Insect Food

We need a food to live. And people make wery unusual food and drinks.
Hamburger. You say - how can I change the hamburger? It's just ordinary food!
In Switzerland people make hamburger and balls for incects!

The Swiss supermarket chain Coop has begun selling burgers and balls made from insects. It's being billed as a legal first in Europe. This continent is more accustomed to steak, sausage, poultry and fish as a source of protein.

The goal is to convince leery consumers to try a nutritious, if unusual food that "preserves the planet's resources," Coop says.

The insect burgers, like the meat variety, can be accompanied by buns, tomatoes and lettuce. The insect balls seem to fit best in pita bread, perhaps with a spoonful of yogurt. The balls are a mixture of mealworms with cilantro, onions and chickpeas.

cockroach milk: the next super foood

The milk crystals of the Pacific beetle cockroach are beautiful. Slice open an embryonic roach under a microscope, and the crystals spill out in a shower of nutrient-dense glitter.

But the flavor of cockroach milk is nothing to write home about. Subramanian Ramaswamy, a biochemist at the Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine in Bangalore, India, told The Washington Post as much early Tuesday. As a party dare – he'd lost a drinking competition – one of Ramaswamy's colleagues once ate a sprinkling of the crystals.

Most roaches lay eggs. Not the Pacific beetle cockroach. It gives birth to live young, sort of like humans if we kept babies by the dozen in fleshy organs called brood sacs. Also like humans, mother Pacific beetle cockroaches produce food for their offspring. The embryos dine on a liquid substance packed with fats, sugars and protein. You can think of this like cockroach milk.

I don't think anyone is going to like it if you tell them, 'We extracted crystals from a cockroach, and that is going to be food,'" Ramaswamy said. Further examination of the crystals will also tell if the roach crystals are toxic to humans.

Bugs for dinner

With a twist of lime and a dash of salt, Sydney chef Nowshad Alam Rasel flavors a hot pan full of crickets. He tosses them over a flaming stove.

This savory snack would not be out of place at a Mexican cantina or a Bangkok street stall. Now, it is creeping onto menus at Australian boutique eateries such as El Topo. In these popular restaurants, bug-based dishes are challenging the inhibitions of diners.

"When they come for the first time, the customer very much wants to know what it is," says sous-chef Rasel. He neatly plates up the fried critters, topping the bugs with slices of fresh chili pepper.