EATING insects? sounds disgusting but…
Insects For Dinner, Anyone?
When I was watching TV the other day, I saw a restaurant which uses insects for protein. The restaurant was called EAT for E and is located in Japan. One of their popular dishes is silkworm gapao rice. You can see nice and crispy silkworms within the dish! I don’t know why but the pictures made me want to actually try it.
Depending on who you are and what you like to eat this might sound disgusting - or it might even sound interesting. The reason I decided to write about insects as human food is the potential to solve environmental problems.
As you may know, by 2050 the world's population is expected to be 9.7 billion. We need to produce not just food - but food which contains proteins and vitamins. When you think of proteins, probably you think of beef, chicken, pork and tofu.
Food production is responsible for a third of all planet-heating gases caused by humans. Meat accounts for 60% of that. How can we produce high-protein foods without so much greenhouse gas?
One answer could be insects. Let’s compare beef versus cricket: It turns out crickets have much more protein than any other meat including beef. Also, crickets contain high levels of zinc, iron, calcium and magnesium.
What about sustainability? Cows need 25kg of food to produce 1kg of meat. But crickets only needs 2.1kg of food to produce 1kg of meat. Since you can eat the whole body of a cricket, there is no wasted food, either. Also, cows need 22,000L of water to produce 1kg of meat but crickets require only 420L to make 1kg of meat.
As you can see, crickets don't produce much greenhouse emission. And as you know, beef produces a lot of methane which also is becoming a problem.
Insects could be the keyword for our sustainable future.
If you would like to try out high-end food from insects, or casual cricket ramen, here is the place to go! (In Japan)
Yum!