It has been suggested that humans could raise and eat insects, instead of raising cattle, pig, chickens, etc. There seem to be many advantages:
-insects convert more of their food into useable protein
-insects can be raised quickly and cheaply (no pastures needed)
-insect protein is largely free of dangerous prions (as are showing upin cattle)
So, what species of insects are good to eat? I’ve heard that the Chinese like stir-fried silkworms…and locusts are said to be good to eat. What other insects could be used? And, do they taste good? :rolleyes:
All insects can be protein sources. It’s overcoming the mental handicap of eating them that’s hard.
As I noted last week on the board, I just read a book with 33 ways to eat insects. You could try that book. Or read the chapter on insects in Marvin Harris’ Good to Eat/The Sacred Cow and the Abominable Pig. In essence, the biggest problem with insects is that they’re small. You have to get a lot of them together, and that generally takes time. (Insects that already are in bunches – ants and termites – tend to have a lot of chitin for little meat. Plus they bite your tongue.)
One place where you don’t have that problem is with locusts. If locusts are eating your crops, you already have a bunch of them. You don’t have the crops anymore, so you might as well eat the locusts. One good benefit is that, unlike a lot of other insects that have a lot of “organ meat”, locusts have a lot of muscle tissue for leaping and flying. Muscle tissue is good, because otherwise you’re eating bug guts.
One last thing – I could swear that Harris writes that insects have a high fat content. (this is the excuse I use for not eating insects), but this new book claims that insects are low-fat.
Here’s the book:
The Eat-a-Bug Cookbook by David George Gordon
Aw heck, any insect can be eaten as protein…except the poisonous ones, of course.
Amazingly, no one’s done a comprehensive analysis of of the relative nutritional value of insects, but they are a staple of many cultures. You cited silkworms and locusts, but beetles and crickets are also a big part of a lot of culture’s diets. Although not insects, earthworms were the next white meet a couple of decades ago, and superworms and mealworms are also high-protein alternative food. You can probably get chocolate-covered insects over the Internet.
All insects are not created equal, though. Waxworms are much higher in fat than things like crickets and mealworms, so caveat emptor! Finally, I couldn’t begin to guess if insects have the minerals and vitamins we get from animal meat, particularly iron and B-12.
As for the taste, it all depends on how you prepare them. I watched somebody eat and cook a tarantula, and while it made me sad (I have many tarantulas as pets), it was interesting that they eater said they tasted kind of like crab. That makes perfect sense, of course, since crabs, lobsters, and shrimp are also fairly close relatives to insects and arachnids. Take some earthworms, sautee with crickets and add to your fettucine alfredo, and you’ve got quite a dish!
Look at some of the references in Harris’ book. There are nutritional analyses for several insects, if not a comprehensive study.
My daughter took my copy of The Eat-a-Bug Cookbook to camp with her the other day to gross out her friends.
Ideally, they need to be able to feed on something that isn’t an available food source to humans or cattle; sawdust or sugar cane waste would be good.
Many people are squeamish about eating insects though (myself included, despite my reputation as a voracious gourmand and despite my acceptance, on an intellectual level, that they are just another food source and can’t possibly be worse than some of the seafood I’ve eaten), but how about raising insects (feeding them on otherwise useless waste) as a food source for farmed fish or chickens? I realise this wouldn’t be as efficient as feeding the insects directly to the humans, but it might still be workable.
http://www.realcooltoys.com/realediblebugs.html
Some real, some not. Personally, I’m enticed by the cheddar cheese superworms.
Some insects taste surprisingly good. Waxmoth larvae, when raised on cornmeal, become chubby little bites that are very sweet tasting. High fat content though.