In the developed world it's on average 80 kilograms per person per year, which goes up to in the United States and a bit lower in some other countries, but on average 80 kilograms per person per year. In the developing world it's much lower. It's 25 kilograms per person per year. But it's increasing enormously. In China in the last 20 years, it increased from 20 to 50, and it's still increasing.
So if a third of the world population is going to increase its meat consumption from 25 to 80 on average, and a third of the world population is living in China and in India, we're having an enormous demand on meat. And of course, we are not there to say that's only for us, it's not for them. They have the same share that we have. Now to start with, I should say that we are eating way too much meat in the Western world.
We could do with much, much less — and I know, I've been a vegetarian for a long time, and you can easily do without anything. You'll get proteins in any kind of food anyway. But then there's a lot of problems that come with meat production, and we're being faced with that more and more often. The first problem that we're facing is human health. Pigs are quite like us. They're even models in medicine, and we can even transplant organs from a pig to a human.
That means that pigs also share diseases with us. And a pig disease, a pig virus, and a human virus can both proliferate, and because of their kind of reproduction, they can combine and produce a new virus. This has happened in the Netherlands in the s during the classical swine fever outbreak. You get a new disease that can be deadly. We eat insects — they're so distantly related from us that this doesn't happen.
So that's one point for insects. And there's the conversion factor. You take 10 kilograms of feed, you can get one kilogram of beef, but you can get nine kilograms of locust meat. So if you would be an entrepreneur, what would you do? With 10 kilograms of input, you can get either one or nine kg.
So far we're taking the one, or up to five kilograms of output. We're not taking the bonus yet. We're not taking the nine kilograms of output yet. So that's two points for insects. And there's the environment. If we take 10 kilograms of food — Laughter and it results in one kilogram of beef, the other nine kilograms are waste, and a lot of that is manure.
If you produce insects, you have less manure per kilogram of meat that you produce. So less waste. Furthermore, per kilogram of manure, you have much, much less ammonia and fewer greenhouse gases when you have insect manure than when you have cow manure. So you have less waste, and the waste that you have is not as environmental malign as it is with cow dung. So that's three points for insects. Now there's a big "if," of course, and it is if insects produce meat that is of good quality.
Well there have been all kinds of analyses and in terms of protein, or fat, or vitamins, it's very good. In fact, it's comparable to anything we eat as meat at the moment. And even in terms of calories, it is very good.
One kilogram of grasshoppers has the same amount of calories as 10 hot dogs, or six Big Macs. So that's four points for insects. I can go on, and I could make many more points for insects, but time doesn't allow this.
So the question is, why not eat insects? I gave you at least four arguments in favor. We'll have to. Even if you don't like it, you'll have to get used to this because at the moment, 70 percent of all our agricultural land is being used to produce livestock. That's not only the land where the livestock is walking and feeding, but it's also other areas where the feed is being produced and being transported. We can increase it a bit at the expense of rainforests, but there's a limitation very soon.
And if you remember that we need to increase agricultural production by 70 percent, we're not going to make it that way. We could much better change from meat, from beef, to insects. And then 80 percent of the world already eats insects, so we are just a minority — in a country like the U. On the left-hand side, you see a market in Laos where they have abundantly present all kinds of insects that you choose for dinner for the night. On the right-hand side you see a grasshopper. So people there are eating them, not because they're hungry, but because they think it's a delicacy.
It's just very good food. You can vary enormously. It has many benefits. TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes.
Closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages are now available on TED. Why not eat insects? Marcel Dicke makes an appetising case for adding insects to everyone's diet. His message to squeamish chefs and foodies: delicacies like locusts and caterpillars compete with meat in flavour, nutrition and eco-friendliness. Topics Science GrrlScientist blogposts. Reuse this content. News U. Politics Joe Biden Congress Extremism.
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