FYI

There Is Some Bug Eating in Your (Immediate) Future

It's what's for dinner.
It’s what’s for dinner. Photo: iStockphoto

Like it or not, insects are about to become a major part of your diet. As Grub Street has mentioned time and again, the global food situation is looking kind of grim, and as a planet, we are just one major catastrophe away from a global food crisis. So really, we should be thankful for the tireless work that entomologists at Wageningen University and some Dutch insect-raising companies are doing to help offset our impending food apocalypse. According to The Wall Street Journal, several companies based in the Netherlands that ordinarily raise bugs as feed for animals in zoos, are now running special production lines to raise creepy crawlers like locusts and mealworms for human consumption!

As if that weren’t enough: According to the same article, most of us are already consuming all kinds of bugs that we never knew about. The average person consumes upwards of a pound each year! Granted that’s a pound of bugs and bug parts that are already mixed into things like chocolate (in which the FDA allows for up to 60 insect fragments per 100 grams), peanut butter (30 insect parts per 100 grams), and fruit juice (allowed five fruit-fly eggs and one or two larvae per 250 milliliters). And red the dye that makes things like Campari and candy so colorful? Made from — you guessed it — insects. You read that right. These are bugs and we’re eating them. At least when the apocalypse happens, the idea of eating bugs for sustenance will be a little more palatable.

The Six-Legged Meat of the Future [WSJ]
Earlier: Apocalypse Prep: A Guide to Eating Bugs

There Is Some Bug Eating in Your (Immediate) Future