Van Huis is an entomologist at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, and he was our guest in this Science Forum discussion.

Crickets, dung beetles and giant ants may not be your idea of an ideal meal, but millions of people around the world rely on insects for food. Crickets are so popular in Thailand that people farm the critters. Big-bottomed ants are a delicacy in Colombia. (Check out our story by reporter John Otis here.)

Van Huis argues that people in developed countries should also make insects a regular part of their diet. Insects are nutritious, inexpensive and environmentally sustainable.

So, would you consider cricket pad thai for dinner if it helped the environment? Join the conversation!

In the late 1990s, van Huis took a three-month trip across Africa to interview people about edible insects. He found people reluctant to talk. They were worried that a Westerner like him would ridicule their eating habits as primitive and barbaric.

In fact, many Westerners do consider the practice repulsive, but van Huis calls that a misconception. ”We think that people eat insects [just] because they are hungry, which is complete nonsense!” he says. “They eat insects because they really like it.”

Insects can also be an important source of nutrition. They’re easily available and inexpensive to rear. And as van Huis and his colleagues showed in a recent study, insects emit lower amounts of greenhouse gases than conventional livestock, like cattle, pigs and chickens.

Van Huis worries that people in developing countries may give up eating insects to adopt the meat-heavy diets of developed countries. That, he says, could worsen food security and environmental problems.

The U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) is promoting edible insects as a valuable source of income and a solution to food shortages in developing countries. (See this 2004 report about insects being an important component of African diets.) Van Huis is advising the FAO in its efforts.

Learn about insect delicacies in Laos in the video.

Colombian dinner: Big-butt ants:

Additional Resources:

The FAO held a recent workshop on insect farming in Laos.

‘The Six-Legged Meal of the Future,’ The Wall Street Journal.

The FAO’s Edible Insect Programmes.

‘Bugs as Food: Humans Bite Back,’ National Geographic.

Mealworm french fries, Banana worm bread, Chocolate Chirp Cookies and more recpies.

This week: The 2008 global food shortage may be a distant memory to most of us, but hunger and malnutrition remain a serious problem in many parts of the world. Today, you’ll hear about a famine early warning system developed in the U.S. One scientist explains how climate change will affect agriculture. A journalist and author talks about a fungal disease threatening the world’s wheat crop. Also, one scientist’s efforts to develop improved crop varieties in nutrient poor parts of the world by studying roots.  And don’t forget our conversation about geoengineering on the Science Forum goes through Monday, the 19th.  So stop by and join the discussion!

Stem Rust Threatens Global Wheat Production: Stem rust is a fungal disease of cereal crops so pernicious that it has been called the polio of agriculture. In the 1970s scientists working with the late Norman Borlaug (the father of Green Revolution) developed a variety of wheat resistant to the fungus. That resistant variety helped farmers for decades, until in 1999 a new strain of the pest emerged in Uganda in 1999. The spores of the new fungal strain have been carried by the wind from Africa to Asia. The fungus is now on its way to India and Pakistan, where 20% of the world’s wheat is produced.
Guest: Susan Dworkin, author of The Viking in the Wheatfield: A Scientist’s Struggles to Preserve the World’s Harvest.
The U.N Food and Agricultural Association’s Wheat Rust page.
USDA’s resources on UG99.

Roots of a Second Green Revolution: The Green Revolution in the 1960s and ’70s led to massive increases in global food production. But not everyone benefited. The improved crop varieties needed better irrigation and external fertilizers. And poorer farmers especially in Africa couldn’t afford to buy fertilizers or set up proper irrigation. Now, researchers are developing crop varieties with roots that are more efficient in drawing nutrients from the nutrient-poor soils. They believe their work could lead to a second green revolution.
Guest: Jonathan Lynch.
Read this article about Lynch’s work in the Christian Science Monitor.

Climate Change and Agriculture: Climate change will affect global food production. Rising temperatures and changing rainfall patterns are expected to hurt agriculture in some places, and help it in others.  But there’s time to adapt our food production system to make it more resilient, say researchers.
Guest: David Lobell.
What will it cost to adapt our food production system?

An Early Warning System for Famine: The U.S government has developed a network for early warning system for famine around the world. To do so, researchers use satellite data on rainfall and agricultural yield.
Guest: James Verdin.
Famine Early Warning System Network.

This week: We’re coming to you from India again. A surprise audio snapshot of the capital city, New Delhi, awaits you. Don’t miss it! You’ll also hear from a 16-year-old Indian boy who’s invented a simple solution to a common problem in India. Also, Turkey just banned women from traveling abroad to get pregnant via artificial insemination. And some British food products now have carbon-footprint labels. (flickr image courtesy of fxp)

Sperm Donation in Turkey: A new Turkish law makes it a criminal offense for a woman to go abroad and get pregnant via artificial insemination. Artificial insemination was already illegal in Turkey, but women had until now been able to seek sperm donors in other countries. Now women can be imprisoned for up to three years for doing so. Doctors and lawyers are unsure how the government plans to enforce the law.
Guest: Pinar Ilkkaracan, the co-founder of Women for Women’s Human Rights in Istanbul.
Transcript of the story.
BBC coverage.
Women for Women’s Human Rights.
Pinar Ilkkaracan.

