Insects March Forward in Food and Feed
The rearing of insects for human food and sustainable animal feed is on the rise, transforming agricultural and food waste into valuable and nutritious fats and proteins.
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The usual fare at a barbeque is sausages, steaks or burgers, but Dr. Yasmin Akhtar got a shock when she heard that bugs were on the menu at a conference in Toronto. Her day job at the University of British Columbia focused on using natural products such as plant oils to control insects as pests; she wasn’t expecting to eat them. “I thought why eat creepy-crawlies, but then I tasted a chocolate-coated ant and really enjoyed it,” she recalled.
Most Western consumers think of insects as something to be avoided rather than eaten, but plenty of people delight in them, with an estimated 2,000 species eaten around the world. Grubs, locusts, flies, crickets, beetles and termites are flavored and cooked, especially in Asia, Africa, Central America and South America. It is estimated that up to 2 billion people eat them1. Insects contain many nutritious proteins and fats and can be reared far more efficiently and sustainably than livestock. They can also be fed on waste streams from agriculture and even food waste, upping their green credentials.
“The current food system is unsustainable and faces challenges. As populations continue to rise, we can't keep putting more and more pressure on the environment to feed us all, particularly under a changing climate,” noted Professor Lindsay Stringer, an expert in environmental sustainability at the University of York. “There is increasing interest in edible insects because they contain useful protein and vitamins and can be eaten either directly by people or can be mixed with other nutrients and used in animal and fish feeds.”
Entomologist Arnold van Huis at Wageningen University in the Netherlands was interviewing in sub-Saharan Africa about insects, when he discovered that local women in Niger often earn extra income selling grasshoppers from their millet crop: “People know they are nutritious and besides they’re also considered quite delicious,” said van Huis.
After his sabbatical in Africa, van Huis became fascinated with insects as food and he sampled grasshoppers, flies, mealworms and termites. “Most people season them with pepper, salt etcetera, though termites don’t need seasoning. They taste nice by themselves,” he said.
Could bugs be coming to a kitchen near you?
Diners could get nutritional benefits from eating insects, scientists believe. “Insects have got good quality protein, but also vitamins and minerals and other components that are beneficial to your health,” said Professor D. Julian McClements, food scientist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In his book Meat Less: The Next Food Revolution (2023), he notes that “the nutritional profile of edible bugs depends on the species, their life state and how they are prepared and is fairly similar to that found in animal meal. ”Many contain high levels of quality protein, unsaturated fats, omega-3 and -6 fatty acids, dietary fibres, vitamins and minerals such as iron, magnesium and calcium.2,3
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Eating insects could also be better for the planet, studies suggest. “Rearing animals means you need a lot of land and water,” said Akhtar. By comparison, bugs and insects are far more efficient at converting food to protein – the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) estimates that to produce one kilogram of protein you would need 201 m2 of land for cattle, but just 14 m2 for insects. Additionally, around 40% of a cattle’s body mass is edible, compared to around 55% for pigs and chicken. This rises to 80% for bugs. The greenhouse emissions of insects are also a fraction of those for cattle.4
Nonetheless, it is hard to get masses of consumers to switch from their traditional tasty bacon or beef steaks to an insect alternative. But there are ways to eat insects without necessarily getting perturbed by crunchy legs and wings. Akhtar routinely buys cricket flour that is roasted and ground into a fine powder; she bakes with it, one cup of insect flour with one cup of regular flour, and feels that her baking doesn’t taste of insect. “Mostly insects have a nutty flavor,” she said, “but it is like tofu in that they absorb the flavor or ingredients of the spices or other ingredients you had to the food.”
