The Six-Legged Meat of the Future

[Guest guest]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703293204576106072340020728.html

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.

Meanwhile, our food needs are on the rise. The human population is expected

to grow from six billion in 2000 to nine billion in 2050. Meat production is

expected to double in the same period, as demand grows from rising wealth.

Pastures and fodder already use up 70% of all agricultural land, so

increasing livestock production would require expanding agricultural acreage

at the expense of rain forests and other natural lands. Officials at the

United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization recently predicted that

beef could become an extreme luxury item by 2050, like caviar, due to rising

production costs.

Raising insects for food would avoid many of the problems associated with

livestock. For instance, swine and humans are similar enough that they can

share many diseases. Such co-infection can yield new disease strains that

are lethal to humans, as happened during a swine fever outbreak in the

Netherlands in the late 1990s. Because insects are so different from us,

such risks are accordingly lower.

Insects are also cold-blooded, so they don't need as much feed as animals

like pigs and cows, which consume more energy to maintain their body

temperatures. Ten pounds of feed yields one pound of beef, three pounds of

pork, five pounds of chicken and up to six pounds of insect meat.

Insects produce less waste, too. The proportion of livestock that is not

edible after processing is 30% for pork, 35% for chicken, 45% for beef and

65% for lamb. By contrast, only 20% of a cricket is inedible.

Raising insects requires relatively little water, especially as compared to

the production of conventional meat (it takes more than 10 gallons of water,

for instance, to produce about two pounds of beef). Insects also produce far

less ammonia and other greenhouse gases per pound of body weight. Livestock

is responsible for at least 10% of all greenhouse gas emissions.

Raising insects is more humane as well. Housing cattle, swine or chicken in

high densities causes stress to the animals, but insects like mealworms and

locusts naturally like to live in dense quarters. The insects can be crowded

into vertical stacked trays or cages. Nor do bug farms have to be restricted

to rural areas; they could sprout up anywhere, from a suburban strip mall to

an apartment building. Enterprising gourmets could even keep a few trays of

mealworms in the garage to ensure a fresh supply.

The first insect fare is likely to be incorporated subtly into dishes, as a

replacement for meat in meatballs and sauces. It also can be mixed into

prepared foods to boost their nutritional value—like putting mealworm paste

into a quiche. And dry-roasted insects can be used as a replacement for nuts

in baked goods like cookies and breads.

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.--

Ortiz, MS, RD

*The FRUGAL Dietitian* <http://www.thefrugaldietitian.com>

Check out my blog: mixture of deals and nutrition

Groupon: $2 for Five Movie Rentals from Blockbuster Express: Starts 12:01

2/19 <http://thefrugaldietitian.com/?p=15059>Mamapedia:Free Baby r

from Seven Slings ($39 Value)- Just Pay Shipping Fees of

$11.95<http://thefrugaldietitian.com/?p=15071>February:

Heart Health Month The Frugal Dietitian Giveaway enter by 2/21

NOON<http://thefrugaldietitian.com/?p=15004>

*Healthy Diet at any Age: We are NOT just looking

*

*at the years people have behind them but also the

*

*quality of the years ahead of them.*