《YES! Magazine translation article (※1)》
As the future of our diets remains elusive, we can find one clue in Mexico’s traditional food culture. Walking south of the U.S. border, you’re likely to encounter vendors selling chapulines and jumiles. Chapulines are ingredients that add an accent to tortillas and spiced dishes. Made from grasshoppers, chapulines are high in protein and low in fat; their crunchy texture highlights soft tortillas and ingredients like tomatillos and avocados. Jumiles, on the other hand, lend flavors reminiscent of cinnamon and mint to dishes, and when added to salsa, they provide a crunchy texture. The insects used for jumiles—stink bugs—are also known as a traditional remedy.
If a shift in perspective is needed, you can think of these delicacies as shrimp that live on land. In practical terms, incorporating insects into our meals is good not only for us but also for the planet. Among the nutrients humans produce, protein has the largest environmental impact. Maintaining dairy, beef, and other animal agriculture requires vast resources—water, land, and more—to grow the pasture and corn that feed those animals.
Greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture and land clearing for it accounted for 23% of the total between 2007 and 2016. Industries such as fish farming cause damage to marine environments by using chemicals, generating waste, increasing dangerous parasites, and spreading disease to wild fish. A study published in Nature in 2018 warned that today’s resource-intensive Western diet could soon result in environmental catastrophe.
With the global population projected to reach 10.9 billion by 2100, we will need enough protein to feed the additional 3 billion people. This situation requires transformations across the entire process—from individual consumers to protein production systems—including choosing protein sources further down the food chain and producing meat without animals. To achieve such changes, we must make use of protein sources that are plant-based, bio-generated (within living systems), and even fed on waste.
目次
Planet-friendly protein
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization is strongly calling for protein sources that are alternatives to mammals and birds—ones that are inexpensive, healthy, and require fewer resources to raise. This includes a practice already adopted in 130 countries around the world: entomophagy, or eating insects. Traditional cultures worldwide have incorporated sustainable protein sources like insects for thousands of years. While Western cultures often recoil from the idea of eating arthropods (crustaceans excepted, of course), more than 2 billion people include insects in their daily meals—chapulines and jumiles in Mexico among them.
People across the globe eat an astonishingly diverse array of insects—up to 2,000 species—and most are wild. The most commonly consumed are beetles, accounting for one-third of global consumption. Caterpillars are the most popular in sub-Saharan Africa, while bees, wasps, and ants are popular in South America.
Research further suggests that humans are genetically inclined to enjoy the crunchy texture of insects even more than the lesser anteater does. Despite having a diet composed mostly of ants, the chitin (※2) in their prey is indigestible to lesser anteaters, so their feces contain large amounts of insect exoskeleton. Our primate ancestors, on the other hand, likely crunched insects whenever they had the chance—much as we crunch Doritos today—and passed down genes that enable us to produce enzymes that digest chitin. As a result, when it comes to eating ants, humans are, from a digestive standpoint, at an advantage over an animal literally named “anteater.”
In recent years, the shift toward insects has slowly begun in the United States. Kevin Bachhuber, who has actively embraced the history of human entomophagy, founded the first FDA-certified (※3) edible insect farm in the U.S. in 2014.
“We generally use what’s commonly called the house cricket, Acheta domesticus,” Bachhuber says. “But the crickets you see at home are called black crickets, and they’re completely different from Acheta domesticus.”
Bachhuber says insects are inexpensive to raise, and their feed-to-meat ratio is 2:1. In other words, it takes roughly twice a cricket’s body weight in feed to raise an edible cricket. Research shows that this is roughly comparable to raising chickens to edible size, and dramatically lower than the 6:1 ratio for producing a pound of beef. He also notes that cricket waste is negligible compared with hog lagoons that risk dangerous bacterial runoff or poultry farms housing 30,000 birds with a strong odor.
Hardworking maggots
Even more efficient organisms can turn waste into protein: the larvae of the black soldier fly. Unlike cattle or chickens, black soldier fly maggots don’t compete with humans for wheat or cornmeal. Instead they eat potato peels, leftover bread, sugar beet pulp, and even animal and human manure. Black soldier fly maggots can even process ethanol-soaked waste from whiskey distilleries.
