Other Food Sources
By tony leather, 14th Apr 2012 | Follow this author
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Posted in WikinutNewsOff Beat
Initially, it is planned to market crickets, mealworms, and grasshoppers, already commercially farmed for animal feed, using different processing methods, such as the technology used in the shellfish industry, the bond between exoskeleton and internal proteins broken by machine.
Other Food sources
We love eating turkey, but never stop to think about what the bird has feasted on to fatten it up for our consumption. Commercially raised birds eat computer formulated diets that cost least, normally of animal by-products, corn, distillers' grains, soybean meal and various vitamins and minerals.
Wild, turkeys are omnivores eating 80% grass, as well as other plantsve, seeds, insects and small animals at times, some organic poultry farmers feeding them all vegetarian diets. U.S. Poultry and Egg Association data has shown, however, that the vast majority of turkeys eaten are from mass-market suppliers, even though the organic birds are undoubtedly tastier.
That being so, it might be time to consider an alternative to turkey at this festive time, turning instead to the revolutionary step of serving some insects as part of the meal. Entom Foods, a start-up company, is actively encouraging people to seriously consider insects as food.
Entom aims to make eating bugs more appealing by removing all the things people take exception to, eventually hoping to produce processed bug-based foodstuffs, marketing the insect nutrients in a familiar form taking away the distasteful element.
Initially, it is planned to market crickets, mealworms, and grasshoppers, already commercially farmed for animal feed, using different processing methods, such as the technology used in the shellfish industry, the bond between exoskeleton and internal proteins broken by machine.
Entom say that insects are not only far more environmentally sustainable than traditional livestock, but much more productive, because where one kilo livestock feed means one kilo of beef, the return with insects is 7 to ten times greater.
Some insects are very nutritious, Grasshoppers, for instance, have 20.6g protein per 100g insect, slightly less than that of lean beef, but then the insect does have three times the amount of calcium, and the taste can be quite surprising
Male bee larvae, apparently, taste of honey and bacon, while giant water bugs taste of green apples. Consuming insects - entomophagy - is common practice in some places, like Paraguay, where large and plentiful palm grubs are harvested from rotting logs, the insects a popular protein source.
About 500 kinds of insects are eaten around the world, many as delicacies, and a research group in Holland carried out an experiment in which university students were presented with snack tables, laden with things like Thai marinated grasshopper spring rolls, buffalo worm chocolate gnache, and quiche lorraine with meal worms.
All got consumed readily, the students astounded to learn that there are more than 1,200 edible insect species including worms, gnats, wasps, termites and beetles in the world that we know of. Insects replacing animal meat as a healthier, more environmentally friendly protein may well be inevitable in the long run
Meat prices are certain to get ever higher, and the Fear Factor associated by westerners with eating bugs needs to be conquered, because with 9 billion people on earth by 2050 and agricultural land at a premium, eating meat may no longer be an option for any but the wealthy.
When you think that insects are protein-rich, fat-poor, abundant and efficient to cultivate, producing far less greenhouse gas and manure, the big question should be why we are not already eating them by the bucketful. To be truthful, the average person already quite unwittingly eats, annually about 500 grams of bug particles, in various foods.
Grasshoppers, locusts and many other varieties of bug taste delicious if stir fried with good oil, garlic, red pepper etc and served up, but those in the west would still prefer their insect protein to be unrecognizable as such. Entom think that if the insects are processed and not visible in food, people will more readily accept it.
If it can be textured, like soya, to resemble meat, then protein taken from meal worms and other insect sources could very well one day be common pizza ingredients, and the giant water bug snacks, along with fried tarantulas and honey bees, may one day be gracing those thanksgiving tables, if those celebrating want to avoid starvation.
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