UN agency pushes for more insects on the menu

A United Nations food agency is pushing a new kind of diet high in nutritional value and good for the environment - edible insects.

The Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) hailed the likes of grasshoppers, ants and other members of the insect world as an underutilised food for people, livestock and pets.

A new report says two billion people worldwide already supplement their diets with insects.

Eva Ursula Muller, Director of Forestry Economics Policy and Product Division at FAO, "While most edible insects are gathered in forests, the UN says mechanisation can ratchet up insect-farming production".

"In the West people don't eat insects yet, even though in some restaurants we can already see them. But once we have developed better technologies for farming insects, they have really a large potential for becoming a major food source," she added.