About one-third of the food produced annually worldwide ends up as waste. A minor part of this waste is used for biofuel and compost production, but most is landfilled, causing environmental damage. Mass production of edible insects for human food and livestock feed seems a sustainable solution to meet demand for animal-based protein, which is expected to increase due to rapid global population growth. The aim of this review was to compile up-to-date information on mass rearing of edible insects for food and feed based on food wastes. The use and the potential role of the fermentation process in edible insect mass production and the potential impact of this rearing process in achieving an environmentally friendly and sustainable food industry was also assessed. Food waste comprises a huge nutrient stock that could be valorized to feed nutritionally flexible edible insects. Artificial diets based on food by-products for black soldier fly, house fly, mealworm, and house cricket mass production have already been tested with promising results. The use of fermentation and fermentation by-products can contribute to this process and future research is proposed towards this direction. Part of the sustainability of the food sector could be based on the valorization of food waste for edible insect mass production. Further research on functional properties of reared edible insects, standardization of edible insects rearing techniques, safety control aspects, and life cycle assessments is needed for an insect-based food industry.

Food Wastes as a Potential New Source for Edible Insect Mass Production for Food and Feed: A review

Recent advances in polyhydroxyalkanoate production: Feedstocks, strains and process developments.

Biodegradation of polylactic acid by yellow mealworms (larvae of Tenebrio molitor) via resource recovery: A sustainable approach for waste management.

Biodegradation of polystyrene and low-density polyethylene by Zophobas atratus larvae: Fragmentation into microplastics, gut microbiota shift, and microbial functional enzymes

Background The very recently released EFSA's scientific opinion on the safety of dried (whole or ground) Tenebrio molitor larvae (yellow mealworm) considering their uses in various food products and the following approval by The Standing Committee on Plants, Animals, Food and Feed, brought T. molitor into the spotlight. This is EFSA's first opinion on edible insects as a novel food pursuant to Regulation (EU) 2015/2283. Scope and approach This review aims to summarize existing information regarding the features that may corroborate the sustainability and increase the acceptability of T. molitor larvae as food ingredient. Towards this end, aspects related to rearing and farming conditions, nutrient content and technological approaches for the recovery of protein and lipid fractions are addressed. Special emphasis was posed on their protein techno-functional properties and the development of new T. molitor larva-based food products. Key findings and conclusions The larvae of yellow mealworm are considered among the most promising alternatives to address the predicted deficiency of conventional food protein. Owing to their notable protein, lipid, vitamin, and mineral content, they could serve as future ingredients for industrial purposes (e.g. substitutes of traditional animal sources) bringing environmental and economic advantages. Several methods of T. molitor larvae protein extraction have been studied leading to different characteristics of the final protein preparations. Compared to conventional protein sources the protein fraction of T. molitor has not been much investigated with respect to its physicochemical and techno-functional properties, the knowledge of which is essential to allow their effective inclusion in food formulations.

Potentiality of Tenebrio molitor larva-based ingredients for the food industry: A review

In 1984, China joined the Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC), which was established by the United Nations’ World Health Organization (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which consists of 188 member states and one member organization. Since then, China has taken an active role in various initiatives organized by the Codex Committee on Food Additives (CCFA) and has shared resources and experience with its Codex member states, thus effectively promoting the development of the Chinese food additive standards system. Instead of a country where almost no systematic food additive standard were available, China has become the host country of the CCFA’s sessions. China’s food additive industry is the only one that is supported by international standards, out of the industries of the International Standard Industrial Classification and China’s national economy. Based on this case, four strategic milestones are summarized by retrospectively analyzing the history of the development of Chinese food additive standards from 1978 to the present. China is expected to share its valuable experience and provide references for the improvement of food additive standards systems in multiple developing countries, so promoting food safety and trade harmonization. With the advances in core technologies in the food industry, the future development of food additive standardization is also forecast in this review.

/pdf/retrospective-analysis-of-the-development-history-of-the-33hs4qa1lv.pdf

Retrospective analysis of the development history of the Chinese food additive standards system based on the CODEX principles.

Mealworms are commercially reared on diets comprising of mixed grains. Substituting grains with agro-food industry by-products creates opportunities to valorize by-products and lowers the cost of insect rearing practices. In this study, three by-products (mushroom spent corn stover, highly denatured soybean meal, and spirit distillers’ grains) as treatments and wheat bran as control were used to rear mealworms. For growth performance, mealworms dry weights reared on three by-products were 53–67% of control. Feed conversion and utilization ratios ranged from 36 to 45% and 50 to 57% of control, respectively. For nutritional profile, protein and fat fractions ranged from 70 to 76% and 6 to 12% of mealworm dry weight, respectively. Leucine, lysine, methionine + cysteine, threonine, and valine were the limiting amino acids comparing with FAO/WHO requirements. The major fatty acids were linoleic acid (C18:2, 30–38%), oleic acid (C18:1, 24–34%), and palmitic acid (C16:0, 14–17%). The comparable nutritional profile demonstrated the potential to rear mealworms using these three cheap by-products. The results provide a reference for insect farmers to formulate the diets for obtaining specific insect products with desired nutrient composition.

Growth performance and nutritional profile of mealworms reared on corn stover, soybean meal, and distillers’ grains

Handle everyday research tasks with reliable, citation-backed results

Your personal Research Agent to handle research tasks with citation-backed results

Popular Tasks used by Researchers

How can I help with your research?

Meet SciSpace

Get more enhanced response by uploading the PDFs you want me to reference.

No relevant PDFs in your library

SciSpace is the AI research assistant for academics. Run systematic literature reviews on 280M+ papers, and write papers with cited sources. Trusted by 1M+ students, PhDs & researchers.

SciSpace | AI for Research

Analyze PDFs

Code & Manuscripts

Funding & Grants

Literature & Patents

Medical & Clinical Data

Systematic Review

Visualize & Present

Web & Data

Build a Google Scholar-like website for your research.

Build a website

Create charts and images for your research

Create a Chart

Write a paper for submission to a journal

Draft a manuscript

Patent Search

Design eye-catching scientific posters in minutes.

Scientific Poster Generation

Systematic Literature Review

One task is running at the moment. Your messages will be shown right after.

Drag and drop or click here to browse

Loved by <highlight>1 million+</highlight> researchers

Extract a list of specific topics and their sources from unstructured text

Topics

Compare and analyze relevant papers that matches with your search

Papers

Get insights from PDFs and bookmarked papers from your library

My library

Recent searches

Try searching for:

Catch AI-generated content in scholarly and non-scholarly content

{ai} Detector

Ai Writer

Get PDF Summaries, highlighted text explanations 

Chat with PDF

Effortlessly create in-text citations and bibliographies in APA and 2,500 other formats

Citation generator

Get explanations, summaries, and answers on academic papers

Ease up your research workflow with {scispace}'s cohort of exciting AI tools

Elevate your academic writing skills and convey your ideas the way you want

Paraphraser

Explore our range of reading and writing tools

Your file is being prepared and should be ready in a few minutes. If it's a large file, it might take a bit longer. You can close this window, and we'll email you the file when it's done.

You have reached a maximum limit of <strong>{limit}</strong> columns in the table. Remove at least <strong>1</strong> column to add or create another one.

Gaowei Chen

Author Tools

Chat about Author

Papers

Retrospective analysis of the development history of the Chinese food additive standards system based on the CODEX principles.

Growth performance and nutritional profile of mealworms reared on corn stover, soybean meal, and distillers’ grains