The Next Dietitian You Consult With May Be An Entomologist

February 21, 2015

92

February 21, 2015 – By 2050 with more than 9 billion human mouths to feed let alone countless cattle, pigs, chickens and other meat, it is not surprising that food scientists are turning to the most prolific animals on Earth as a good source for protein. We are not talking about two and four-legged creatures, but those with six – insects.

It’s not like many of us aren’t already in the insect eating business. According to a 2013 paper published by the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, 2 billion of us regularly indulge in entomophagy, the consumption of insects whether ground up as meal, or pan-fried, baked and broiled whole. And when you think about it, if today we eat fresh-water prawns, shrimp, crab, lobster and shell fish, it’s not too much of a stretch to consider indulging in a nice meal of deep-fried cricket.

In fact, in North America, it seems crickets are the emerging insect of choice for foodies. Meet Tiny Farms and the Open Bug Farm Project. The company first opened its doors in Silicon Valley California in 2012. Andrew Brentano, a co-founder, believes the key to levelling the food playing field between insects and cattle is scaling up cricket farms.Today in the United States there are approximately 30 insect farms producing food for human consumption. That’s double the number since 2009. Almost all the product is going into the making of cricket flour for baked goods and protein bars.

Brentano points out that raising crickets is far more sustainable than hog and poultry farming or cattle ranching. He provides some interesting statistical comparisons:

It takes 11.33 kilograms (25 pounds) of feed to produce 0.45 kilograms (1 pound) of beef.
Comparably you use 0.90 kilograms (2 pounds) of feed to produce 0.45 kilograms (1 pound) of crickets.
Water savings are substantial as well. Where it takes almost 1,900 liters (500 gallons) of water to produce 0.45 kilograms (1 pound) of chicken, a four times that amount for beef, you need only 3.8 liters (1 gallon) of water mostly contained in feed, potatoes and carrots, to produce the equivalent in crickets.
And a final bonus, raising crickets is a way to combat climate change producing 80% less of the potent greenhouse gas, methane, than cattle.

Why are crickets less of a resource hog than our traditional meat protein sources? Because they are cold-blooded. The food they eat doesn’t go to sustaining body temperature but instead is directly converted to body mass. This efficiency may prove key in seeing insects become a global source of meat protein as the century unfolds. That’s not to say that insects aren’t already a meat protein source in many parts of the world, particularly, Africa and Asia.

There are problems however. The extensive use of insecticides by farmers growing staple crops makes insects harvested in the wild a non-starter. And small-scale raising of insects, pretty much what is being done today in most of the world, restricts supply and makes insects as a primary food source unreliable.

So what’s needed is new production methods and new ways of branding and packaging crickets and other insect meat protein sources. A Texas-based startup founded by graduate students from Montreal’s McGill University hopes to establish the model for industrial-scale insect farming. At Aspire Food Group’s Austin location it processes 5 million crickets per week. Each takes takes 6 weeks to raise. At that point the crickets are humanely dispatched by freezing. Some are then roasted and ground into a powder which is packaged and sold for use in a variety of foods. The remainder are sold whole. But even at this scale a 0.45 kilogram (1 pound) bag of cricket powder sells for $24 U.S. and the 100 gram bag of whole crickets goes for $10. That’s hardly competitive with chicken or beef at current prices. But in 2050 with 2 billion more humans to feed you can bet that crickets and other insects will be common dinner fare.