Eating bugs? Who would do that? And why?

Let's start by talking about the harder question: Why?

Why eat bugs?

We can break down reasons to eat insects into three main categories:

• Nutritional Benefits
• Health Benefits
• Envriomental Benefits Over Similar Animal Protein Sources

Nutritional Benefits

On average, the protein content of edible insects ranges from about 35%-75% of their dry weight, compared to ~25% in lean beef and ~23% in chicken breast

Additionally, with high fat content and low carbohydrate content, insects make the perfect snack for many people on specific diets. Take, for instance, a ketogenic diet, in which insects play the perfect role. Additionally, although no research on this has been performed, foods with high fat content have been shown to help with lower the risk of heart disease and reduce inflammation and it would follow that insects, with their healthy, natural fats, would have these effects too. Some insects (like grasshoppers, crickets, termites, and mealworms) are rich in iron, zinc, calcium, copper, phosphorus, magnesium, and maganese. These minerals are important to help your body produce critical, life-sustaining things such as blood cells and muscle mass. Finally, some insects like members of the orthoptera(grasshoppers, crickets, and locusts) and coleoptera(beetles) orders are high in folic acid, a vitamin important for healthy cell growth and function.

Additionally, insects provide many health benefits.

Health Benefits

Among the most promising insects for wide-scale human consumption sits two main species: Yellow mealworms(Tenebrio molitor) and house crickets(Acheta domesticus). Scientists belive that these insects are promising for future humans to eat at scale as they are highly nutritious(as pointed out above) and mealworms are already fed to many farm animals. Recently, both of these were approved for human consumption in Europe. These insects are proven to contain high amounts of antioxidants, useful for lowering your risk of many diseases, including heart disease and certain cancers. For comparison, some insects contain up to 2-5 times the antioxidant capacity of orange juice or olive oil. Other studies have demonstrated that the daily administration of mealworm powder showed a active anti-obesity effect in mice fed high-fat foods. Additionally, these mealworms showed up to a 90% reduction in the amount of fat stored by the animals tested on.

Insects can also aid in preventing death from various diseases. In addition to the anti-cancer properties described above, flies fed mealworms showed significant old age improvment in locomotive control, even after being injected with a suppressant to model Parkinson's Disease, suggesting that insect consumption may lead to not only a longer life, but increased resistance to Parkinson's disease. Finally, additional insects have shown to help consumers in fighting off malicious infections and destroying invasive microbes. This aspect needs further research, but could be of major help to humans.

Enviromental Benefits Over Similar Animal Protein Sources

There are many!

Land Use
Agricultural livestock use land use, being a primary concern related to climate change, needs to be addressed. Currently, livestock accounts for 80% of agricultural land use, which in turn accounts for 44% of all available land use. By looking at insects as an alternative source, we can greatly reduce our need for land.

Efficiency
When we look at a potential food source, we really want to determine how efficient that animal is at converting its food mass into body mass.

With this information, not only do insects make sense from a environmental perspective, but they are also cheaper to grow and harvest at scale.

Freshwater Usage
Current estimakes predict that by 2025 1.8 billion people will be living in countries with absolute water scarcity and ⅔ of the world will be under water-related stress.
Agriculture consumes about 70% of freshwater worldwide. Currently, it takes about 22,000-44,000 liters of freshwater to produce 1 kilogram of beef. The amount of water required for cinsects like mealworms or crickets is much lower.

Greenhouse Gas Lifetime Production
Insects produce far less greenhouse gases during their lifetime than other, similar protein sources, even when viewed on a per-kg of meat scale.

Other
Replacing typical protein sources with insects yields several additional benefits, including(but not limited to):

• Improvement to Animal Welfare
• Extremely Low Risk of Zoonotic Infections
• Organic Side Streams(feeding them excrement from other animals)
• Ammonia Output

Now that we know why people eat bugs, let's move onto the next question: Who?

Who eats bugs?

Well... many, many people! As we've learned above, insects are a incredible replacement for current meat consumption patterns, hindered solely by cultural biases.
Globally, at least 2 billion people already eat insects in over 113 countries.

Examples

Some examples of people eating insects include:

• People in China eating Wasps
• People in Laos eating silkworms and crickets
• And people in Thailand eating silkworms and caterpillars

And hopefully, after reading this...YOU!