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While the future of food may seem elusive, clues can be found in the culinary traditions of Mexico. Trek south of the U.S. border and you stand a good chance of coming across a chapulines or jumiles vendor. Chapulines add a nice kick to any tortilla or spicy food dish. They鈥檙e high in protein, low in fat, and the grasshoppers鈥� crispiness complements the softer texture of the tomatillo and avocado components. Jumiles, meanwhile, bring a cinnamon or minty taste to recipes and add to salsa. These little stink bugs are also renowned for their .

Think of these delicacies as a kind of shrimp that live on land, if you need perspective. But the fact of the matter is that including insects in our diets is good for us and good for the planet. Of all the nutrients humans cultivate, protein has the on the environment due to the vast quantities of water, land, and resources needed to grow the grass and corn that sustain our dairy, beef, and poultry industries.

Our agriculture industry, and the land clearing that it requires, produced of greenhouse gas emissions between 2007 and 2016. The fish-farming industry takes a because farms use chemicals, create waste, cultivate dangerous parasitic lice, and can spread disease to wild fish populations. The modern Western diet with its resource-heavy demands is quickly handing us an ecological catastrophe, according to published in 2018 in Nature.

Add to that the fact that human population is on track to by the year 2100, and we鈥檙e going to need enough protein to feed an extra . This calls for an all-hands-on-deck approach for individuals as well as production systems, opting for protein sources further down the food chain and capitalizing on innovations that allow us to produce meat without animals. Getting there will involve embracing protein that can be sourced from plants, grown in vivo, or fed with waste.

Planet-Friendly Protein

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations is pushing hard for cheaper, healthier, and less resource-heavy alternatives to mammal and bird protein. This includes a practice that鈥檚 in 130 countries: entomophagy鈥攅ating insects. Indigenous cultures worldwide have enjoyed these sustainable protein sources for millennia. While Western cultures may cringe at the idea of arthropods as food (save for crustaceans, of course), more than 2 billion people include insects in their diets today, like the chapulines and jumiles in Mexico.

People around the world eat an impressively diverse array of some 2,000 different species of insects, most of them harvested in the wild. The most common are beetles, accounting for about a third of total global consumption. Caterpillars enjoy their greatest popularity in sub-Saharan Africa, whereas bees, wasps, and ants are favorites in Latin America.

What鈥檚 more, research shows that humans appear to be genetically predisposed to love the crunchy awesomeness of bugs even more than silky anteaters do. Despite arboreal ants comprising almost the entirety of the silky anteater鈥檚 diet, the animal鈥檚 excrement contains huge amounts of insect exoskeletons because they . But thanks to a common ancestor who crunched into bugs like a bag of Doritos every chance they got, primates, including people, are thought to have inherited a gene that produces a chitin-digesting enzyme. As a result, when it comes to eating ants, humans could have a digestive advantage over animals called 鈥渁nteaters.鈥�

In recent years, the U.S. has slowly started to get on the bug bandwagon. Kevin Bachhuber was eager to embrace humanity鈥檚 when he founded the first U.S. farm to receive FDA approval for food-grade insects in 2014.

If you’ve ever eaten sushi or drunk a smoothie with a bright green tint, you’ve already come across algae in your food.

鈥淲e use Acheta domesticus, the common house cricket,鈥� Bachhuber says. 鈥淏ut the ones found in your home are black field crickets鈥攖hat鈥檚 an entirely different kind of cricket.鈥�

Bachhuber confirmed that the bugs are cheap to raise, with a feed-to-meat ratio around 2:1. That means it takes about twice a cricket鈥檚 weight in food to produce one edible cricket. That鈥檚 about the same as growing a chicken to a harvestable size, according to , but it鈥檚 nothing compared to the required to produce a pound of beef. Plus, Bachhuber claims a cricket鈥檚 waste pales next to the dangerous of hog lagoon runoff or the eau de parfum of a industrial-grade chicken shed.

