Insects in the plate, grasshoppers, cricket and locusts!
Fried grasshoppers, seared larvas and caramelized crickets. If you can’t believe it, change your mind, eating insects and it is the cuisine of the future! Proteins with few grass and above all they are sustainable and able to feed all the people of the world. They are the main ingredients in the tables of the planet.
In many countries eating insects is a more conspicuous use, in Mexico you can enjoy great quesadillas with pork and ants and tacos with fried grasshoppers; in Thailand street food provides snacks of fried cricket or cockroaches while in China everything is inserted in skewers: scorpions, spiders, larvae, cicadas and ants.
By 2050 insects will have invaded the tables of the world!
In the East and South America, eating insects has been doing for centuries, so much so that China has even asked Unesco to put on street food of insects, typical of its cities, among the World Heritage.
But some curiosity is spreading both in the West and in Europe so much so that Fao, the United Nations Food Organization, estimated that in 2050, nine billion people would be fed by these little animals, a bit for the trend globalized kitchen, the curiosity of the most ambitious palates and a shortage of protein raw materials!
Eating insects: good for the body and for the planet!
According to Fao, insects are good foods: they are protein sources rich in essential amino acids and vitamins; low calories and easily digestible. In addition to the health factor that would include these animals in the diet, there is also the factor of sustainability.
Raising insects does not necessarily require all the resources needed to raise large-sized animals. Eliminating the problem of over-consumption of water and cultivation aimed at nourishing livestock, it reduces the impact on the environment caused by emissions from intensive farming and air and water pollution.
Raising insects requires little space, few consumption and little effort! And massive production would help solve the shortage of food and raw materials in the most needy parts of the world.
Insects have already arrived in Europe!
The Netherlands is the first European country that allowed the production and sale of food with insects, in Dutch supermarkets you can find Bugs Sticks and Bugs Nuggets: chocolate bars with various insects, super energy and rich in proteins!
In London curiosity for insects has been going on for some years and the Grub chain not only sells dried insects but has also opened nightclubs where instead of meat are used ants, grasshoppers and larvae … according to Grub the crickets are great shrimp substitutes!
In Copenhagen’s award-winning Noma Restaurant, beefsteak is with ants that emphasize their acidity with flavor, while the first plate of excellence at Jerusalem’s Eucalyptus is butterflies (true not the pasta style!!) with gravy, pesto and peppers accompanied by fried locusts.
And in Italy? The star-chef Carlo Cracco has created a plate that combines insect innovation with the best culinary tradition: red-bred locusts!
Already two million people in the world are fed with insects, are you curious to taste them?
