March 21st

www.123rf.com

People fight back and eat the locust plague sweeping through the Sudan and Israel. They fry the insects in a tasty coating to make them crunchy and delicious. However, they can never hope to contain the hordes of insects sweeping the land. See the full article here.

The United Nations and worldwide governments are wondering how the Earth's expanding population will feed themselves in the future. In the West, many of us have grown up with cheap, abundant meat. Rising prices mean we are now starting to see the return of meat as a luxury. As a result we are looking for new ways to fill the meat gap.

www.enterthebible.org

Food futurologists predict that insects or mini-livestock as they could become known, could become a staple of our diet.  It's a win-win situation. Insects provide as much nutritional value as ordinary meat and are a great source of protein, according to researchers at a university in the Netherlands. They also cost less to raise, consume less water than cattle or livestock and do not have much of a carbon footprint. Plus, there are an estimated 1,400 species that are edible to man. Insects like crickets and grasshoppers can be ground down to make burgers and sausages resembling their meat counterparts. 

A large chunk of the world's population, an estimated 70%, already eats insects as a regular part of their diet. Caterpillars and locusts are popular in Africa, wasps are a delicacy in Japan, and crickets are eaten in Thailand. 

fineartamerica.com

A member of the Experimental Food Society predicts that insects will need an image overhaul if they are to become more palatable to the squeamish Europeans and North Americans. However, most people eat insects without even realizing it. There are no figures available, but some estimates put it at about 500g every year. Muesli can inadvertently contain beetle and moth larvae and about 20% of imported dates have a small caterpillar inside.

Field workers in the 1600s and 1700s had little more than gruel when times were hard, and they would have picked up what they found in the fields such as slugs - not big slimy ones, but milk slugs - and beetle larvae. 

Could you eat slug soup, boiled cod with snail sauce and gooseberry cream with sawflies? For a lighter alternative, what about moths on toast or a stag beetle larvae sandwich?