Mealworms For Your Next Meal: Humane And Nutritious, But What About Delicious?

  Posted on February 8, 2016  by insectrecipes  No comments

Mealworms: Ready to infuse some replenishable protein into your next meal.

For us in the West, insects as a food are often considered the final frontier of the human diet. We know we can eat them—people all over the world do every day—but most of us are reserving this experience as our last ditch resort when the food apocalypse eliminates all the ‘real’ meat choices. But let’s be honest, word is getting out that these buggy alternatives actually aren’t as horrible as we imagined them to be. Case in point: mealworms.

Mealworm Nutrition

Mealworms are the larval stage of the emperor moth (Imbrasia belina). Many Americans are familiar with these wormy-looking grubs because they’re a common food for our exotic pets and popular feed for chickens as well. They make great animal food because of their high nutritional content, but as it turns out, that same nutrition can benefit us!

Mealworm protein content is particularly impressive, at roughly 53% of their dried weight. They’re also rich in copper, potassium, iron, zinc and selenium. They carry about 28% dried fat, but it’s all that good, healthy, polyunsaturated fats that you won’t find in traditional meat sources. All of this is awesome news for people interested in reducing their intake of unhealthy fats without losing the great nutrition they receive from meat.

This Recipe comes from http://www.ent.iastate.edu/misc/insectsasfood.html

An Ethical and Organic Diet Solution

Most Americans are aware that the treatment of livestock for slaughter is…horrific, to say the least. Many (myself included) find that the only way they can enjoy their steak dinner or chicken soup is by working hard to maintain as much ignorance as possible about what their dinner went through before it made it to the table.

Mealworms come as a saving grace for your self conscience, because of the simple, humane way they are harvested. Harman Johar, founder of  World Ento, raises his mealworms on a diet of organic oats. Once they are grown, he euthanizes them by slowly dropping the temperature of their enclosure. This puts them in a type of hibernative sleep common in cold blooded animals exposed to cold temperatures, before the temperatures are dropped to a lethal level. Johar and his team then screen the insects for diseases and parasites using a float test (the ones that float don’t pass), and heat-treating the rest. They then dry and process the mealworms without chemicals or preservatives.

Taste and Uses

So now you know that mealworms can not only be a food, but a nutritious one that’s humanely produced. Once you get past the ‘ick factor’ of eating a bug, the real question is: are they going to taste any good?

Tropical entomologist Van Huis at Wageningen University in the Netherlands decided to find out. He conducted a blind taste test of two types of meatballs: one made of half ground meat and half ground mealworms, and the other made with 100% meat. Unsurprisingly to him, most people preferred the version with mealworms over 100% traditional meat.

And if meatballs aren’t your style, there are a ton of different ways to try these creepy crawlies. Many people eat them dry roasted, with salt or dipped in chocolate for a sweet treat. The best part about roasting them is that they have a shelf life of up to a year. They also serve as a nutritious crouton replacement on your salad. Some say they have a bit of a nutty flavor, which makes them suitable in cookies and other baked goods that require a sprinkling of nuts. If you’re an adventurous baker, you can also purchase or create ‘mealworm flour’ to add some nutrition to your muffins or pancakes.

Where to Buy Mealworms

As far as we can tell, World Ento is currently the only company in the US farming mealworms for human consumption. Although there are plenty of other places to find them, buying a box of live mealworms from an online pet store is not the best idea if you plan on eating them yourself, because they probably don’t take as much care in their screening process as World Ento does.

Although  World Ento is the first kid on the block for the mealworm diet, and is showing even more promise with new venture capital funding, it likely won’t have a monopoly for long. Cricket flour started from similar modest origins and now tons of startups are benefitting from the waves of interest. In the mean time, the most adventurous chefs can always prepare their own mealworms (here’s one of many blog posts out there that will show you how), just be sure you get the grubs from a trusted source.