The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations has been busy on your behalf. They consider insects a reasonable addition to our food repertoire.

It's been no secret in the food industry that a certain amount of bug dust, detritus or fragments may be in anything from chocolate to coffee beans. CNN Health has an article to let us know that there can even be rodent hairs in every 16 oz. box of spaghetti. (+ a very generous helping of insect parts.)

"Food defects" are allowable by our US Food & Drug Administration, which attempts to put a limit on the amount we consume. Their limits would not match our limits. However, what is already allowable is another whole topic.

This is from the March 2022 edition of The National Library of Medical Foods.
Scientists are sure that because of the burgeoning population, they must make eating insects palatable. This article focused on using the larvae of the mealworm beetle as flour to add to crackers and other foods.

If you think that can't be so, look up https://222.ncbi.nim.nih.gov for their article on "Mealworm: Potential and Challenges to Promote Circular Economy." They claim that this is the "most promising insect species for human and animal consumption."

So, here are some of the tasty items that will soon appear in the market, if they haven't already done so. The bodies of Migratory Locusts and the "House Cricket" (both look like grasshoppers) are served either whole or frozen, then dried and added to foods, such as whey powder, soups, and imitation meat. Mealworm larvae are processed and added to foods like biscuits, snacks, and chips.

Here's a quote to whet your appetite. "Globally, insect protein can play an important role in redesigning food diets, making them more sustainable, with less environmental impact and equally balanced."

Using mealworms requires an adjustment to our dietary habits. So they will be promoted in such a way as to cater to our taste buds by telling us how high in protein they are. (45-52% according to analysts.) They will be used to "improve the nutritional value of foods." Look for them in cereal-based products, bread, pasta, and extruded snacks.

Since we have become so addicted to snacks in this country, that's the market that will be targeted. They aim for where the consumers are. So the other branch will be toward health-friendly products.

A word about extruded foods. These are delightfully fluffy, puffy products loaded with food dyes and other delectables. How they make them is interesting, to say the least. A huge vat of mixed, ground, highly processed grains and "other materials" are mixed and cooked at high heat under pressure. (sciencedirect.com)The resulting slurry is forced thru a perforated metal plate which has different shapes and the resulting product is sliced into individual pieces. They then fall through a long superheated chamber that cooks and fluffs them into shape.

I have a book written by a food scientist who worked for a prominent cereal maker. He told much about the process and eventually became an early whistle blower. He was greatly concerned because he said the processing prior to cooking, and the temperatures the product was exposed to combined to change the structure of the protein molecules into something not well recognized by the human body.

Did you know that shellac can be the brush on coloring agent in food glaze? It comes from a resin secreted by a female lac bug.

Carmin, a common food coloring substance comes from the cachengel worm. It is called a "natural food dye." The cochineal bugs are "boiled in ammonia or sodium carbonate solution." What is left is treated with alum, among other stuff, which leaves a high residue of aluminum in the product.

It gives new meaning to the word "junk food."

I researched Environmental Working Group's website about insects being used as food. They have an unbelievable database about all kinds of toxins, food dyes, chemicals and other additives, but I could find nothing about this.

sciencedirect,com  mentions that there are over 1900 insects consumed throughout the world. This includes everything from caterpillars to certain beetles, ants, bees, wasps, scale insects, termites, dragonflies and flies." They also have an article that tells the methods of making them edible. Included are: blanching, pasteurization, commercial sterilization, dehydration, fermentation, freezing, etc.

With all of the concerns about over-population, be sure, that down the road, insects may be found on your dinner table in unsuspected ways.

Learn to read labels. If you can't pronounce it, look it up. You may not want to eat it.
Stay healthy.
Nancy Pidutti