That’s right ladies and gents, next time you’re feeling a little peckish put down your bacon and egg roll and reach for a handful of crispy creepy crawlies. It’s better for you after all.
A study released by the United Nations has said that introducing insects into Western diets may be a way of combating the ballooning rates of global obesity.
More than 1,900 species of bug are eaten worldwide, predominantly in south-east Asia and in Africa but many in the West would sooner eat their designer hat than rip into a termite or caterpillar for lunch.
Yet the authors of the new study from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said many insects contained the same amount of protein and minerals as meat and more healthy fats doctors recommend in balanced diets.
“In the West we have a cultural bias, and think that because insects come from developing countries, they cannot be good,” said scientist Arnold van Huis, one of the reports authors, speaking to Yahoo.com.
Many restaurants in Europe have reportedly started offering insect based meals, presenting them to discerning diners as ‘exotic delicacies’.
Noma, a Danish restaurant that has been crowned the world’s best three years running, is famous for using insect ingredients such as ants and fermented grasshopper.
The report says that while helping in the battle with obesity, farming of bugs for human consumption as likely to be less land-dependent than traditional livestock and produce fewer greenhouse gases.
In blind taste tests conducted by Professor van Huis and his team at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, 9 out of 10 subjects claimed to prefer the taste of meatballs made half with beef and half with mealworms than the more traditional, all meat recipe.
Food for thought, so to speak.
Images: Getty
