“Caterpillars and meat play the same role in the human body.”
Yansi saying, Democratic Republic of the Congo
What will you do if you see a grasshopper on your plate…?
Leave alone your plate… what will you do to it if you see anywhere near you…? Just take an old paper, roll it and shoo away the insect isn’t it…? Or crush it to death if you are more inhumane… ? If you are in Mexican, than you will be probably use the Grasshopper for making Tacos…
Insects , as food…? Yuck. If this is your feeling after reading the above paragraph… hold your breadth and read further.
We know insects for reasons like pollination and plant reproduction, waster conversion, maintaining soil fertility and even as pest control. When we think about the obvious insect products like honey ( a spoonful of honey is a life time secretion of about 50 honey bees…!) , silk, ( a secretion from two glands of Caterpillar larvae) shellac ( a secretion of lac insects used as wood top coat applied to make your furniture shiny) , red dye ( a colouring agent used as colouring agent in lipsticks and fashion products). If you would have consumed Strawberry Frappuccino from a famous coffeeshop chain before 2012, chances are there you would have tasted crushed Cochineal insects…! Which was used as colouring agent. ( nytimes.com– why aren’t we eating more insects..?). Google cochineal insect carmine to see the colour resemblance to strawberry…!!
Why we can’t accept insects as a food option..? the yucky feeling as mentioned in the first para… The Yuck factor about insects roots from the common belief that we relate insects with dirt, its presence among the waste/garbage , as a transmitter of disease and as a pest eating our crops. Contrarily , insects are good sources of protein and other nutrients like Omega-3 Fatty acids, many Essential Amino Acids, Calcium, Iron, Zinc, and Magnesium . Not only this, the quality of nutrients are far more superior and eco -friendly than the other red meats. They need only one -eighth of ingredients to yield the same amount of nutrients from other varieties of meat like beef, pork or chicken. So they leave lesser carbon foot prints.Let’s compare a cricket with animals. It takes almost 15,000 litres of water to produce 1kg of red meat while it takes barely 8 litres to produce one kg of crickets. This is mainly because crickets use 8 times less feed than an animal. If a family of four ate insects once a week for a year, they would help save about 6,00,000 litres of water. Many Military survival manuals clearly state that insects should be eaten as a perfect alternative when other food sources are not available. ( Smithsonian. si.edu)
Entomophagy ( eating insect as a food by humans ) is in the human evolutionary time line. Ancient people ate insect not as a means of food during famine or being in proximity.. they ate it as their choice.. for its delicious taste and nutrition – mainly fat and protein it offers. According to Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), worldwide , close to 2 billion people eat about 1900 speciess of edible insects on a regular basis. Popular among them are Beetles (31%), Catterpillars ( 18%) and Bees/Wasps?Ants ( 14%) Thats a huge number isn’t it…?
Forty years ago in Thailand there was an outbreak of the patanga locust (Patanga succincta) in maize. Aerial spraying of insecticide did not succeed and a campaign to promote the eating of the patanga locust was initiated between 1978 and 1981. The grasshoppers were deep-fried, used as a cracker ingredient and fermented to make a cooking sauce. Today, the grasshopper (deep-fried) is one of the best-known and most popular edible insects in Thailand, and this species is no longer a major agricultural pest. Some farmers even grow maize crops to feed the insect, rather than harvesting the maize for sale ( FAO- The role of insects , 2015). Thats interesting isn’t it…?
Major insect eating countries are in the tropical south asia, and Africa. Europe doesn’t have favourable climate for insect varieties to develop and hence doesn’t prefer insect as a food ingredient. Western world, mainly the European settlers in North americas doesn’t experiment with insects as a food as they associated it with dirt and disease. Now slowly the outlook about insect as a food option is changing in the western world too. Many companies have started farming insects and develop products based on insect flour. Currently a 55 Million USD business, the insect based food industry is estimated to grow into a 1 billion USD business by 2024.
Entomophagy in India, popular dishes based on insects various countries, major companies involved in insect farming and will the insects be our future food… ?
Wait for my next post.
Good Food....Good Mood. 