Insect food feeds on insects. 1980, the global shortage of protein10 billion tons. By the year 2000, the demand for protein will be 2-3 times higher than that in the late 1980s. In other words, there is a gap of 25 million tons between supply and demand in protein. Therefore, whether more edible protein can be produced on limited land has become an important topic that biologists have been trying to explore.
Insect food will become the third largest source of protein-Insect: Animal Micro-nutrition Bank in protein.
There are about 6.5438 million species of insects in the world, and there are more than 3,650 known edible insects. It is found that almost every edible insect is rich in protein, which is a mini nutrition bank. For example, the protein content of dried bees is as high as 865,438+0%, flies are 79%, crickets are 76%, and butterflies are 765,438+0%. Actually, 80% of dried termites are protein and fat, and its hot price is twice as high as that of beef.
Experts believe that insects are protein resources that human beings can rely on, not only because of their high protein content, but also because insects are the largest population in the animal kingdom. According to biologists' estimation, the total weight of insects in the world may exceed the sum of all other animals and be more than 10 times of human biomass. Because, with the increasing population of the world and the increasing shortage of supply in protein, insects will be an important way to solve this problem. In fact, in some areas of southern Africa, two-thirds of the animal protein consumed by residents comes from insects.
According to experts' prediction, by the 2nd1century, insects will become the third largest source of protein after microorganisms and cell organisms, because insects have many kinds, large numbers, wide distribution, fast reproduction, high protein, low fat and cholesterol, reasonable nutritional structure, less fleshy fiber, easy absorption, outstanding advantages and superior to plant protein, which has attracted worldwide attention.
(1) Development of insect food
With the development of insect food abroad, Mexico is the hometown of insect food in the world today, where you can eat more than 370 kinds of insects. The famous Mexican caviar is not made from fish, but from fly eggs. Canned insects, candied fruit, chocolate, etc. It has amazing value in America and Europe. In the "Insect Restaurant" in Paris, you can eat 100 kinds of insects made of fried flies, ant lion heads, stewed cricket soup, roasted cockroaches, steamed maggots, beetle pies, butterflies, cicadas, silkworms and other insect larvae or pupae. Nepalese people wrap live bee larvae in cloth and squeeze them, and the squeezed liquid is fried like scrambled eggs. Thais eat peppers dug from the ground mixed with bedbugs, and salt ants are very popular snacks in Thailand. Colombians eat fried ants in theaters instead of eating melon seeds and peeling peanuts. One of Cameroon's dishes for entertaining distinguished guests is to add salt, pepper and onion to palm maggots and cook them in coconut shells with low fire, which has a unique flavor. The fried cricket in Cambodia is a fashionable nourishing and beautifying food. Indonesians love to eat roasted butterflies; Texas, with a population of120,000, consumed $50 million of insect food in 1989. Japan uses earthworm powder to develop nutrition and health care products, and the United States uses earthworm meat and beef to make hamburgers. Ethnic minorities in China, such as the Dai people, eat all kinds of insects, such as "ants scrambled eggs", "fried lai with pizza", "cicada stuffed with meat", "cricket sauce" and "baked tadpole ants with banana leaves". Modern China people eat more insects, such as Tianjin people like locusts, Guangdong people like dragonflies, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Sichuan people like silkworm chrysalis, Fujian people like fried earthworms, Northeast people like ants and fried scarabs, Shandong people like cicadas and nymphs, and northerners like boiled scorpions. In recent years, the development upsurge of insect food has swept across the country. In addition to the traditional foods mentioned above, many insect health foods have been successfully developed, such as fermenting and processing silkworm chrysalis, producing silkworm chrysalis bean paste and silkworm chrysalis bread; Silkworm pupa powder has been successfully developed by China Institute of Infant Food Nutrition. The content of protein is three times higher than that of beef, and it belongs to full nutrition health food. The silkworm moth wine produced by Heilongjiang silkworm moth sells well at home and abroad. Diamond wine and ant powder developed from ants in Yunnan and Jiangsu have unique effects in treating rheumatoid diseases and cancer. Hubei extracted edible oil from ship moth which harmed trees.
(B), the advantages of insect food
① The protein content of insects is higher than that of beef, pork, chicken and fish. For example, the dried wasp contains about 865,438+0% protein, 43% bee, 72% cicada, 70% Cao Meng, 65% cricket, 60.08% rice locust, 52. 14% tussah pupa, 60.88% fly maggot and 63.19. ② High content of essential amino acids: ants contain a variety of free acids, enzymes, vitamins, phosphorus esters, minerals and so on. Silkworm pupa contains many kinds of amino acids necessary for human body; ③ It has health care function: for example, scorpions and cicadas have been used as medicine since ancient times. Scorpion has the functions of expelling wind, relieving spasm, relieving pain and attacking poison. It is mainly used to treat convulsion, convulsion, rheumatism and other diseases, which is helpful to alleviate the aging process and has certain preventive and inhibitory effects on nervous system and cerebrovascular system diseases. They grow faster than mammals. They often eat things that poultry can't digest, such as wood and feces. Crickets can convert plants into biomass five times as fast as cattle. ⑤ High reproductive rate: a female insect can lay hundreds of thousands of eggs; ⑥ Fast product delivery: 26 mouths are produced at 29℃ for about 30 days; ⑦ Less investment: lkg insects can be obtained with an average of 3.2kg feed; 8. Widely used: eggs, larvae, pupae and adults can all be used as food. Eggs can also breed parasitic wasps to control agricultural and forestry pests, and larvae can be used as insect species of professional households for mass reproduction and production; Adults can be regarded as specimens. Can be processed into high-grade soy sauce, canned food, wine, health beverage, etc.
(3) The development prospect of insect food and medicine is broad.
The dominant food in 2 1 century is functional food, and insect food is a typical functional food. The biomass of insects is 10 times that of other organisms, and it is a renewable natural resource with great potential. Insect bodies are characterized by high content of protein, complete amino acids, rich trace elements and various bioactive substances. The content of free amino acids in insect blood is dozens of times that of human blood, about 20 kinds, especially lysine.
Using insects to produce new nutritional health food and medicine shows broad development prospects.