A US student has just spent 30 days on an "insect diet " - eating insects three times a day. Camren Brantley-Rios says traditional meats such as pork and beef are unable to continue and he wanted to try out what many consider the diet of the future. Many people would not like the idea of eating insects distasteful, even if it were not disgusting. Not so long ago Brantley-Rios was among them. But for the last month he has been eating insects for breakfast, lunch and dinner. "I'm mainly sticking to three kinds," he says. Occasionally he has included different insects. Preparing these he "actually cried", though he insists they were surprisingly good. Insects consume fewer resources than animals, like pigs and cows, to produce the same amount of protein , Brantley-Rios says - and more than two billion people worldwide include insects in their regular diet, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. "There's not really a need to eat insects in America because we have it so nice," Brantley-Rios says. "We have finer meats and we're lucky to have that luxury , so there's not much of a pressure to eat insects right now. But what a lot of people are trying to do is make it a little bit more marketable." He has ordered insects from farms that usually supply zoos, which need them "to feed certain animals". He has always made sure the insects have been fed on an organic diet, he says, and only bought species he knows are safe to eat. He knows that one person eating insects won't make much difference. To have a real environmental effect, millions would have to follow his example. How does Brantley-Rios guarantee the safety of his insect diet?
He tests each species before eating it. He has insects raised on his own farm. He feeds his insects on an organic diet. He orders insects for certain zoo animals.