Global status of insects as food and feed source: A review

Background: Entomophagy (eating insects) has a long history. Currently, 2 billion people in 113 countries consume insects (Tao, Li 2018). However, in many states (mainly Western) attitude towards it is ambiguous. Majority of people there reject insects as food because they consider eating insects as nasty. However, this attitude is no more than a preconception because, over the years, many formerly unusual foodstuffs (for example, eating frogs) became traditional. Scope and approach: This review's purpose is to give comprehensive positive and negative analysis aspects of the use of insects as a food source for humans and animal feed. This study focuses on such positive reasons for using insects as a food source for human health, environmental factors, and socioeconomic benefit, the high efficiency of the use of forages for insects cultivation, there are considerable nutritional value of different insect species comparing to chicken, pork and beef. Challenges of using insects as food related to microbial, chemical, physical, allergic, parasitical and toxicological risks. Key Findings and Conclusions: In the context of the world food resources reduction, insects food use is a promising direction. The main tasks are the knowledge dissemination, change of the ratio in getting edible insects (the share increase of semi-domestication and farming comparing to wild harvesting), edible insect food industry development, species composition expansion of used insects, conducting research on risks to human health. The review argues that insects have the potential to serve as food and feed source globally with a lower negative impact on the environment.