Hello and welcome to the Nutrition Diva podcast. I'm your host Monica Reinegel. And today

we're talking about a rapidly growing sector of the food industry, insects as a source

of protein for humans and more recently for pets. You know, we've been talking so much

about protein in recent years, taking in more protein than is strictly necessary to meet

your minimum biological needs has several potential advantages. It can help you manage

your appetite and your weight. It can also help you hang on to your hard one muscle mass

and bone density and otherwise slow the aging process. And that's especially true with

the higher quality protein that we get from animal sources. But there's a problem. A couple

of problems actually. First, the global population is growing faster than the food supply. And

that means we may soon be struggling to produce enough food and enough protein to supply

even the world's basic needs, much less higher protein diets. And secondly, a lot of people

are growing increasingly uncomfortable with the environmental and the ethical aspects of

raising animals for meat. It's interesting. The percentage of people who identify as strict

vegetarians or vegans hasn't really budged in several decades. But those who continue

to eat meat are definitely eating less of it. We're eating about 10% less meat per capita

than we were 10 years ago and a third less than we were back in the 1970s. Now, I want

to be very clear, it is not hard to meet your minimum protein needs on a plant-based diet.

But if you were aiming a bit higher than just the minimum protein needs, it does get a bit

more challenging. Plant-based protein sources tend to be less complete or balanced in terms of

their amino acid makeup. So it takes more grams of plant protein to achieve the same effects as you'd

get from animal protein. How much more? It would depend on exactly which proteins you were eating,

but a ballpark estimate is that you need about 20% more plant protein. So 60 grams of plant protein

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