Soldiering On

An even more efficient creature conjures protein from waste: the larvae of the black soldier fly, Hermetia illucens. Unlike cows and chickens, these grubs don鈥檛 compete with humans for wheat and cornmeal. Instead, potato peelings, bread remains, sugar beet pulp, seaweed, and animal and human manure. They can even handle the ethanol-saturated leftovers from a whiskey distillery.

Why would anybody eat such a voracious little savage? 鈥淭hey have a popcorn flavor to them鈥攁 little nutty,鈥� says Jeff Tomberlin, at Texas A&M University. Tomberlin Evo Conversion Systems LLC, to research black soldier fly larvae for animal feed. He鈥檚 also incorporating them into a kind of bug-based waste disposal system since a black soldier fly larva鈥檚 gut can apparently turn anything into protein, aside from bones, hair, and pineapple rinds. That includes dangerous pharmaceuticals and pesticides, Tomberline says. Trimethoprim, for example, is a caustic antibiotic that can linger in the environment for 25 days, but the of black soldier fly larvae neutralize it in only , according to one study, and without any of it in the bug.

Tomberlin wants to drop the middle-pig, so to speak, and put the bug directly on American tables. He is a proponent of processing insects into ingredients for use in other foods; cricket flour, for example, is already available in stores and .

A Greener Source

The further one moves down the food chain, the fewer resources are required to produce the protein. That鈥檚 why Texas-based nutrition company iWi (pronounced 鈥渆e-we鈥�) cultivates Nannochloropsis algae in more than 100 picturesque saltwater pools dotting the deserts of New Mexico and Texas.

Using a minimum of nutrients, along with plenty of carbon dioxide and sunshine, the algae quickly proliferates in the pools and is filtered and processed into an omega-3 oil. The company is also completing regulatory work on an algae powder high in protein and carbohydrates.

If you鈥檝e ever eaten sushi or drunk a smoothie with a bright green tint, then you鈥檝e already come across algae in your food, says Rebecca White, the company鈥檚 vice president of operations. She says it鈥檚 a ubiquitous, low-resource, and sustainable protein enrichment.

White points to several milk brands that already use algae-derived omega-3s to fortify their products, including Horizon and Fairlife. Algae Oil recently received a qualified health claim from the Food and Drug Administration. Odwalla, too, is incorporating algae into products such as smoothies, juices, and snack bars.

鈥淚t鈥檚 cool that people are experimenting,鈥� says Frannie Maas, a vegan who lives in Washington, D.C. She points out that eating a sustainable, animal-free diet isn鈥檛 always easy or affordable. 鈥淚t鈥檚 important to know, as a vegan, that many people aren鈥檛 in a financial position to buy meat (or) dairy alternatives. Or they don鈥檛 live in an area where they can easily get those,鈥� Maas says. But she predicts that emerging possibilities will soon put smart, legitimate selections on everybody鈥檚 table.

A Fish Out of Water

Those unprepared to embrace entomophagy or accept plant-based alternatives need not bemoan a future without protein, however. Real meat also appears to be moving into a new, more sustainable age.

Wild Type is a San Francisco company that鈥檚 managed to grow genuine salmon meat from salmon cells. The process involves multiplying individual fish cells in baths of a nutrient- and oxygen-rich solution until they become muscle fibers and connective tissue. Though reminiscent of an Asimov novel, the process is far enough along now to produce the kind of tissue that flakes naturally after cooking. Arye Elfenbein, the company鈥檚 co-founder and chief scientist, says it tastes great smoked and is visually appealing enough to be a component of sushi.

鈥淲e wanted a cleaner food source to avoid the mercury, antibiotics, or pesticides you get in wild or farmed fish, but we also wanted to give people an opportunity to live a little lighter on the planet,鈥� says Ben Friedman, Wild Type鈥檚 head of product.

Wild Type co-founder and CEO Justin Kolbeck says the company is already working with partners in the food industry to coax the meat into an ideal shape, and he predicts Wild Type salmon will be a menu option at chain restaurants within five to 10 years.

鈥淚t [was] almost unthinkable that there would be a plant-based burger at Burger King and White Castle, yet today it鈥檚 practically ubiquitous,鈥� Kolbeck says. 鈥淚 think the same goes for seafood alternatives.鈥