Nutritional Composition of Bombyx mori Pupae: A Systematic Review

Abstract

As insects have started to enter the eating habits of Western countries, an increasing amount of literature regarding the mulberry silkworm (Bombyx mori) prospective application as food has been published. Despite this growing interest, there is currently no systematic review of silkworm nutritional composition available. In this paper, we performed a systematic review of the recent available literature on the nutrient composition of mulberry silkworm pupae. After screening the titles and abstracts of 14,008 studies retrieved from three scientific databases, data about nutrients was extracted from 29 selected papers, together with their related variables. This systematic review provides an overview of the variety of data reported in the literature and highlights that many elements contribute to hindering a sound comparison of the different nutritional values reported for silkworm pupae. The observed variability of the composition data reported could be due to differences in diet, strains, pretreatments, and origin of the silkworm analyzed. However, all these variables were not always available and should be reported in future studies to simplify the data comparison.

Edible Insects as a Novel Source of Bioactive Peptides: A Systematic Review

“…In addition, B. mori pupae are frequently used in food, feed, and traditional medicine in Asian countries, being the only insect in the list of novel food resources published by the Ministry of Health of China [65]. The nutritional value of the dehydrated B. mori pupae was reported to present a content of 45-60% of protein, 20-35% of fat, 0.92-28.2% of carbohydrates, and 0.54-6.38% of fiber [66].…”

Impact of Mulberry Silkworm (Bombyx mori L.) Pupae Powder on Physicochemical Properties and Consumer Preference of Ready-to-Eat Smoked Fish Paste

“…(2019), which are essential for the strengthening of the immune system (Talwar et al, 1989). According to Tassoni et al (2022), the concentrations of Fe, Ca, Mn, Zn, and Mg varied from 2.83 to 4.95, 92 to 181, 1.08 to 2.3, 1.39 to 24.4, and 89 to 280 mg/100 g, respectively.…”

“…The main by-product of the silk industry is silkworm pupae, which are highly degradable, sometimes used as fertilizer or as waste after the silk is removed from the cocoon (FAO, 2013), which are a good source of protein, lipids, minerals, and vitamins, and are considered a good source of nutrients for humans (Tomotake et al, 2010). They may be utilized as food or as animal feed, which supports circular production chains and preventing the release of potentially hazardous waste into the environment (Tassoni et al, 2022).…”

Silkworm pupae derivatives as source of high value protein intended for pasta fortification

“…Furthermore, being a by‐product of sericulture agroindustry, the use of silkworm pupae in commercial products perfectly fits within a biorefinery framework. Two recent systematic reviews focus on the nutritional content of silkworm pupae for food use (Tassoni et al., 2022) and on their safety from a food perspective (Filippo et al., 2022), by underlining that silkworm pupae are a good nutritional resource with very limited risks for human health. With a view to exploit the silkworm with a circular economy approach, pupae are an interesting by‐product as they are traditionally accepted and used as fertilizer, animal feed, and edible insects in some countries such as Japan, Korea, India, and Thailand (Mishra et al., 2003; Pereira et al., 2003; Zhou & Han, 2006).…”

“…Among several insect species, the EFSA assessed silkworms as a possible source for the production of processed animal protein. Kumar et al (2015) and Tassoni et al (2022) revealed that silkworm pupae contain 17 amino acids, which include all the nine essential ones. They also contain a wide range of bioactive components, including polyunsaturated fatty acids, peptides, polyphenols with antioxidant, apoptotic and antigenotoxic, antitumor, and cardiovascular protective and hepato-protective activities (Sadat et al, 2022;Wu et al, 2021).…”