The change aligns with the WEF’s plan to combat “climate change.”
QUICK FACTS:
- Schools across the Netherlands have begun introducing mealworms and insects into the diets of 10-12-year-olds.
- The swap is part of a push for a “sustainable” meat substitute that schools hope will bring about “behavioral changes through unprejudiced children.”
- This program is said to be part of the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) plan to convert the European Union to more climate-friendly behavior, including the encouragement from earlier this year to eat “tasty” insects and bugs.
- The WEF claims that markets will soon carry “novel food,” such as the Tenebrio Molitor beetle, a mealworm, which has been ruled as safe for people to eat.
FROM LOCAL MEDIA:
- Local media reported the implementation of worms and insections into the school’s offerings saying, “After a first hesitation, the students of the Octopus primary school in Zwolle carefully put them in their mouths: mealworms. And as the taste buds get to work on the unfamiliar food, some faces brighten: ‘it tastes like nuts,’ they say. The school children are today exposed to a new eating experience. Part of a teaching package about healthy and sustainable food. It is a tried and tested means: behavioral changes via the (as yet) uninhibited children. Because, if they appreciate it, then it has a future.”
- The reporters put a positive spin on the drastic change, saying, “There were not only mealworms on the menu at De Octopus today. The 7th-grade students were also able to sample dishes made with lupine beans and other insects. It was all about the ‘Taste Mission Adventurous Proteins’, part of the Dutch Food Week campaign by farmers and horticulturists. The teaching package has been developed with the cooperation of Wageningen University & Research (WUR).”
BACKGROUND:
- In July of last year, NBC Los Angeles reported that startups in some parts of the world are looking to “make bugs tasty.”
- The publication reported that the “edible insect scene features items like cricket chips in the Czech Republic, bug burgers in Germany and Belgian beetle beer.”
- The piece centered around Tiziana Di Costanzo, who is “an edible insect entrepreneur who holds cricket and mealworm cooking classes at her West London home, where she also raises the critters in a backyard shed with her husband, Tom Mohan.”
