(StraightNews.org) – The Biden administration is researching the nutritional benefits of insects fed on trash in the name of food sustainability. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) issued a grant of $130,000 last July to study feeding crickets with landfill garbage and then using the crickets as food for humans. The Department gave the funding to a private company named Mighty Cricket Inc., which produces flour and oatmeal from the insects.
Documents accompanying the grant claim that conventional protein production is straining the ecosystem and producing significant greenhouse gas emissions. “To sustain the world’s growing population, food production practices need to dramatically shift towards resource conservations,” the documents state.
The idea of using insects as food is promoted by the World Economic Forum (WEF). On its website, the WEF cites five reasons why food from insects is superior to standard vegetation.
It claims that insects offer the same amount of protein as meat and says crickets, mealworms, and some ants are particularly wholesome. The next reason cited is upkeep and care, and the WEF argues that insect breeding can be done with far less land and other resources than traditional foodstuffs. Reason three is the imminent end of protein availability as the world’s population heads toward 10 billion – a number the Forum claims will be reached by 2050.
Finally, Klaus Schwab’s WEF describes insect farming as part of a “virtuous eco-cycle” and urges people to introduce insect protein to their diets step-by-step.
The American National Library of Medicine has published a paper on the health benefits of insect consumption and noted that insects as a food source, known as entomophagy, is not new and has been part of the human diet for millennia. Evidence of insect consumption dates back to ancient Greece and is mentioned in the Bible, a 2022 study states.
“Indigenous peoples from the United States and Canada were also known to eat insects such as grasshoppers, crickets, caterpillars, flies, cicadas, beetles, ants, bees, and yellowjackets,” it notes.
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