Crawling with nutritional goodness
CRESTA – Cresta Shopping Centre gets treated to some edible bugs at their latest pop-up restaurant.
Rentokil South Africa hosted this year’s South African leg of the global ‘Pestaurant’ event at Cresta Shopping Centre on 3 June.
Savoury treats such as cricket crostini, crispy mealworms and roasted locust canapés were served along with chocolate-covered bugs and scorpion lollipops for those with a sweeter tooth.
Rentokil , which celebrated its 90th anniversary this year, has been biting back at bugs for the past three years. The company’s pop-up pestaurants have met with huge success at food shows in London, Australia, Cape Town, the USA and Brazil, and these trial runs are set to be followed up with more permanent establishments.
Rentokil SA category manager Nathalie Leblond said that the pestaurants raise awareness of pest-related issues. “Rentokil experts deal with millions of pests on behalf of people around the world. As a global organisation we leverage newly-gained knowledge and innovative ways of dealing with pests from international experts and adapt their ideas for pests that are local to us in South Africa,” she said.
A 2013 report by the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation states that about two billion people worldwide are currently supplementing their diet with insects, which are high in protein, B vitamins and minerals such as iron and zinc.
Close to 2 000 kinds of insects have reportedly been used as food, so there is ample choice. If someone does not like ants, the alternative could be beetles, caterpillars, crickets or wasps – the kinds of insects reported to be most popular among insect eaters. Experts in the art of entomophagy agree that most insects have a nutty taste.
Insects are extremely efficient in converting what is fed to them into edible meat. Crickets, for example, need 12 times less feed than cattle to produce the same amount of protein. On top of it they need very little water compared to livestock, grain and vegetables.
