Eat more insects; good for you, good for world

The latest weapon in the UN’s fight against hunger, global warming and pollution might be flying by you right now.
Edible insects are being promoted as a low-fat, high-protein food for people, pets and livestock. According to the UN, they come with appetizing side benefits: Reducing greenhouse gas emissions and livestock pollution, creating jobs in developing countries and feeding the millions of hungry people in the world.
Two billion people eat insects, largely in Asia, Africa and Latin America, the Rome-based UN Food and Agriculture Organization said yesterday as it issued a report exploring edible insect potential.
Some insects may already be in your food (and this is no fly-in-my-soup joke). Demand for natural food coloring as opposed to artificial dyes is increasing, the agency’s experts say.
A red coloring produced from the cochineal, a scaled insect often exported from Peru, already puts the hue in a trendy Italian aperitif and an internationally popular brand of strawberry yogurt. Many pharmaceutical companies also use colorings from insects in their pills.
Scientists who have studied the nutritional value of edible insects have found that red ants, small grasshoppers and some water beetles pack enough protein to rank with lean ground beef while having less fat per gram.
Beetles and caterpillars are the most common meals among the more than 1,900 edible insect species that people eat. Other popular insect foods are bees, wasps, ants, grasshoppers, locusts and crickets. Less popular are termites and flies, according to UN data.