Eat Spiders and Grass Hoppers and Stay Hale and Hearty!

It would take a while for you to digest them, but scientists have revealed that eating bugs would be nutritious, delicious and environmental friendly.

It would take a while for you digest them, but scientists have revealed that eating bugs would be nutritious, delicious and environmental friendly.

Gorging on spiders and grasshoppers, or entomophagy, as the practice is originally called, provides essential nutrients, keeps down pests and puts much less strain on the planet than eating conventional meat.

Scientists from Ohio State University have dubbed these insects as "micro-livestock".

"Insects are the most valuable, underused and delicious animals in the world," the Independent quoted David George Gordon, a Seattle-based naturalist and author, as saying.

The West "is one the few cultures" that doesn't eat them, he adds. "Maybe we are the weirdos."

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) had also held a special conference highlighting their benefits earlier this year.

Studies have shown that insects are rich in protein and essential nutrients and contain much less cholesterol, and much more unsaturated fat, than other kinds of meat.

Scientists at the National Autonomous University of Mexico have listed 1,700 different species and found that bugs are bolted down in at least 113 countries globally.

The dishes popular world-over include a plate of maguey worms- larvae of a giant butterfly in Mexico, Sago grubs wrapped in banana leaves in Papua New Guinea, Large leafcutter ants in Colombia and wasps with rice in Japan's Emperor Hirohito.

Entomophagy's supporters also suggested that crab, shrimp and lobster, are delicacies, even though these creatures are scavengers.

Source-ANI
SPH