Carbon-Footprint Labels on British Food: Last week we reported on new online technologies to help consumers track the environmental footprint of some products.  Well, other ways of monitoring the impacts of products are emerging.  In Britain, some food products are now sporting carbon-footprint labels alongside their nutrition labels.  The World’s Laura Lynch has the story.
Transcript of the story.
The Carbon Trust.

A Young Indian Innovator: Piyush Agarwal is a 16-year-old high school student, and he wants to be a full-time magician. While his magic tricks still need some work, he is already a successful young innovator. He has invented a motorized system to dry clothes outdoors while protecting them from falling rain. He was one of the many grassroots innovators displaying their work at India’s National Innovation Foundation’s exhibition in New Delhi last week.
India’s National Innovation Foundation
More about Agarwal’s innovation and other awardees.

Music in Science Segment: I’m flying back to Boston this weekend, so be ready for this segment in next week’s podcast.

The company that developed it, an Indian subsidiary of Monsanto, claims the crop can reduce pesticide use and boost yields. But the Indian government has decided not to approve the crop until an independent assessment is conducted to examine possible impacts on human health and the environment.

What does this mean for the future of GM crops in India and elsewhere? And does this technology have a role to play in feeding the world’s hungry? Join our discussion with Dr. Lisa Weasel. She’s a professor of biology at Portland State University and the author of Food Fray: Inside the Controversy over Genetically Modified Food. She writes that GM crops are more of “a condiment than a main course” in addressing global food security.

Listen to our interview with Dr. Weasel here.[player] Download MP3

The World’s science reporter Rhitu Chatterjee also spoke with Indian scientist Pushpa Bhargava, a member of an independent scientific committee that evaluated the data on the new eggplant. Listen to that interview on this week’s The World Science Podcast.

Our listeners brought their thoughts and questions to Lisa Weasel.

• Human beings have been altering plants ever since the beginning of agriculture. Why is genetic engineering any different from the older, more traditional ways of tinkering with crop varieties?

• Is there any scientific evidence of harm to human health from eating GM food?

• Why are small farmers in developing countries especially concerned about GM crops?

[player] Download MP3

This week: How barbecue may have sparked human evolution.  Also: giant kangaroos, shrinking dinosaurs, and some old grain.

Catching Fire: Harvard anthropologist Richard Wrangham has written a new book called “Catching Fire.” In it, he argues that – more than anything else – what allowed our hominid ancestors to evolve into modern humans was the invention of cooking.

Wrangham has spent decades studying primates in Africa. He says cooking gave our ancestors access to a wider range of foods, helped their brains grow, and – because they no longer had to eat berries and leaves for six hours a day – gave them leisure time to develop tools and technologies.

Richard Wrangham

Wrangham also proposes other provocative ideas: how the explosion of modern, over-processed foods plays a key role in today’s obesity epidemic; and how cooking led to the subjugation of women. And Wrangham shares his own experiences eating raw meat and leaves like chimpanzees do.

Wrangham is also our guest in The World’s interactive science forum. Join us for a lively conversation. Ask questions, share your ideas, or just exchange your favorite zebra and gazelle recipes.

Guest: Prof. Richard Wrangham, Harvard University.

And….. Elsa’s Favorite Science Stories For the Week

More on prehistoric food:

Humans killed Australia’s giant kangaroos (illustration below). (The study.)
Dinosaurs were smaller than we thought. (The study.)
Earliest granary discovered in Jordan. (The study.)

Music:
Mashed Potatoes USA, by James Brown
Struttin’ With Some Barbecue, by Louis Armstrong

Hunting may have driven giant kangaroos (Procoptodon goliah) to extinction. Image courtesy of Gavin Prideaux, Flinders Univeresity.

Richard Wrangham

In the most recent World Science Forum, we brought you Richard Wrangham, author of “Catching Fire,” which argues that apes became human because they learned to cook.

Wrangham is a Harvard anthropologist who’s spent decades studying chimps in Africa. He’s also studied human diet, and he argues that the development of cooking by our ancestors was a key to unlocking human potential.

We spoke to Wrangham on the podcast. Download the interview, or listen here: [player]

Wrangham joined us in the forum. Read what he and others had to say, below.
Wrangham says cooking gave early hominids access to a much wider range of foods, helped their brains grow, and gave them time to develop tools and technologies.

Could you survive on raw food?  Have you tried?

Wrangham proposes that the invention of cooking led to the repression of women. But is cooking necessarily a female endeavor?

He also argues that humans instinctively like soft food. Does that fit with your experience?