By 2050 there will be an estimated 10 billion humans living on this planet. Beyond that being a lot of mouths to feed, those folks will be, on average, wealthier than today's population, with a taste for the foods found in regions like the US and Western Europe. But we simply don't have the capability, the land or the production resources to ensure that many people can eat a cheeseburger whenever the mood strikes. Luckily, researchers from around the globe are working on alternative-protein sources to supplement our existing beef, pork and chicken.

Of course, there's tofu, which has been used as a meat replacement for thousands of years. But today's consumers expect their protein substitutes to closely resemble the meats they're replacing, which is why Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat have arrived to such public fanfare. These plant-based burger alternatives offer the same bloody sizzle that beef does. In Impossible's case, that comes from heme derived from soy roots that have been fermented in genetically engineered yeast. Beyond Meat, on the other hoof, relies on a processing method that "aligns plant-proteins in the same fibrous structures you'd find in animal proteins." But as much as they look, smell and taste like a real beef patty, these products are still extruded plant matter -- and highly processed products at that.

Julie Lesnik, a biological anthropologist at Wayne State University, advocates that we look to get our meat from smaller, more-resource-efficient animals than cattle -- specifically, crickets. She points out that per kilogram, crickets offer roughly the same amount of protein as beef as well as significantly more micronutrients, since you're consuming the exoskeleton as well.

View photos Horse cricket fried with sliced lemon grass More

She also notes that given their diminutive stature and affinity for cramped, dark places, crickets require far less arable land than cattle do, citing a 2013 report by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Whereas it takes around 200 square meters of space to grow one kilogram of beef, the same amount of cricket needs only about 15 square meters. They can even be vertically farmed. Their water requirements are equally reduced compared to the 22,000 liters required to produce that kilo of beef.

Crickets for the same yield of protein "use less than one liter of water... based on the fact that crickets get all their water needs from their food," Lesnick said during a recent SciLine webcast. "You still use water to clean your facilities and all the different processing, so one liter is an incredibly idealistic number. So I generally present this more like 100 liters just to be less sensational."

Switching our diets from cow to cricket could help slow climate change as well. The FAO estimates that grazing animals are responsible for as much as 40 percent of the methane released into the atmosphere every year. Crickets, however, don't generally eat grasses and hay and therefore produce a fraction of the greenhouse gasses. (Meanwhile, thanks to their fiber-based diet, termites are a significant source of methane. So we won't likely be raising them as a food source in the foreseeable future.) According to a 2019 white paper by the World Economic Forum, replacing beef with alternative proteins could reduce methane emissions anywhere from seven to 26 percent, depending on the region.

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