UN food advisor says: "Let them eat insects"!

[Andrew Veresay]

By Garry White 01 May 2011

Serge Verniau, the Laos representative to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) wants the world to ditch steaks and burgers - and eat insects instead.
"Most of the world's population will live in urban areas. Trying to feed the whole planet enough protein from cows won't work," Mr Verniau said last week.

Insects are eaten from the wild in Laos, but are not farmed on a large scale. He wants to increase research into the field and host a conference on edible insects in 2012.

Insect farming is also environmentally safer – with a recent study by FoodServiceWarehouse.com suggesting that swapping pork and beef for crickets and locusts could help reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 95pc.

As well as emitting fewer gases insects also have twice the protein of meat and fish, whilst being rich in unsaturated fat.

Mr Verniau's research continues: "You can make powder from crickets that is very rich in protein. It's low in fat and it can be added to biscuits in problem areas where food rations are distributed."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/commodities/8486704/UN-food-advi...

 

[Ecosikh]

Hi everyone

this is worth having a look at bug farm

bon appétit!

[Lana]

@ Ecosikh - you can eat slugs:

http://www.eattheweeds.com/are-slugs-edible-what-about-snails-2/

There is also a lot of interesting reading on the page.

[Heather]

A nice tutorial on how to eat garden snails

[Corey Young]

Just saw this report on the CBC website and thought that it was quite interesting:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/flour-made-from-insects-wins-1m-f...

 

Flour made from insects wins $1M for McGill team

Insect-based 'power flour' high in protein, iron

“We are farming insects and we’re grinding them into a fine powder and then we’re mixing it with locally appropriate flour to create what we call power flour,” Ashour explained to CBC News.

“It is essentially flour that is fortified with protein and iron obtained from locally appropriate insects.”

 

[Howard]

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations published a detailed 200-page report in 2013: Edible Insects - Future Prospects For Food and Feed Security.

Download Full Report - 5.7Mb

http://www.fao.org/docrep/018/i3253e/i3253e00.htm

[Ecosikh]

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/picture/2013/sep/13/eating-...

[Chris Harris]

As always educate yourself about anything you do for a better result.

As with all foods, know where they come from, how they are produced and minimise environmental pollutants.

Seek knowledge from traditional elders, experts, craftspeople, survivalists, tradespeople and people who know.

All grasshoppers, katydids, and crickets are good to eat - high staurated fat and protein.

Moths are high in saturated fats too,and can be quite large.

Wood and tree grubs are all good to eat.

Stick insects and leaf insects are all good to eat.

Caterpillars are NOT good to eat.

Butterflies are NOT good to eat.

Worms are NOT good to eat.

Cockroaches are NOT good to eat.

Cooking insects can make them more palatable for some people - but they have a pleasant nutty protein flavour to me when raw and I am sure they are better foryou that way.

Any insect that has fed on poisonous plants (yes - you should know or be learning these too!) is not safe to eat. Herbicides and insecticides should also be avoided!!!

Experiment with these while it is still a choice!

[Chris Harris]

I for one have been eating insects for some years now.

We (by this I mean my partner, daughters, and friends) eat both the tree grubs (witchetty grub) that Mark mentioned and also the grasshoppers and katydids that frequent our subtropical garden.

These are a delicious snack that we collect live, then put in the freezer for 1 hour which "sedates" them, then pan fry with a little oil, salt (and sometimes garlic).

This is one of my favourite beer snacks!

We have also eaten guinea pig "surplus" animals which is one to remember for small animal production systems - tasty like a cross between chicken and rabbit and has a good source of fat over the back for us high metabolism types

 

Surviving the pole shift is going to require much "thinking outside the box" so lets share ideas!