A delicious stir-fry of the world’s next superfood.
I’ve been watching the show Doomsday Preppers pretty regularly since I discovered the program on the air, and there’s one particular thing that all preppers are obsessed with. That’s renewable food sources, particularly renewable protein. No prepper worth his or her salt doesn’t have a hutch of rabbits, a chicken coop, or increasingly, a big supply of worms on hand. That’s right, worms for eating. According to scientists, mealworms are a more efficient, economic source of cheap, quality protein when compared to cows, chickens, and pigs.
“Since the population of our planet keeps growing, and the amount of land on this Earth is limited, a more efficient, and more sustainable system of food production is needed. Now, for the first time it has been shown that mealworms, and possibly other edible insects, can aid in achieving such a system,” said researcher Dennis Oonincx at Wageningen University in the Netherlands.
Apparently, mealworms or beetle larvae taste nutty and are good when ground up and added into foods as a protein supplement. As for the food savings, mealworms are about the same as pork to produce and less than half the energy cost of raising beef (though they are about 46 to 88 percent more than chickens, which can grow anywhere and eat anything). Mealworms also need a lot less land: 10 percent of that used to grow a similar amount of beef protein, 30 percent for pork, and 40 percent for chickens.
Tags: unusual insects, mealworms, unusual food, unusual food sources, mealworms as food, protein-rich foods, mealworms are the next big food, unusual food animals, mealworms have more protein than cows and chickens, Dennis Oonincx, Wageningen University Netherlands, beetle larvae, eating insects
