Chefs, scientists and food engineers look to the past and to the future in the race to find viable, sustainable and enjoyable alternatives to conventional animal products
People of Yunnan Restaurant is a small eatery on a quiet side street in Hong Kong’s San Po Kong district, and may seem an unlikely place to taste the future of food. But this casual dining spot, specialising in traditional cuisine from the south-western Chinese province of its name, serves what many are hailing as a solution to world hunger and the harmful effects of livestock farming: edible insects.
Born in Yunnan but raised in Hong Kong, chef Li Qing and his wife opened the restaurant in 2005, to introduce locals to Yunnan-style noodles. Li began serving fried cicada, grasshoppers and other bugs as a gimmick, but soon found customers seeking them out – and not only for their novelty, but for their healthful and medicinal properties. “If food becomes scarce, people will turn to insects because they are healthy, clean and nutritious,” Li says, over a serving of fried bee pupae, silkworm pupae and bamboo worms tossed with salt, chilli and a dash of Sichuan pepper. “It will become like the old days, when we kept them in our pockets and ate them as a snack.”
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Li might be on to something: a typical mealworm provides the same protein, vitamins and minerals as fish and meat, and more unsaturated omega-3 and fatty acids than cattle and pigs. What’s more, thanks to a growing body of research into food security and the environmental impact of the livestock and fisheries industries, insects are emerging as a potential alternative to conventional animal protein.