Eat 2 to 3 servings (about 4 to 6 ounces) of heart-healthy protein every day -- from a variety of sources.
Sample servings (portions) include:
There are reasons to consider eating bugs as a source of protein. Swansea University in the UK, is the host to this year’s Royal Entomology Society conference, and one of the speakers at this year’s conference will be talking about insect protein being a solution to famine.
On the one hand, you might say, “Ew.” On the other, why not? Remember a young Christian Bale in the film “Empire of the Sun”? His character is in an internment camp, and he's told that if he wants to make it through and keep up his strength, he shouldn’t pick the bugs out of his food; he should eat them for the protein. It was disturbing, but it made sense under the circumstances.
According to BBC News, 80 percent of the world’s population eats some sort of insect as part of their diet. You may not be in that 80 percent, and you may be a long way off from being convinced to join them, but the facts are interesting.
Professor Arnold van Huis from Wageningen University in Belgium will be presenting the case for eating insects at the conference. He says that producing one kilogram (about 2.2 pounds) of meat from a cow requires 13 kg (about 28 ½ pounds) of vegetable matter as feed.
However, 1 kg (about 2.2 pounds) of meat from a cricket, locust or beetle needs just 1.5 to 2 kg (3.3 to 4.4 pounds) of vegetable matter as feed for the bugs. The environmental impact of raising bugs for meat protein is much less than raising cows for meat protein.
Those numbers are impressive, but you still may not want to put a cricket in your mouth. Despite the fact that there is no “credible reason against eating them, taste-wise and nutritionally, and there’s not a difference between insect meat and that from birds, fish or mammals,” we just can’t get past the fact that in our minds, insects are not food.
So grinding insect meat into patties is one option being considered to make insects more palatable to those of us with objections to seeing whole insects on our plates. Van Huis may have gotten the idea from “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution,” when Oliver showed children exactly what gets ground up and put into chicken nuggets. The children were grossed out when they saw the process, but once they saw the finished product, they wanted to eat it because it was something they were accustomed to. Could it be the same with bug burgers?
Here are a couple of tips on how you boost your protein intake besides eating a larger piece of meat!
Eating a breakfast that is beefed up with protein may be optimal for appetite control. Eating breakfast, compared to skipping breakfast, is known to reduce hunger, increase satiety, as well as reduce activity in the regions of the brain that control food motivation and cravings. By adding an increased percentage of protein in your breakfast, there may be a greater reduction in hunger. A hard cooked egg, a serving of nuts, a cup of yogurt or some reduced fat cheese are just a few of the ways that you can healthfully add protein to your breakfast and potentially experience less hunger throughout the morning.
Gluten is a composite protein, made up of the smaller protein molecules gliadin and glutelin, and it’s found in many grains, including wheat, barley, rye, oats, spelt and kamut. These gluten proteins constitute as much as 80 percent of the protein in wheat. Non-grass grains such as corn and rice do not contain these proteins and are not gluten-based foods, despite the fact that they are often categorized this way. So, those who are trying to eliminate gluten are still able to consume rice and corn. Gluten intolerance is caused by incomplete digestion of gliadin proteins.
There is no test to diagnose gluten sensitivity. Gluten sensitivity is a diagnosis of exclusion, which means that doctors rule out celiac disease and wheat allergy first. They will then put you on a gluten-free diet. If you get better, they will put gluten back in your diet, and if you get worse again, you will be diagnosed with gluten sensitivity.
Gluten sensitivity is a food intolerance. An intolerance means that the symptoms that occur do not involve an immune response in the body. Doctors don't really understand why someone might have a reaction to a food. The mechanism is not understood at this point in time, unfortunately.