Cricket flour boasts an impressive nutritional scorecard. Literature studies have reported cricket flours that are up to 70% protein, with calcium levels equivalent to those seen in salmon and tofu.5,6 The same studies have also found cricket flour to contain a wide range of amino acids, including an “abundance of essential amino acids.”6
Fly larvae as the future of feed
While insect products and recipes might seem niche and quirky, the same cannot be said for insects as feed. One species stands out as of interest for mass rearing for animal feed – the black soldier fly (Hermetia illucens). Eggs of the fly can be incubated on various waste streams, including food and agricultural waste, as the larvae are adapted to grow on a wide variety of organic waste. “They can be reared even on manure, which is their natural habitat, and they’re very nutritious,” said van Huis. The larvae that hatch can be harvested in less than two weeks and turned into a protein- and fat-rich feed for animals.
“The amino acid profile of this fly is very advantageous. It has all the essential amino acids in larger proportion and it can be raised in a green, ethical manner,” added Louw Hoffman, a professor of meat science at the University of Queensland, Australia. Hoffman has recently studied the use of spectroscopy techniques in monitoring the safety and nutritional value of black soldier fly after its processed.7
He has also collaborated with Australian company Goterra, which makes autonomous waste management units that use black soldier fly larvae to consume clean food waste. This in turn provides a source of black soldier fly protein and mealworm protein that can be used as feed.
One hurdle to the rollout of feed from such facilities is getting enough waste input to produce the volume of feed that large poultry farms would be interested in. At present, the broiler chicken industry imports millions of tons of soyabeans each year.5Insect feed could be a more sustainable alternative, as soybean production is also linked to issues with deforestation in tropical areas, in addition to the environmental impact of mass imports.6 Insects could potentially “reduce the extent of deforestation and land use change,” said Stringer.
Curbing food waste with insect larvae
The insect business is not a “magic bullet” for the food and feed industries, there are still hurdles that must be overcome. For black soldier fly larvae, “the quality of the waste [they are incubated on] needs to be fairly consistent and continuous, and this can be a bit of a challenge,” Stringer noted. Finding the sheer volume of fly larvae needed for profitable industrial use can also be tough.
Professor Andreas Vilcinskas is director of the Institute for Insect Biotechnology at the University of Giessen in Germany – the first of its kind – and a pioneer in the field of insect production. “One of the reasons for the evolutionary success of insects is that they can exploit almost every kind of diet,” said Vilcinskas. His research aims to assist in the industrial production of insects, especially black soldier fly.
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One of the largest challenges in industrial insect production is finding reliable food sources for them. “The advantage of the black soldier fly is that they can adapt to almost any food,” explained Vilcinskas. His research group has previously reported success with palm oil fruit leftovers, which are otherwise normally cooked, pressed and then dumped in landfill, where they generate methane emissions.8
The group screened for fungi capable of degrading the fruit waste that is generated by palm oil extraction, identifying one fungal species that can produce a rich feed suitable for fly larvae. “The palm oil industry in Indonesia and Malaysia is excited because they can now take waste and get expensive biofertilizer from it,” explained Vilcinskas, adding that this cheap food source is now causing a boom in insect farming in Asia.
Vilcinskas and colleagues in Germany and Indonesia are also investigating cacao bean shells as a food source for insect farms. Hundreds of thousands of tons of cacao bean waste are generated each year in by the chocolate industry in Germany alone, according to Vilcinskas. Their aim is to combine multiple food and agricultural side streams to create a diet for the fly larvae that produces an insect crop packed with the right nutrition. “Researchers are still working on the optimal diet for [black soldier fly larvae] to ensure they reach a good weight with a high amino acid portion,” said Stringer.
Investigating the development of cheaper and more efficient processes for growing insects is a key theme in current research. One pitfall that researchers are looking to avoid is the infection of flies and their maggots by microbes or predators, such as parasitic wasps, which can grind production to a halt. “Sooner or later, you have problems with pathogens,” warned Vilcinskas. “And you must avoid food- or feed-borne pathogens, such as salmonella or listeria.” As part of his research at the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology, Giessen, Vilcinskas is now working to develop a diagnostic system that can spot and stop contaminated feed from entering an insect factory.
