Termites as human foods—A comprehensive review

Abstract

Global food production is anticipated to rise along with the growth of the global population. As a result, creative solutions must be devised to ensure that everyone has access to nutritious, affordable, and safe food. Consequently, including insects in diets has the potential to improve global food and nutrition security. This paper aims to share recent findings by covering edible termites as the main aspect, from their consumption record until consumer acceptance. A total of 53 termite species are reported as edible ones and distributed in 6 biogeographic realms. Generally, termites have a nutrient composition that is suitable for human consumption, and cooked termites are a better dietary choice than their raw counterparts. Besides, increasing customer interest in eating termite‐based food can be achieved by making it more palatable and tastier through various cooking processes, that is, boiling, frying, grilling, roasting, smoking, and sun‐drying. Moreover, edible termites can also be used as a new source of medication by exhibiting antimicrobial activity. Regarding their advantages, it is strongly encouraged to implement a seminatural rearing system to sustain the supply of edible termites. Overall, this paper makes it evident that termites are an important natural resource for food or medicine. Hence, the long‐term objective is to stimulate scientific inquiry into the potential of edible insects as an answer to the problem of global food security.

Edible black ant Smith (Carebara vidua) as human food – A systematic review

“…Low to high intensity of blue color represent least to high number of species consumption, respectively, in each country. Estrada et al, 2021;Siddiqui et al, 2023a). Hence, it is necessary to search for alternative natural resources to combat this situation.…”

“…Earlier, European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) Scientific Committee has recorded 12 insect species as potential a food source; house cricket (Acheta domesticus), American grasshopper (Schistocerca americana), banded cricket (Gryllodes sigillatus), black soldier fly (Hermetia illucens), African migratory locust (Locusta migratoria migratorioides), housefly (Musca domestica), honeycomb moth (Galleria mellonella), silkworm (Bombyx mori), lesser wax moth (Achroia grisella), superworm (Zophobas atratus), lesser mealworm (Alphitobius diaperinus), and mealworm (Tenebrio molitor) (EFSA, 2015). According to Siddiqui et al (2023a), there are more than 2000 species of insects that have been identified as edible, but only 80% of these are confirmed suitable for human consumption, and 4% have been recognised to have medicinal value (van Itterbeeck and Pelozuelo, 2022). In developing nations, notably in regions namely Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are incorporating edible insects as a dietary food source (Tao and Li, 2018;Hlongwane et al, 2020).…”