By Adelia Saunders
23 February 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: Global climate change and increasing food insecurity in many parts of the developing world may put insects on the menu, experts from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said this week, as scientists from around the world gathered in Chiang Mai, Thailand, to assess the potential of the world’s 1,400 edible insects to help fill growing food gaps.
As erratic weather patterns threaten agriculture; spiking fuel costs and an emerging biofuels market drive up prices on such staple foods as corn and soy; and a growing population leaves farmland exhausted from overuse, two billion people are at risk of going hungry. The commercialization and marketing of edible insects, according to the FAO, could create money-making opportunities and add key nutrients to the diets of vulnerable populations.
“Many of the insects that are eaten are highly nutritious and big sources of protein,” Patrick Durst, the FAO’s Senior Forestry Officer, said in an interview with MediaGlobal. The important thing, he said, “is to ensure food safety, hygienic raising and collecting, so we avoid chemical residues and ensure that the quality of the food is really good.”
Insects tend to be high in the necessary amino acids that many grain-based diets lack. Many have a greater caloric content than corn, soy or beef and provide crucial nutrients— a handful of Angola’s Usta terpsichore caterpillars fills a day’s requirements for zinc and iron, while three caterpillar species found in the Democratic Republic of Congo are high in riboflavin and niacin. Winged adult termites give magnesium and copper; they are also high in fat. Dried adult weevils are 69 percent protein, well over three times the percentage found in a can of tuna.
“The amount of biomass of ants alone, worldwide, is about ten times the biomass of humans, and ants are only one species, one family of insects,” Durst said. “So the numbers are fantastic, and the rapidity with which they’re able to reproduce means that most insects don’t have any real problem or threat [of overuse],” he said, adding that as more people develop a taste for insects, more research is needed to preserve delicate ecological balances. “There’s certainly a lot of aspects of the insect dynamics and the interactions of different species in the wild that biologists are not completely knowledgeable of,” Durst said. “In some areas of the world, in fact, there are management regimes that have been developed that help to insure that there isn’t over-harvesting at critical times in the life cycle of the insects.”
Fried insects for sale in Bangkok, Thailand, include locusts, bamboo
worms, moth chrysalises, crickets, diving beetles and giant water beetles.
(Photo by Takoradee, GFDL)
Insects are far more nutritious than the things they eat, making them able to convert their food into fat and protein more effectively than livestock. The common cricket changes plants into energy five times more efficiently than cows do.
Eating agricultural pests, such as locusts and other grasshoppers, could lessen the need for pesticides, although insects are unlikely to ever be controlled completely through human consumption, and food experts worry over the residual effects of even limited chemical use.
Fears over climate change have underscored the need for greater development of the edible insect industry, a sector already booming in Thailand, where insect consumption has increased in recent years. “There’s an expectation that if the climate is warming, there will in fact be more insects, not less,” Durst said, adding that when crops fail due to drought or flooding, insects remain. “In fact they might be more hardy to the harsh conditions than a lot of other sources of food,” he said.
The Western aversion to six-legged snacks is hardly universal, Durst said. Insects are eaten in 88 countries in Asia, Africa and the Americas. “In most places this is common,” Durst said. “In my view, the reason we haven’t seen more support for this is because most of the donor countries are European countries and North America, and for the most part it has not been part of the culture in these countries to eat insects.”
“It’s a question of getting over the idea. People who do have some resistance to it, if they can have an open mind, it’s quite amazing how good they can taste,” Durst said, adding that among his favorites was Thailand’s fried bamboo worm. “It’s a crispy type of treat,” he said. “You could think of it similar to a French fry.”
Fried bamboo worms are a Thai treat (Photo courtesy of Surangkanang Phoungpan)