Today we eat five times more meat than in the 60s. If then the production was 70 million tons a year, in 2017 it was 330 million.
But it is also that, according to the latest data that the United Nations Organization for Food and Agriculture (FAO) launched this Tuesday on the occasion of world food waste day, 14% of that production is wasted.
That is why it is not surprising that the FAO estimates that, to supply 9.1 billion people in the next 30 years, food production will have to grow by 70%.
Where can we get protein for so many people without destroying the planet?
One of the options is unconventional in our culture, but very efficient in terms of protein percentage: insects.
On the outskirts of Albacete, there is a farm where you can not hear the bellowing of a cow, or the grunting of a pig or cackling of chickens.
The characteristic song is heard
of a legion of crickets because it is one of the few insect farms in Spain.
They raise various species for animal consumption.
Crickets is one of them.
At 60 days they are ready to be consumed and their percentage of protein can be around 70% while red meat has 25% protein.
But there are also others such as tenebrios with properties similar to those of blue fish, according to the breeders of this Proteinsecta farm.
There are other cultures in which the consumption of insects is more common, as in Mexico.
In Spain, Roberto Ruiz, who until this summer ran the only Mexican restaurant with a Michelin star, Punto MX in Madrid, is one of the experts in elaborations with this type of raw material.
Ruiz attributes this culture to the fact that there were no large mammals in Mexico and that to receive proteins they had to resort to insects.
In this video we can also see some of the most common elaborations with insects in the Aztec country.