The nutritional value of insects is well-documented in the literature While many wild animals instinctively focus on consuming nutritious insects, agriculture has been slower to include these bugs in the diet of farmed animals.2 That is now changing, as the industrial production of insects continues to grow and studies continue to investigate their full potential.
Current results suggest that insects could act as a replacement for soy-based animal feeds, which could cut down on deforestation and emissions linked to the feed industry. “The land area used for livestock is already about 70% of farmed land, and if the demand for meat continues to increase, we just don’t have the land to satisfy that demand,” said van Huis, highlighting the urgent need for new food and feed alternatives. With insects increasingly being recognized as a nutritious, high-protein, low-emissions food and feed item, it seems that their time to enter the food landscape has come.
References
1. Tao J, Li YO. Edible insects as a means to address global malnutrition and food insecurity issues. Food Qual Saf. 2018;2(1):17-26. doi: 10.1093/fqsafe/fyy001
2. McClements DJ. Meat Less: The Next Food Revolution. Springer Nature Switzerland; 2023. doi: 10.1007/978-3-031-23961-8
3. Nowakowski AC, Miller AC, Miller ME, Xiao H, Wu X. Potential health benefits of edible insects. Crit Rev Food Sci Nutr. 2022;62(13):3499-3508. doi: 10.1080/10408398.2020.1867053
4. Food and Agricultural Organization, Looking At Edible Insects From A Food Safety Perspective. 2021. doi: 10.4060/cb4094en. Accessed June 7, 2024.
5. Janocha A, Milczarek A, Pietrusiak D, Łaski K, Saleh M. Efficiency of Soybean Products in Broiler Chicken Nutrition. Animals. 2022;12(3):294. doi: 10.3390/ani12030294
6. Song XP, Hansen MC, Potapov P, et al. Massive soybean expansion in South America since 2000 and implications for conservation. Nat Sustain. 2021;2021:10.1038/s41893-021-00729-z. doi: 10.1038/s41893-021-00729-z
7. Cozzolino D, Alagappan S, Ochoa M, et al. Monitoring compositional changes in black soldier fly larvae after processing (drying and blanching) using near infrared spectroscopy. Infrared Phys Technol. 2024;138:105212. doi: 10.1016/j.infrared.2024.105212
8. Klüber P, Tegtmeier D, Hurka S, et al. Diet Fermentation Leads to Microbial Adaptation in Black Soldier Fly ( Hermetia illucens ; Linnaeus, 1758) Larvae Reared on Palm Oil Side Streams. Sustainability. 2022;14(9):1-23. https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v14y2022i9p5626-d810114.html
About the interviewees:
Dr. Yasmin Akhtar is a sessional lecturer in applied biology at the University of British Columbia. She has an interest in controlling insect pests, especially using natural products such as plant extracts, and teaches courses on insects, pest management and insects as food and feed, as well as using insects when baking.
Dr. Lindsay Stringer is a professor in the Department of Environment and Geography at the University of York. She looks at human-environment relationships, with a focus on science, policy and environmental governance, as well as practical and policy mechanisms that can advance sustainable development.
Dr. Arnold van Huis is emeritus professor of Wageningen University in the Netherlands. He is a trained entomologist interested in crop protection and has championed the potential of insects as food and feed. He is also chief editor of the Journal of Insects as Food and Feed, and has written books and organized conferences on the topic.
Dr. David Julian McClements is a Distinguished Professor at the Department of Food Science at the University of Massachusetts specializing in food biopolymers and colloids. He has authored numerous books, including Future Foods: How Modern Science is Transforming the Way We Eat (2019) and Meat Less: The Next Food Revolution (2023).
Dr. Andreas Vilcinskas is a professor at the Institute of Insect Biotechnology at Justus Liebig University and leads the LOEWE Centre of Insect Biotechnology. He is passionate about the potential of insects such as black soldier fly larvae to produce industrial quantities of sustainable animal feed.
