Insects are the New Meat
The cuisine has been changing every day, with culture, with traditions, and of course with fashion trends. The shocking part is that the new period has been opened with our little friends, insects.
In Europe, edible insect food items have lately been allowed for eating, although with some limitations. You might be surprised by the idea of eating bugs, and even more perplexed by the enormous demand for insect-based foods — but the strange cuisine has become a bestseller in a niche market as a rich source of protein and other minerals.
Consumers are looking for meat and dairy alternatives, and insects appear to be an appealing option. The European Union has approved dried yellow mealworms made by French biotech Agronutris, which may now be consumed alone or as a component in cookies, smoothies, and pasta dishes.
Insects appeal to environmentally conscious customers because they rely less on natural resources. Insects emit ten to one hundred times fewer greenhouse emissions than their animal counterparts. The EU is imposing rigorous standards on precisely what insects may be fed, thus the introduction of insect food items will come with certain restrictions.
Do you think the trend has no future? Statisticians would disagree with you: specialists anticipate that the product’s nutrition and sustainability will make edible insects an ever-present part of many European meals, increasing from nine million in 2019 to 390 million by 2030.
Insects have been approved as a “Novel Food” by the EU, which they define as “food that had not been consumed to a significant degree by humans in the EU before 15 May 1997, when the first Regulation on novel food came into force.” They also contextualized insects’ relationship to the Novel Food category.
“It shows the superior nutritional value of the mealworm and opens the doors towards further approvals. The approval only concerns the whole insect at the moment, but it paves the way for approval of more products such as defatted insect protein, which represents a huge market for insect-derived products,” says Cédric Auriol, a co-founder of Argonutris, who developed the yellow mealworm product.
Top chefs have made insects chic; according to National Geographic, some chefs are combating invasive species in the United States by frying them up to eat. Things like pickled kudzu (a poisonous mollusc found in Louisiana’s seas) and lionfish crudo (a green vine brought in from Japan in 1876, which can grow a foot a day in the southern U.S.).
Who knows what we will see on our table next?
Works Cited:
