Mon Oct 17, 2022 – 5:23 pm EDT
(LifeSiteNews) — At least a thousand Australian schools are now offering schoolchildren chips laced with insect protein, a food source being pushed by the World Economic Forum and some environmentalists as a “sustainable” diet choice.
The “edible bug” company Circle Harvest began selling its cricket corn chips to schools across Australia this year and expects the unconventional snack to be purchased by 6,000 schools by mid-2023.
While it is not presented as such, the new school food offering remains experimental, since the direct health effects of human consumption of insects have scarcely been studied. A 2021 journal article called edible insects an “understudied food resource.”
Potential health concerns are raised by the fact that scientists are currently investigating the “hypothesis” that chitin, which forms the exoskeleton of insects and crustaceans, “causes inflammation and allergy.” Protein powders and flours are ordinarily made by grinding whole insects, thus including chitin.
Circle Harvest has warned that those who are allergic to shellfish “can have a similar reaction when eating edible insects.”
Other safety concerns regarding insect consumption are raised by a study that found parasites in 81 percent of examined insect
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