Bug banquets to end world food crisis?

A delicacy..deep-fried spiders on a skewer

As the population grows, the climate changes, and arable land available for agriculture shrinks, people will eat bugs.

So says Frank Franklin, a professor and director of pediatric nutrition at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Franklin sees a natural progression towards consuming insects as part of the daily diet.

Dining on creepy-crawlers—properly known as entomophagy—is a matter of course for much of humanity. Maggots, worms, beetles—even spiders and scorpions—are considered lip-smacking treats by many Asians.

From Africa to Mexico, from Japan to Cambodia, bugs fill the dinner plate.

Will bugs really sell in the Western world? Well, it’s a known fact that when people get hungry enough they’ll eat anything. Reports from North Korea are that some there are eating grass and tree bark—perhaps they’ve already eaten all the bugs that are easy to find.

The real reason why some—like Franklin—are eying bugs with a fork instead of a can of insecticide is a matter of economics. Insect protein is much cheaper than animal protein.

How many people in Europe and North America would be willing to substitute bugs for beef? To further investigate the matter, LiveScience.com sought out the expert opinion of Dennis Oonincx, an entomologist at Wageningen University in the Netherlands.

According to Oonincx, “The suggestion that insects would be more efficient has been around for quite some time.”

A veritable cornucopia: bug bash banquet

Climate change and bug banquet bashes

Most of the experiments driving researchers—and their grants—towards bug banquets as the solution for potential food shortages in the future is driven by the underlying assumption that the hypothesis of man-made global warming, now climate change, is true.

Man-made global warming may be a fallacy, however, or even an outright fraud. A new camp has sprung up declaring that anthropogenic climate change is nonsense and the climate is driven mostly by the vagaries of the sun. They argue that the planet is actually slipping into a short-term or long-term Ice Age.

Regardless which camp is correct, the evidence the climate is changing seems inescapable. If the planet warmed there would be no food shortage. A cooling planet is what could bring billions to the edge of starvation.

If the world actually is tipping into an Ice Age then entomophagy makes economic sense and may be the only avenue available to feed a hungry world.

Although a core group of researchers has been studying insect diets for many decades, Franklin is relatively new to the field. After discovering the science of entomophagy back in 2010, he realized its importance for future generations.

“The more I looked at it,” he told LiveScience, “the more it made incredible sense that this would be an important nutritional advance that is only going to bring back what has probably been there since the primitive man.”

Crunchy beetle appetizer with creamy centers

Insects to the stars?

NASA, the European Space Agency and even the Japanese space agency have studied the potential of bugs supplementing future astronaut’s diets.

According to Japanese nutritionists, insects make sense as a food supply on extended space missions because they offer solutions that plants and animals cannot address effectively.

The Japanese space task force is seriously considering certain species of termites and silkworms as a way to easily replenish food stocks on a deep space vehicle or even an interplanetary orbiting space station. The scientists believe the bugs can supply a steady stream of critical fats and amino acids to help maintain spacefarer’s overall health.

Yummy: hot, steaming scorpion soup

Other approaches

Beyond bugs, other scientists addressing the possibility of a future rife with food shortages are experimenting with in-vitro meat—literally meat grown in laboratories. Others are pushing fast-growing genetically modified plant strains of grains, cruciferous vegetables and fruits.

Hangers-on for the technology of cloning see that bio-technology as a way to alleviate some food shortages, although the cloning of animals only increases the population at a faster clip and does not solve the problem of what the cloned animals will eat.

Meanwhile, back in the Netherlands, Oonincx and his redoubtable team have completed a study comparing livestock to bugs. The research considered expense, time factors, nutrition and threw in the data for carbon footprints just in case carbon-dioxide is causing a warming of the climate.

The study “proves the hypothesis that insects can be a more efficient source [of protein], and I definitely believe there is a future for edible insects,” Oonincx declared. “It may not be as the animal as such but regarding protein extraction there is a lot to be learned and a lot to be gained.”

Original Helium article.

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