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The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals is a nonfiction book written by American author Michael Pollan published in 2006. As omnivores , humans have a variety of food choices. In the book, Pollan investigates the environmental and animal welfare effects of various food choices.
In recent years, however, a certain level of consumer interest was observed according to related consumer studies, especially in cases when the insects are not identifiable in the processed food (e.g. insect flour in a ready-to-eat food), and consumers made aware of additional values of insect-based food stuffs. [69] [70] [71] [72]
Insects as food or edible insects are insect species used for human consumption. [1] Over 2 billion people are estimated to eat insects on a daily basis. [ 2 ] Globally, more than 2,000 insect species are considered edible, though far fewer are discussed for industrialized mass production and regionally authorized for use in food.
The raccoon is a generalist, because it has a natural range that includes most of North and Central America, and it is omnivorous, eating berries, insects such as butterflies, eggs, and various small animals. When it comes to insects, particularly native bees and lepidoptera (butterflies and moths), many are specialist species.
Robber fly feeding on wasp Fried saturniid caterpillars being served on bread for human consumption in Burkina Faso in 2015. Entomophagy (/ ˌ ɛ n t ə ˈ m ɒ f ə dʒ i /, from Greek ἔντομον éntomon, 'insect', and φαγεῖν phagein, 'to eat') is the practice of eating insects.
Developing edible insects as a source of food when other forms of protein such as poultry and bovine are less available and less sustainable has been explored. Insects explored for food and feed include crickets, grasshoppers, caterpillars, ants, dragonflies, scale insects, flies, and more.
The "Spanish fly", Lytta vesicatoria, has been considered to have medicinal, aphrodisiac, and other properties. Human interactions with insects include both a wide variety of uses, whether practical such as for food, textiles, and dyestuffs, or symbolic, as in art, music, and literature, and negative interactions including damage to crops and extensive efforts to control insect pests.
Insects form an important part of the food chain, especially for entomophagous vertebrates such as many mammals, birds, amphibians, and reptiles. Insects play a critical role in maintaining community structure and composition; in the case of animals through diseases transmission, predation and parasitism , and in plants through phytophagy and ...