Singapore's food safety regulator has just approved 16 species of insects for human consumption. Crickets, grasshoppers, locusts, mealworms and silkworms will be on the menus around Singapore.
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00:00Insects have been approved in Australia for quite a while and there's three species that
00:06pheasants have approved at the moment.
00:09What are they?
00:11So there's mealworms, crickets and what's called a mealworm beetle.
00:17And how are we seeing these insects dished up in Australia and also I guess how are they
00:24proposed to be dished up in Singapore?
00:28So in Singapore there's actually been a range of restaurants starting to prepare and actually
00:32looking to incorporate insects into their menus.
00:37And there's a range like whole insects or as an ingredient.
00:41In Australia we're seeing lower level of consumption but we're seeing there are some whole insects
00:47available but more likely that you'll see them as a protein powder or as a meal that
00:53can be incorporated into an ingredient in another food.
00:56So you're not necessarily seeing the whole insect or eating it as looking like an insect
01:00on your plate.
01:01How widespread is the consumption of insects in Australia at the moment and what are some
01:06of the benefits for that?
01:09So it's hard to find data on that.
01:12There's some surveys from about five or six years ago that suggest about a third of people
01:16in Australia have tried insects and our data suggests about a third would actually be willing
01:23to try it.
01:25The benefits of eating insects, they're very high in protein, omega-3s, ions, copper, zinc
01:33and also some of the vitamins like B12 so they have a really good nutritional profile
01:38if you're eating the whole insect.
01:41Insects have of course already been a part of people's diets in Australia for some years
01:45particularly in indigenous communities there are species already sort of traditionally
01:50eaten right?
01:51Yes.
01:52So we estimate that First Nations people have probably eaten around 60, traditionally eaten
01:57around 60 different types of insects across Australia.
02:02And how should insects be prepared to be eaten?
02:06We're not sort of encouraging people to pick up bugs around the house are we?
02:10No, no.
02:11So as part of the food safety assessment they actually have to be, for human consumption
02:16they actually have to be produced in essentially an insect farm that has very strict requirements
02:22around how the farm operates, what the food source for the insects to make sure that that
02:29food source doesn't have contaminants in it.
02:32So very similar to traditional farming you've got quality control through the whole process
02:37and then that comes right through to food service and service in supermarkets so you'll
02:42mostly see them as powders when they come out or incorporated into something like a
02:47muesli bar.