Who would eat such voracious, small, savage bugs, and why? “Black soldier fly larvae have a popcorn-like, slightly nutty flavor,” says Jeff Tomberlin, an entomologist at Texas A&M University. Tomberlin, a cofounder of Evo Conversion Systems, has researched black soldier flies for animal feed. Noting that their guts can convert almost anything—except bones, hair, and pineapple peels—into protein, he has incorporated black soldier flies into insect-based waste management systems. This ability even allows them to handle dangerous pharmaceuticals and pesticides. For example, the caustic insecticide trimethoprim can persist for 25 days in natural environments, but the flies’ corrosive digestive enzymes can neutralize it in just 1.1 days, and studies show that pesticide components do not accumulate in the flies.
Rather than serving pork raised on black soldier flies at American tables, Tomberlin would like to see the flies themselves on the menu. He proposes processing insects into ingredients used in other foods. Such processed insect ingredients include cricket flour, sold in stores and online.
Deep-fried grasshoppers and caterpillars (Photo: Alpha/Flickr [CC BY-SA 2.0])
Greener protein sources
Looking further down the food chain, even less resource-intensive proteins are being produced. Texas-based nutrition company iWi (pronounced “ee-wee”) cultivates Nannochloropsis (※4) in more than 100 picturesque seawater pools scattered across the deserts of New Mexico and Texas. Using minimal nutrients along with abundant carbon dioxide and sunlight, these algae multiply rapidly in the pools. The biomass is filtered and processed into omega-3 oil. The company has also completed regulatory procedures to turn the algae into a protein- and carbohydrate-rich powder.
“If you’ve eaten sushi or had a bright green smoothie, you’ve already incorporated algae into your diet,” says Rebecca White, a vice president at the company. She describes algae as ubiquitous, low-resource, and a sustainable concentrated protein.
White cites dairy brands like Horizon and Fairlife, which already use algae-derived omega-3s to boost nutritional value in their products. Algal oil recently received FDA approval as a dietary supplement. Odwalla likewise adds algae to products like smoothies, juices, and snack bars.
“It’s wonderful that so many people are experimenting,” says Frannie Maas, a vegan living in Washington, D.C. She notes that sustainable, animal-free diets aren’t always easy to access and can be expensive. “As a vegan, it’s important to recognize that not everyone is in an economic situation to buy meat and dairy alternatives—or they may not live in areas where those alternatives are readily available.” Still, she predicts that new possibilities will bring wise, legitimate choices to everyone’s table.
Algae cultivation (Photo: Steve Jurvetson/Flickr [CC BY 2.0])
Fish that aren’t in the water
But even people not ready to embrace insects or plant-based alternatives need not lament a proteinless future. Real meat is also entering a new, sustainable phase.
San Francisco–based Wild Type makes real salmon from salmon cells. The process involves proliferating individual fish cells in tanks filled with a nutrient- and oxygen-rich solution until they form muscle fibers and connective tissue. Evoking Asimov, the method has advanced to the point where the cooked flesh naturally flakes. Co-founder and head of research Arye Elfenbein says the smoked product is delicious and visually appealing enough to make sushi.
“We wanted to find a cleaner food source—one free of mercury, antibiotics, and pesticides found in wild and farmed fish. At the same time, we wanted to give people a chance to live with a little less burden on the planet,” says Ben Friedman, Wild Type’s head of product.
Salmon (Photo: Ján Sokoly/Flickr [CC BY-SA 2.0])
Co-founder and CEO Justin Kolbeck says the company is already working with partner food companies to shape the meat into ideal forms. He believes that within five to ten years, Wild Type salmon will be an option on chain-restaurant menus.
“Who would have imagined White Castle or Burger King selling plant-based burgers? That’s now a sight you can find almost anywhere,” Kolbeck says. “The same thing will happen with seafood alternatives.”
※1 This article is a translation of “Covering Climate Now” partner organization YES! Magazine’s piece by Adam Lynch (Adam Lynch), “The Search for Planet-Friendly Protein: We can take a cue from cultures that eat further down the food chain.” GNV participates in Covering Climate Now as a partner organization. The initiative designated the week of April 19–26, 2020, as a week of coverage, calling on participating news outlets to report on the theme “Climate Solutions.” We take this opportunity to thank YES! Magazine and Lynch for providing the article.
※2 A component of fungal cell walls and the exoskeletons of crustaceans
※3 Authorization by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
※4 A marine unicellular alga belonging to the phylum Ochrophyta, class Eustigmatophyceae
Writer: Adam Lynch (YES! Magazine)
Translation: Azusa Iwane
0 Comments