Biology professor researches mealworms as food source
My name is Alexander Olvido. I teach
biology at the University of North
Georgia on the Oconee Campus and I'm
interested in researching how beetles
react to things in their environment. In
a classroom when we're doing this
exercise I want students to at least
experience, you know, how science is done
and done properly I should say.
There's a lot of human beings living on this earth
today and there's projected to be over
9 billion people--billion with a B--in 2050
in midst twenty-first century. How do you
feed, how do you grow enough food to feed
these people? In other cultures mealworm
is a part of their diet but in Western
cultures and the European cultures like
this aversion to to eating insects.
And they're much cheaper to grow in terms
and have a lower environmental cost and
growing them in large masses in
industrial warehouses. So to me the
future of food production really is in
in going smaller not bigger. You don't
want to grow bigger pigs or bigger cows for
their meat. You want to grow more of
these insects and try introduce them as
as viable food options for people who
may not be able to afford a high-protein
meat diet.