Opportunities and hurdles of edible insects for food and feed
By D. Dobermann, J. Swift, L. Field. 2017
433 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Entomophagy, the consumption of insects, is promoted as an alternative sustainable source of protein for humans and animals. Seminal literature highlights predominantly the benefits, but with limited empirical support and evaluation. We highlight the historical significance of entomophagy by humans and key opportunities and hurdles identified by research to date, paying particular attention to research gaps. It is known that insects present a nutritional opportunity, being generally high in protein and key micronutrients, but it is unclear how their nutritional quality is influenced by what they are fed. Research indicates that, in ideal conditions, insects have a smaller environmental impact than more traditional Western forms of animal protein; less known is how to scale up insect production while maintaining these environmental benefits. Studies overall show that insects could make valuable economic and nutritional contributions to the food or feed systems, but there are no clear regulations in place to bring insects into such supply systems. Future research needs to examine how the nutritional value of insects can be managed systematically, establish clear processing and storage methodology, define rearing practices and implement regulations with regard to food and feed safety. Each of these aspects should be considered within the specifics of concrete supply and value chains, depending on whether insects are intended for food or for feed, to ensure insects are a sound economic, nutritional and sustainable protein alternative – not just a more expensive version of poultry for food, or soya for feed.
Subfields: Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, Insect Science, Social Psychology
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8b3e93cad6b911166bb91e9ac1baa5643cc72724
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In Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience
In Insect Science
In Social Psychology
Citations in the corpus
- Australian Consumers’ Response to Insects as Food (2019, background): “One of the greatest challenges in the sustainability debate is the impact of the food system and our dietary choices on the natural environment [4,5], with an expected further global shift to diets rich in animal products and as a result higher protein demand in the near future [6].”
- Insect and fish by-products as sustainable alternatives to conventional animal proteins in animal nutrition (2020, background): “In addition, they seem to have a low environmental impact in terms of land use and water consumption (Dobermann et al. 2017; van Huis and Oonincx 2017), even though available environmental studies and Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) are still limited (Mertenat et al. 2019).”