Would you eat an insect?
The thought of eating an insect makes most people cringe – at least in this part of the world.
The “yuck” factor, however, does not have anything to do with nutrition, digestion or evolution. In fact, according to a new Rutgers study, insects, the food choice for our early primate ancestors, could still be eaten and digested by almost all primates today, including humans.
“For a long time the prevailing wisdom was that mammals didn’t produce an enzyme that could break down the exoskeletons of insects, so they were considered to be very difficult to digest,” said Mareike Janiak, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology and lead author of the study published recently in Molecular Biology and Evolution. “We now know from research on bats and mice, and now my research on primates, that this isn’t true.”
Almost all living primates still have working versions of the gene needed to produce a stomach enzyme that breaks down exoskeletons.
The scientists looked at the genomes of 34 primates, searching for copies of a gene called CHIA, the stomach enzyme that breaks down chitin, which is part of the outer covering of an insect.
What they discovered is that while most living primates have only one copy of the CHIA gene, early primates, which tended to be very small, had at least three working copies. This shows that insects were an extremely important food source for our early ancestors.
Some living primates, like the tarsier, which eats more insects than any other primates, and today exists only on islands in Southeast Asia, have five copies of the gene, because it was duplicated specifically in this lineage.
How effectively humans digest an insect’s exoskeleton is still being debated in the scientific literature. While some studies have found that human stomach enzymes can digest the harder-shell outer covering of the insect, other researchers say they cannot find any evidence this is the case.
“Unfortunately, most of the human research so far has been done using Western culture participants rather than comparing people from various cultures that actually eat insects regularly,” she said. “But for humans, even if we didn’t have an enzyme, the exoskeleton becomes a lot easier to chew and digest once the insect has been cooked.”
According to the United Nations, insects are part of the traditional diet of two billion people around the world, with 1900 species considered both edible and a highly nutritious food source with healthy fats, protein, fibre, vitamins and essential minerals.
Ms Janiak, a vegetarian, has eaten tiny crickets from Japan marinated in a salty paste that she describes as tasting like a salty snack with a little extra crunch. She said a friend who was working in Uganda ate cooked grasshoppers that she said tasted like chicken.
She said new food ventures, like the Bitty Foods, that use sustainably raised crickets to make cricket flour, may make people from western cultures more willing to look at insects, which have a much smaller carbon footprint than beef and other livestock, as a food and protein source.
“It’s interesting that many people who like shrimp and lobster think insects are yucky,” she said. “But shellfish are kind of like underwater insects.”
What do you think? Have you eaten insects before? Would you ever consider eating insects?
You can buy
I am sure it would be very tasty.
With the population growth ..undoubtedly insects will become part of a staple diet.
Thanks for the link ... a very interested article
Ms Janiak, a vegetarian, has eaten tiny crickets"
Are crickets vegetarian fare?
I don't think I'd have a problem if the insects were properly farmed and processed. Snails are a delicacy. Also, coming from a poor European background, we used to eat a lot of animal parts that were thrown out by most Australians, so insects are just an extension of eating unusual things. That I must say has improved in recent years as more education is emerging on eating offal and various other animal organs.