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LOS ANGELES, CA - Will scientists stop at nothing to get us to eat bugs? In their quest for alternative food sources they've dabbled with cricket flour and cockroach milk, and now they're suggesting we could make mealworms part of our meals.
Dutch researchers are studying how to turn the insect larva into a source of fat, as a replacement for margarine or vegetable oils. But why? Low in saturated fats, mealworms are sustainable and easy to cultivate.
How does it taste? Researchers aren't allowed to try it because it's made in a lab, but they say the liquid version looks like olive oil and has a mild, grassy smell.
But before mealworm fat starts showing up on European grocery shelves, much more analysis needs to be done. It's trans fat free, but it doesn't have many healthy omega-3 fatty acids either. So it's not a superfood. Since it's just an alternative oil, skeptics wonder if production could keep up with other millions of TONS of palm oil and soybean oil produced globally each year. That's a lot of mealworms.
Meanwhile, we wonder if anyone could ever actually be convinced to buy it.