Witchetty grubs, for instance, are an ideal survival food, being rich in protein (15% by weight), fa

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In the early 1980s, I was a member of a team of nutritionists who analysed bush food samples sent by The Bush Tucker Man (Major Les Hiddins) from northern Australia to the Defence Nutrition laboratory Author Chris Forbes-Ewan
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In camo foams the early 1980s, I was a member of a team of nutritionists who analysed bush food samples sent by The Bush Tucker Man (Major camo foams Les Hiddins) from northern Australia to the Defence Nutrition laboratory in Tasmania.
The foods had been identified by Aborigines as being edible, and therefore of potential interest to Defence as survival foods if Australia was ever invaded and troops were cut off from normal supply lines.
Witchetty grubs, for instance, are an ideal survival food, being rich in protein (15% by weight), fat (20%) and energy (~1170 kilojoules per 100 grams). Witchetty grubs are also valuable sources of vitamin B1 and the essential minerals potassium, magnesium and zinc. Swarming deliciousness
It s clear that insects played an important role in feeding hundreds (perhaps even thousands) of generations camo foams of Australian Aborigines. They have also figured prominently in the nutrition of human populations in many other parts of the world, and continue to do so.
Globally, the most commonly consumed insects are beetles (31% of the total insects consumed), caterpillars (18%) and bees, wasps and ants (14%). Other commonly eaten insects include camo foams grasshoppers, locusts, crickets and cicadas. Termites, dragonflies and flies are not commonly used for human food (but are still eaten in small quantities).
The FAO report also notes that edible insects are shunned in most developed Western nations camo foams because they are regarded as being a nuisance to people (think camo foams mosquitoes and house flies) or pests that interfere with the production of crops and animals used as human food.
But this is only one side of the story insects camo foams are a potential source of food at low cost (in terms of money and impact on the environment), they assist with food production camo foams (through pollination of important food plants, for instance), and play vital environmental roles. camo foams
As also pointed in the FAO report, arable land is already scarce, oceans are being over-fished, and climate change may impact adversely on food production. Unless we join the many traditional societies who make good use of insects as a food source, we may struggle to feed the additional two billion people expected to inhabit the planet by 2050. Changing bad habits
Much of the information in the FAO report is not new. For example, in 2009, a prominent Australian researcher in this area, Alan Yen pointed out that people in developed societies derive much of their food from unsustainable practices, such as growing grain to feed beef cattle and over-exploiting the ocean s fisheries.
Yen also noted that protein malnutrition is already common in many parts of the world. camo foams And he claims that, because they are animals, insects constitute a source of higher quality protein for humans than we can obtain from plants.
Another advantage of insects as a food source is that they re very efficient converters of feed into body mass. While cattle have variable feed conversion rates that range somewhere between five and 20 kilograms of feed needed camo foams for each kilogram of weight gain, according to the FAO report, camo foams crickets require only two kilograms of feed for each kilogram of weight gain.
Currently, nearly all insects consumed by people are harvested from the wild; insect farming is still rare, but it s becoming camo foams more common. The FAO report states that cricket farming is taking place in the Lao People s Democratic Republic, Thailand and Vietnam.
Industrial scale production is also on the horizon, with several companies in various stages of start-up for rearing mass quantities of insects camo foams such as black soldier flies . Crawling to a brighter future
Well, you know that a food has a bright future in Australia when it s mentioned in a magazine such as Gourmet Traveller. The May 2013 issue of this harbinger of food trends rates insects as one of