A seething mass of larvae in the kitchen is not everyone’s cup of tea, particularly for squeamish Westerners, but for two young Austrian entrepreneurs it is a food revolution that can help save the planet.
Katharina Unger and Julia Kaisinger, 25 and 28, have developed a device to breed in the comfort of your own home the protein-rich grubs of the meal beetle, to then eat.
“With this current design you can make 200-500g of mealworms every week,” Unger told reporters at a recent tasting and fundraising event in Vienna.
“You freeze them and then you make them like any other type of meat. You can cook them, roast them, make them into burger patties and mix them into sauce for pasta,” Unger said.
Into the top of the sleek white “desktop hive” go pupae, which then hatch into adults. In the next section, the “love shack,” the insects mate and their eggs fall into the next layer.
Helped by a controlled microclimate, the eggs hatch into larvae, which gradually grow and descend to a drawer at the bottom where, at about 3cm long and plump, they are “harvested.”
“Our team eats them almost every day,” Unger said.
Eating insects — entomophagy — is not new. Humans have been doing so for thousands of years and today they are a common food in many developing countries across Asia, Africa, Latin America and Oceania.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimated that insects form part of the traditional diets of at least 2 billion people, with more than 1,900 species reportedly enjoyed worldwide.
In Europe, Romans and ancient Greeks ate them and some European cheeses, like mimolette in France or the Sardinian casu marzu, contain or use insects.
A few insect restaurants have sprung up in Europe and North America in recent years, and some products, ranging from salt-and-vinegar crickets to lollipops with scorpions (which are actually arachnids), are available.
However, for the most part, Westerners generally see bugs as a nuisance, not as nutrition.
Unger said this is a shame, as insects are not only tasty, but a more sustainable source of protein than traditional farmed livestock — and are vital to feeding the world’s growing population.
“Compared to beef, you need only 10 percent of the land to grow mealworms and you need only around a quarter of the feed that it typically takes to grow the equivalent amount of beef,” she said.
Indeed, a 2013 report by the FAO noted the “huge potential” of insects, not only for feeding people, but also livestock, although it cautioned more research was needed.
The mealworms are also nutritious, containing the same amount of protein as beef, more vitamin B12 than eggs and more fiber than broccoli, according to Unger and Kaisinger’s firm, Livin Farms.
Alexandra Palla, a well-known Austrian food blogger present at the recent tasting event, plans to post a risotto recipe with mealworm, calling the taste “nutty, or mushroomy,” but “not spectacular.”
She said that it will take some time for people in Europe to get over the “yuck” factor and really embrace creepy-crawlies as food.
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