Move Over, Canola: Your Next Recipe Might Call For Insect Oil
Science Photo Library/Getty Images Crunchy and delicious. The quest for alternative cooking oils has found an unlikely source: insects. You might have already heard that insects are gradually making their way into our diets. Foodies and agricultural associations alike are turning to insects as a source of protein instead of resource-intensive livestock like cows and pigs. But they could be a source of oil for cooking as well, as a replacement for animal fat or oils derived from plants like palm or olives, which are environmentally destructive or are less available due to blight. That’s because insects are relatively fatty. Researchers in the Netherlands have been investigating which types of insects would be the most suitable for cooking oils. They evaluated the oils derived from four different insects—the yellow mealworm, the lesser mealworm, the cricket,...