What did you have for lunch today? What about yesterday? And the day before? Probably the usual stuff with a bit of indulgence here and there, I guess. That's normal, as most of us are conditioned to eat those foods which we are familiar and comfortable with. Even when we travel, many of us tend to stick to familiar foods and only a few are adventurous enough to venture into the realm of unknown and unfamiliar gastronomic stuff. I am definitely not among those few. But that doesn't stop me from admiring the bravery of Bear Grylls and his ilk who seem to eat almost anything that walks, runs, swims or crawls (Even though I go Yee-uck when I see them munching on sundry creepy crawlies). Yet I do sometimes wonder if our good old Mother Nature has enough in her bosom to feed the ever growing number of humans. If the numbers keep growing at this rate, the gap between the food produced and the needs of the population is likely to become unbridgeable. But this is true only if we continue to think about conventional food, vegetarian and meat. What if we can find new food sources? The brave souls who emulate Bear Grylls do exist.
Many years ago, before Grylls was even born, the intrepid adventurers led by Thor Heyerdahl on their epic journey from Peru across the Pacific on their reliable raft Kon-Tiki experimented on plankton. Heyerdahl said that they were fascinated by the sight but repelled by the smell. You can read his book on the voyage here. Still, he opined that it was nourishing food and could potentially save ship wrecked people if only they had something to filter the plankton from the water. His advice was to throw away the phytoplankton, which are tiny plants (described by him as inedible) and the tiny jelly fish (which according to him had a bitter taste) and consume the rest. It is now known from documents that scientists in Britain tried to "farm" plankton so that the populace could be fed in case of food shortages during the Second World War. In Spain, two species of phytoplanktons are cultured for consumption. One danger of large scale harvesting of plankton would be a catastrophic disruption of the oceanic food chain. Therefore, the Spanish model looks good.
The other item on the list is insects. Entomophagy involves eating of eggs, larvae, pupa and adult insects. This is fairly common in parts of Asia . And the 'fad' (if you can call it that) has spread to the West with many farms coming up in Canada and the US. These new-age entrepreneurs say that this is a way to avoid food shortages while eating healthy. And they try to reduce the 'yuck' factor by attractive packaging. The girl in the picture is reaching out for an insect cheesecake and chances are that we would not be repelled as much as we would have been if we had been offered the insect without the cheesecake. As some of us would be aware, there is a movement to popularize the eating of insects, which are a rich source of protein and have a low fat content. An added advantage is the low carbon footprint. What is easier than rearing insects on the naturally available food sources? An ideal food you would think, but for the 'yuck' factor. But then whoever thought that eating raw fish would be cool one day? Yet, today sushi is popular in the West. But the "eat-insects" movement seems to be catching on. Here are a couple of articles, for the interested:However, all is not hunky-dory. Even if people get over the 'yuck' factor, there are safety issues and Government regulations to contend with. With the amount of insecticides that are being used, chances are high that the insects which are eaten have imbibed dangerous chemicals much above the limits which are safe for human consumption. And there are regulations to be complied with, which makes the whole business difficult and cumbersome. But there has to be a trade-off somewhere. It is easy to visualize that at the current growth rate of population, it will become increasingly difficult to feed all the people on the existing sources: livestock and crops. Alternate sources are needed and plankton and insects are the only ones left. How durable a food resource plankton would prove to be is difficult to imagine as this 'fad' does not seem to have caught on as much as the other one. I for one, would rather eat plankton however gooey it may look, rather than the creepy-crawlies. What about you?
