Techniques exist to isolate nutrients present in food. In the case of insects, this would preserve only the proteins they contain.
- Eating insects is called entomophagy.
- 80% of the world’s population already consumes insects.
- The harvest cycle for insects is around 45 days, compared to 36 months for traditional farm animals.
Ten billion people will live on earth in 2050. Faced with the depletion of resources, sometimes difficult access to water and agricultural land, how will we be able to feed the entire population? Insects are one of the solutions. “I’m not saying insects will replace our farm animals, but it’s an alternative that seems more sustainable than what we’re doing now.”, explains Jacek Jaczynski, professor of food science at the University of West Virginia. He reminds us that insects have a short lifespan, that they reproduce quickly and that they have simple habitats and nutritional needs. With his team, he found a way to isolate proteins from insects, to make them more easily consumable. Their work is published in the specialized journal LWT.
How to isolate proteins?
Their patented protein isolation technique enables the purification and concentration of proteins from different sources. “For example, milk contains water, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals and various proteins such as casein and whey.explains Jacek Jaczynski. Whey protein can be isolated by various isolation processes, which remove water, fats, carbohydrates, etc. This process results in whey protein isolate or purified and concentrated protein.” This isolate is regularly used today to develop protein-enriched foods. “With insects, our goal is to selectively extract these nutrients, such as proteins and lipids“, adds the researcher. To achieve this, they use a technique called pH solubility precipitation, which allows to have good quality isolates. “Precipitation is the opposite of solubility, he indicates. When protein dissolves in a solution, it visually disappears from that solution, like sugar or salt, while when protein precipitates, it visually reappears.”
Why isolate insect proteins?
It is to make the consumption of insects more attractive that the researchers suggest transforming the insect into powder, as is already the case for grains, reduced to flour. Today, the diet based on insects is widespread throughout the world, but struggles to establish itself in Western cultures. “It’s a minority that doesn’t eat insects.”, says Jacek Jaczynski. “We need to find a way to extract and isolate high quality nutrients and develop prototypes that will appeal to our taste buds.In total, more than 2,000 species of insects have been identified as safe for human consumption.
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