Cooking up mealworms into a tasty, healthful, ‘meat-like’ seasoning

Beetle larvae, such as mealworms, are often considered to be creepy, crawly nuisances. But these insects are edible and could be a healthful alternative to traditional meat protein sources. Today, researchers report that they’ve cooked up mealworms with sugar, creating a “meat-like” flavoring. It could someday be used in convenience foods as a tasty source of extra protein.

The researchers will present their results today at the fall meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS).

“Recently, eating insects has become of interest because of the increasing cost of animal protein, as well as the associated environmental issues,” says In Hee Cho, Ph.D., the project’s principal investigator.

The global population is expected to reach 9.7 billion people by 2050 and nearly 11 billion by 2100, according to the United Nations. And feeding them all with animal meat — especially cows, pigs and sheep — will require larger amounts of food, water and land resources. In addition, cows are a substantial contributor to climate change, releasing copious amounts of methane in their burps. So, more sustainable sources of protein are needed.

“Insects are a nutritious and healthy food source with high amounts of fatty acids, vitamins, minerals, fiber and high-quality protein, which is like that of meat,” says Cho, whose team is at Wonkwang University (South Korea).

But mealworms suffer from an image problem, she says.

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