making six-legged creatures a regular part of our diet.
Not long ago, foods like kiwis and sushi weren't widely known or available. It is quite likely that in 2020 we will look back in surprise at the era when our menus didn't include locusts, beetle larvae, dragonfly larvae, crickets and other insect delights.
Mr. Dicke and Mr. Van Huis are professors of entomology at Wageningen University in the Netherlands.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
Photo: Mitchell Fienberg
Photo: Mitchell Fienberg
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Recipe: Crispy Crickets Preheat the oven to 225 degrees. Strip the antennae, limbs and wings (if any) from 20 to 30 clean, frozen adult crickets, or 40 to 60 cricket nymphs. Spread the stripped crickets on a lightly oiled baking sheet and place in oven. Bake until crickets are crisp, around 20 minutes. Yield: one cup. Sprinkle these on salads or put them through a coffee grinder to turn them into bug "flour." You could even combine the crickets with Chex Mix for a protein-rich snack. From "The Eat-a-Bug Cookbook" by David George Gordon (Ten Speed Press) More Recipes: Superworm Tempura And: Where to Find Creepy Crawly Cuisine |
Edible forest insects - Humans bite back
A report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
EU to spend 3 million Euros
to promote eating insects 'as alternative source of protein'
January 30, 2012
The EU will spend three million Euros to research 'the potential of insects as an alternative source of protein.'
Research projects will be selected this year.
Food experts agree that insects would probably have to be disguised for European audiences, so the insect 'food' could be used as an additive in burgers and other fast food.
The UN's Food Standards Authority says of the research: 'While insects have not traditionally been used for food in the UK or elsewhere in the European Union, it is estimated that about 2.5 billion people across the world have diets that routinely include insects. 'While many insects are regarded as pests, the UN's Food and Agriculture authority is interested in promoting edible insects as a highly sustainable source of nutrition.'
Some worms contain three times as much protein as beef per ounce, while four crickets have as much calcium as a glass of milk.
Daniel Creedon, a chef who serves ants, locusts and bees in honey at the London Archipelago restaurant, said: 'If insects start coming into the food chain they are probably going to have to be disguised. '
'Food producers will probably get away with describing it as animal based proteins. Not many people will buy a locust burger.'
Website Treehugger said: 'It is not hard to imagine the development of an insect-based food additive that enriches burger and nugget protein levels.
'Burgers with processed insect meal could be sold by chains under claims such as "higher in protein", "healthier fats", and "eco-burger"'.
Eighty per cent of countries on Earth already eat insects, and more than 1,000 insect species are often eaten by human beings.
Unlike conventional livestock, insects and bugs need little space and can be bred in sealed buildings under natural light where they live off waste, paper and algae.
The idea has previously been backed by the UN and EU as a way to tackle food shortages.
Some academics believe that the expense and environmental cost of raising livestock means that insect-eating will be inevitable - and it has been claimed that by the end of this decade, insect-eating will be widespread.
Prof Marcel Dicke of Wageningen University in the Netherlands said: 'The most important thing is getting people prepared, getting used to the idea. Because from 2020 onwards, there won't be much of a choice for us.'
Source: Daily Mail
