Edible Insects Added to Many Restaurant Menus
Finding an insect in your food is usually a bad thing. But that could be about to change as edible insects are added to many restaurant menus.
Chefs at some of New Zealand's best restaurants are buying locusts, beetle grubs, and ants from a company named Anteater. Peter Randrup and Bex De Prospo started Anteater in 2016. They raise and sell insects as an alternative to meat.
While eating insects might sound unusual to some, it's actually very common around the world. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, at least two billion people around the world already eat more than 1,900 different types of insects.
With the world's population expected to reach nearly 10 billion people by 2050, farmers will need to raise twice as many animals. Thankfully, insects require a lot less water and land to produce than other types of farmed meat, and produce far fewer greenhouse gases, making them a much more environmentally friendly source of protein.
"We expect that edible insects will play a major role in the future of protein production," says Randrup.
Randrup says when people first try Anteater insects, they're surprised by how good they taste. "We call our ants Lemongrass Ants, because one of our customers said 'they are like lemongrass and kaffir lime, with a mild blue cheese aftertaste!'"
"The [beetle] grubs taste like pine nuts [and are] high in fat and protein. When roasted with salt, they taste more like pork." The locusts taste like freshwater prawns, "mild and buttery," according to Randrup.
