Photo: Charoen Krung Photography / Shutterstock
With the world’s population increasing and climate change intensifying, there is an increasing need for sustainable protein alternatives. While plant-based “meat” and “dairy” have gained popularity, they are not the only eco-friendly alternatives to traditional meat.
Research from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, conducted in mice, indicates that replacing conventional protein sources with mealworms in high-fat diets could slow weight gain, improve immune response, reduce inflammation, improve energy metabolism and beneficially alter the proportion of good nutrients. to bad cholesterol.
“In addition to more dietary fiber, nutritionists also recommend eating more high-quality protein as part of a weight management plan. “We knew from a previous study in roosters that mealworms are a high-quality, highly digestible protein source that is also environmentally sustainable,” said the study’s lead author, Kelly Swanson, professor in the Department of Animal Sciences and director interim of the Division of Nutritional Sciences, both in the U. of I College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES).
Swanson’s team fed mice a high-fat diet (46% of calories from fat) with casein, a dairy protein, for 12 weeks before switching to alternative proteins. Another group, the control, consumed a lean diet with casein throughout the experiment. When mealworms were introduced, the high-fat diet group was obese and experiencing metabolic syndrome, a set of conditions that increase the risk of heart attack, stroke, diabetes and other health problems.
The mice then began eating two types of mealworms in dry and flour-like powder form, replacing 50% or 100% of the casein in the diet. During and after 8 weeks on the experimental diets, the research team measured body weight, body composition, blood metabolites, and gene expression from the liver and adipose (fat) tissue.
The mealworm protein did not cause the obese mice to lose weight, but their rate of weight gain was slowed compared to mice eating high-fat, high-casein diets. And the benefits went further.
“It’s not a weight loss situation; they just slowed their progress on the mealworms,” Swanson said. “The most significant impact was the improvement in their blood lipid profiles. Their LDL, so-called “bad cholesterol,” decreased and HDL, “good cholesterol,” increased. And from a gene expression perspective, inflammation decreased and some of the lipid and glucose metabolism genes were altered. Not everything was positive, but metabolically they were in a better place.”
Some of the benefits could have been associated with chitin, a fibrous material that forms the exoskeleton of insects. Swanson said that although the role of chitin has not been well studied, it appears to act like a fiber, stimulating beneficial microbial activity in the gut. He has another paper in progress to characterize the effects of mealworms on the mouse microbiome.
Other studies have evaluated alternative proteins for obesity weight management in mice, but most have used genetically altered mice designed to remain obese no matter what. Swanson’s team intentionally used “wild” mice to gain weight the same way many humans do: through diet.
But are humans ready for mealworm protein?
“There is a ‘yuck factor’ for many people in Western societies, where eating insects is not entirely normal, but some populations have relied on insect proteins for millennia,” Swanson said. “As protein shortages become a reality, there may be a place for insect meals.”
However, for now, mealworm protein has not yet been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. People curious about insects can try cricket flour, which can be used in food under the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act.
“You can’t see any legs or anything like that,” Swanson said. “It is simply a flour that should not negatively affect the flavor or other properties of the food.”
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