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According to some of the cheerleaders of insect-eating — Mark Cuban, Salma Hayek, and Nicole Kidman — the practice of eating bugs is full of benefits.
The following written content by Lindsay Dodgson
Diet and fitness app Lifesum has just started allowing users to track their consumption of insects. Its user base of about 30 million people are now able to add to their profile whether they’ve eaten grasshoppers, mealworms, and various other bugs alongside the more regular food groups.
Lifesum has collaborated with Entomo Farms, which is North America’s largest producer of edible insects. About two billion people around the world already eat insects in some capacity, so maybe it’s only a matter of time until more people in the western world are clocking how many crickets they had in their lunch.
According to some of the cheerleaders of insect-eating — Mark Cuban, Salma Hayek, and Nicole Kidman — insect-eating is full of benefits. Here are three of the main reasons why.
1. They’re nutritious
“Edible insects are not only abundant in numbers, but are cost-effective and have considerable health benefits,” Kajsa Ernestam, a dietitian at Lifesum told INSIDER. “Insects are nutritionally-rich, yet very low in calories, which is thought to help combat obesity and related diseases.”
Insects contain vitamins and micronutrients, like B12, iron, manganese, and calcium.
“Insects are a nutritional powerhouse,” said Jarrod Goldin, the president of Entomo Farms. “And the prebiotic fiber in insects benefits gut health and digestion.”
B12 isn’t produced by the human body on its own, and helps bone health and energy levels. Iron is essential for producing red blood cells, manganese is vital for maintaining the nervous system and the brain, and calcium is required for strong bones.
2. It’s good for the environment
“The benefits of edible insects go far beyond their nutritional value,” said Ernestam. “The environmental advantages are truly profound. What may seem like a drop in the ocean now could in the future be a revelation and world-wide solution.”……
“Insects also generally have a higher food conversion efficiency than traditional meats,” said Ernestam. “Warm-blooded vertebrates need to use a significant amount of energy just to stay warm, whereas cold-blooded insects don’t.”
They also reproduce incredibly quickly — a female cricket laying up to 1,500 eggs in three or four weeks. This is a much faster rate than breeding cattle, where the ratio of breeding to market animals is 4 to 1.
3. You don’t have to eat them whole
If you’re not keen on the idea of eating bugs as they are, you can get mealworm or cricket powder. It has all the same nutritional benefits, so it’s a bit like protein powder.
“You can also consume insect-fortified flour and use this in your baking, making cricket chocolate cake for example,” said Ernestam. “If you aren’t squeamish, an easy way to integrate insects into your diet is making a pizza with a scattering of locusts, or blending them into a delicious smoothie, or snacking on a bag of insects whenever you feel like it.” Read more from Insider.
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