Mealworm quiche, grasshopper spring rolls and cuisine made
from other creepy crawlies is the answer to the global food crisis, shrinking
land and water resources and climate-changing carbon emissions, Dutch scientist
Arnold van Huis says.
The professor at Wageningen University in the Netherlands
said insects have more protein than cattle per bite, cost less to raise,
consume less water and don’t have much of a carbon footprint. He even has plans
for a cookbook to make bug food a more appetizing prospect for mature palates. “Children
don’t have a problem with eating insects, but adults with developed eating
habits do, and only tasting and experience can make them change their minds,”
Van Huis said.
“The problem is psychological.”
Van Huis has organized lectures, food tastings, and cookery
classes with a master chef who demonstrates how to prepare a range of recipes
using bugs, worms and grasshoppers, all bred — or raised — at a Dutch insect
farm for consumption.
To attract more insect-eaters, Van Huis and his team of
scientists at Wageningen have worked with a local cooking school to produce a
cookbook and suitable recipes.
Chef Henk van Gurp, who created recipes for mealworm quiche
and chocolate pralines with buffalo worms, sees no reason to disguise the
ingredients, and sprinkles mealworms on top of the quiche filling and onto the
chocolate buffalo worms as protein.
“I try to make my food in a way that people can see what
they eat,” he told Reuters. “Once international leading chefs begin preparing
this food, others will follow.”
Grasshoppers are considered a tasty snack in Asian countries
including Thailand and Vietnam, but are not a feature on the Dutch menu. Van
Huis says Europeans should consider insects an alternative source of protein
because they can contain up 90 percent protein, compared with 40-70 percent for
beef.
“Meat consumption is expected to double from 2000 to 2050.
We are already using 70 percent of our agricultural land for livestock and we
cannot afford to spare more,” he said.
Plus raising cattle is responsible for 18 percent of
greenhouse gases emissions.
Insects are already bred as food for birds, lizards and
monkeys at the Callis family’s farm near the university, and now the owners see
a chance to sell bugs for human consumption.
“It is good food, of high nutritional value, and very
healthy for elderly people,” said Margot Callis. Though she cannot eat insects
herself because she is allergic to them.
Duyugu Tatar, a 24-year old IT consultant who attended a
recent lecture and food-tasting at the university, was less effusive about the
mealworm quiche. “The taste was not that awful, but the idea of eating them
horrified me. It was crispy. The taste was not like normal food. Not like meat,
vegetable, or fruit. Maybe something like cornflakes,” she said.
“It took a lot of courage to eat it, I usually smash them
(insects) when I see them. I am not used to eating them. I don’t know if I
would eat it again.”
