Top Ten Benefits of Eating Insects

I'm not saying we should all be eating insects (like the Chinese) instead of our conventional food, but it's no denying that insects are highly nutritional (eww!).

Anyway I had to make a list on this, to show you all the scientific study that has been done on the nutritional benefits of insects. Even the UN recommends people to eat insects to battle hunger and poverty.
The Top Ten
1 Insects have a much higher nutritional value than vegetables, fruits, flowers, leaves and even nuts

Now you might think, THAT'S CRAZY! Nope, it isn't, it definitely isn't. The fat-protein ratio in insect diet is much lower than your regular cereal or bacon. Insects are second trophic level organism, which means that they have the necessary nutrients stored in their tissues as they eat a range of plants. To get the same amount of nutrients as them, we have to eat a great range of foods like vegetables, fruits, nuts and meat (or eggs for protein). But meat has lots of unwanted fat stored in it too, which is harmful for your health. But in insects, the amount of fat present is almost negligible.

2 Insects are potentially the best animal feed on earth

They rival the highly expensive soy based or fishmeal formulae. Weird, isn't it.

3 Insects are easy to breed

We can never get run out of insects if we start breeding them. And they can be a reliable source of food too.

4 Breeding insects for food is good for the environment

The amount of greenhouse gases produced for rearing cattle is ten times the same amount produced while rearing insects. Thus it helps in curbing global warming.

Low production of carbondioxide, stops the abuse of antibiotics on animals that create multi resistens bacterias and can feed the whole world.

5 We don't need to eat vegetables if we can eat insects

You heard it right. You can altogether say a final goodbye to the veggies, if people start eating insects. Insects already have the balanced nutrients required for our balanced diet. So we don't have to look for an additional source of food, including vegetables. But it would pose a huge problem for me (I'm a vegetarian).

6 Insects are present in the canned food we buy from the supermarket and are the major source of most of their nutrients

Funnily enough, we are indirectly insectivores too. The thing is that we don't realize we are actually consuming them! The culprit who makes you eat insects, secretly, are the packaged food you buy from the supermarket!

This is an article about packaged food given by the magazine, The Week -

"The FDA's Defect Levels Handbook lays it all out. Staples like broccoli, canned tomatoes, and hops readily contain "insect fragments - heads, thoraxes, and legs" and even whole insects. (I won't tell you about the rat hair limits...) Fig paste can harbor up to 13 insect heads in 100 grams; canned fruit juices can contain a maggot for every 250 millimetres; 10 grams of hops can be the home for 2,500 aphids"

7 Only 0.5% of the known insect species of this world are actually harmful to people

Whenever we talk about insects, our mind quickly diverts to the disgusting, pathogenic and disease spreading creatures that know nothing but to create problems into the normal lives of humans, but that is a huge stereotype! Cockroaches, mosquitos, flies, and fleas aren't the only insects of this world. They belong to the 0.5% harmful category. The rest are really harmless for us.

8 They are less likely to make us sick

You heard it right. Insect food are less likely to make us sick. Only 0.5% of the insect species are harmful to humans, the rest are completely harmless. Because mammals share many diseases with us (like flu), many of the diseases that can happen to pigs, can spread to the human if consumed as bacon. Because insects and humans are anatomically very different, the insect diseases are very different from ours, and therefore their diseases cannot spread to us and our diseases cannot spread to them.

9 They are everywhere

You can find insects even in your own backyard. Do you want anymore proof?

10 They are good for a country's economy

When insects are added as a diet source, it relaxes pressure from the agriculture produce and livestock rearing. The country can then become self sufficient in food.

The Contenders
11 Eating bugs improves your gut health.
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