The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) approved mealworms become the first insects for human consumption in that region.
This means that they can be used whole, dry in curries or other recipes as flour to make cookies, pasta and bread, as reported by the Daily Mail.
Before this, in Europe, they were already used as an ingredient to make pet food.
The safety agency warned that people with allergies to crustaceans and dust mites could experience reactions from eating mealworms, which are actually beetle larvae rather than worms.
Compared to regular meat farming, insects have higher protein-to-fat ratios, grow and reproduce faster, require fewer resources, and have a lower carbon footprint.
Consequently, insects are often touted as a sustainable food source for the future, fostering an industry worth around $ 400 million that is likely to double or triple by 2024.
Since mealworms are rich in fiber, fat, and protein, these larvae are most likely just the first of insects to land on the plate in the next few years, said Ermolaos Ververis, a chemist and food scientist at the European Food Safety Authority.
Under his watch, mealworms became the first insect the agency evaluated under a ‘new food’ regulation that went into effect in 2018.
This appears to have triggered a flood of similar applications for other edible insects to be approved for widespread consumption.
“There is great interest [from] the scientific community and also the food industry in the edible insect sector”, Ververis said.
The mealworm approval application was submitted by Micronutris, a France-based insect farm focused on raising the mealworms for human consumption.
“‘There are cognitive reasons derived from our social and cultural experiences — the so-called ‘yuck factor’ — that make the thought of eating insects repellent to many Europeans”, said food consumption researcher Giovanni Sogari.
However, “with time and exposure, such attitudes can change,” added the expert from the University of Parma, in Italy.
The European Food Safety Agency said it has received 156 requests for ‘novel food’ safety assessments since 2018, ranging from foods derived from algae to a variety of insect species.
