Could Maggots End World Hunger?

Maggots are undeniably gross, but black soldier fly maggots are a more efficient source of protein than anything else on the planet. Learn how researchers hope to get more people eating insects in this episode of BrainStuff. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey
brain Stuff, Lauren vogel Bomb Here. Chances are that, you,
like me, have spent the better part of your sentient
life assuming that maggots are gross and a lot of
the mare due to their intolerable habit of eating rotting
flesh and feces. But have you considered that maggots might

(00:23):
be what saves you all of us in the end.
Not all maggots are created equal, of course. The one
that's going to save you is not the flesh eating
screw worm maggot of the Florida Keys, nor the larva
that invests Sardinia's infamous and illegal delicacy Kasu marzou, or
maggot cheese. There's only one maggot currently known to science

(00:43):
that could possibly save humanity, and that's the larva of
the black soldier fly. And they're still kind of gross.
Thousands of them will feast on a single food source
at once, creating a writhing, living fountain of maggots. But
sometimes you just have to set aside disgust in the
interest of survival. It's a writhing, living fountain of beneficent earth.
Saving Maggots common in much of the Western Hemisphere and Australia.

(01:09):
You may not have remembered noticing a black soldier fly before.
The adults are about one inch long around two and
a half centimeters and can be mistaken for wasps only.
They're extremely slow and lack a stinger. They often assue
flight and spend their fourteen days or so of adulthood
mosying around on the ground. But what black soldier flies
look like as adults hardly matters, as they spend very

(01:31):
little time in their grown up bodies. In fact, the
adults have no mouthparts or digestive organs because once they
become flies, it's sort of a hidden quiddit situation. They
can mate within a couple of days of hatching, and
they don't live more than a week or two after that.
So it's the larva that have sustainability researchers salivating. Literally,

(01:51):
if their plans come to fruition, we will all be
eating black soldier fly larva, which are referred to as
BSFL in the BIZ. This is because as BSFL contain
about fort protein in addition to some calcium and amino acids,
which is astronomical compared to every other plant and animal
based food on the planet, and they taste like peanuts

(02:12):
or fritos, depending on who you ask. According to a
United Nations report, insects already make up parts of the
diets of around two billion people worldwide, and as Earth's
human population grows, meat like beef and chicken will be
a protein option for fewer and fewer people. It only
takes one acre of BSFL to grow the same amount

(02:33):
of protein as three thousand acres of cattle or a
hundred and thirty acres of soybeans. The larva themselves can
be dried and turned into flour, pressed for their oils,
or roasted and sprinkled over a salad for a little
extra crunch. The sky's the limit with these little buddies.
Not only that bsf l make great trash processors, they're

(02:53):
capable of eating a wide variety of organic waste, nearly
anything you can throw at them, from food scraps and
rotting carcasses to poop and toxic algae, although they reportedly
have a difficult time managing hair bones and pineapple rindes,
so farming with them would leave us with a smaller
carbon footprint and a whole lot of compost a group
of researchers at Texas A and M has even figured

(03:14):
out how to put BSFL to sleep for long periods
of time and then wake them up when it's time
to put them to work eating waste. A few different
companies are currently trying to make this BSFL thing happen,
But can we get over a revulsion in the interest
of survival Keep your ear to the ground of the
next few decades we're about to find out. Today's episode

(03:40):
was written by Jescelin Shields and produced by Tyler Clang.
Brain Stuff this production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works.
For more on this and lots of other futuristically gross topics,
visit our home planet how stuff Works dot com and more. Podcasts.
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