虫子把啤酒肥料变成牛肉
文摘
科技
2023-05-23 12:12
美国
英国《经济学人》网站于2023年5月17日发表题为《虫子把啤酒肥料变成牛肉》的文章。以下观点不代表任何译者立场，本文附有音频，在第一段下面，现将全文翻译如下：Science & technology | Bug-fed steakInsects could help turn beer waste into beefPeople do not like eating insects. Livestock are less picky![]()
Eating insects is one of those ideas that never quite seems to catch on. The United Nations endorsed the idea a decade ago, but, in the West at least, bugs remain mostly absent from supermarket shelves. Faced with an indifferent—or disgusted—public, scientists have been exploring other options. One is to feed the insects instead to livestock, which are not so picky.吃虫子一直难以流行开来。十年前联合国就支持吃虫，但至少在西方，虫子仍然很少出现在超市货架上。面对或无感或厌恶的公众，科学家一直在探索其他方案，其中之一就是把虫子喂给牲畜，毕竟动物不会那么挑剔。
Of course, the insects need to eat, too. To date, they have mostly been reared on leftover chicken feed. But the supply of that is limited, and if insect-reared meat is to take off, new sources will be needed. In a paper in Applied Entomology, Niels Eriksen, a biochemist at Aalborg University, suggests feeding them on the waste products of the beer industry.当然，昆虫自己也需要吃东西。一直以来，昆虫主要靠剩下的鸡饲料养活，但供应有限，如果想让昆虫喂出来的肉类风行，就需要寻找新的饲料来源。奥尔堡大学的生物化学家尼尔斯·埃里克森在《应用昆虫学》期刊上发表的论文中建议用啤酒废料喂养昆虫。The world knocks back around 185bn litres of beer every year. Each litre produces between three and ten litres of wastewater full of discarded barley and yeast . The mix is rich in protein but deficient in carbohydrates, especially compared with chicken feed. Most insects grown for feed depend, in the wild, on the carbohydrates found in rotting fruit. Whether insects would actually consider brewery waste a square meal was, therefore, unclear.全球每年消费约1850亿升啤酒，每升啤酒会产生3至10升富含大麦残渣和酵母的废水。和鸡饲料相比，蛋白质含量更高，但碳水化合物含量较低。大多数饲料用的虫子在野外环境下的碳水化合物来源是腐烂水果，所以我们还不清楚虫子面对啤酒废料时是否会大快朵颐。The researchers used the larvae of the black soldier fly, a workhorse of the “entomoremediation” world. The juvenile insects were divided into three groups, which were offered beer waste, chicken feed or a mixture of both. The researchers monitored both their weight gain and the amount of carbon dioxide they exhaled, which helped assess the insects’ metabolic performance.研究人员使用了黑色军蝇的幼虫，这是“昆虫修复”领域的主力军。幼虫被分成三组，分别提供啤酒废料、鸡饲料或两者的混合物。研究人员监测了它们的体重增长情况和呼出的二氧化碳量，评估昆虫的代谢表现。The larvae happily consumed both brewery waste and chicken feed, and grew equally well on either food source. When Dr Eriksen ground some up and chemically analysed the resulting paste, he found few differences in how nutritious the insects would be to farm animals. The results confirmed one of Dr Eriksen’s hunches. Although black soldier fly larvae favour rotting fruit in the wild, they are capable of eating carrion too. Like beer waste, it too is rich in protein and low in carbohydrates.幼虫吃啤酒废料和鸡饲料都吃得很高兴，并且吃哪个都长得一样好。埃里克森博士将一些幼虫研磨成糊状物并分析了其中的化学成分，发现虫子对农场动物的营养价值几乎与饲料没有差异，结果证实了埃里克森博士的直觉。尽管黑色军蝇幼虫在野外喜欢腐烂的水果，但它们也能吃腐肉。与啤酒废料一样，野外的食物也是更富含蛋白质，而碳水化合物含量更低。The experiment may have implications beyond the brewing business, too. Bone meal from slaughterhouses, sugar-beet waste and waste from other fermentation industries (such as those that produce bioethanol) are all likewise plentiful and protein-rich. All now look to be reasonable targets for nutrient recycling by insects. Whether consumers will be willing to eat insect-reared beef, though, remains to be seen.这个实验也可能对啤酒业之外的领域有影响。屠宰场的骨粉、甜菜渣和其他发酵行业（如生物乙醇）产生的废料都同样供应丰富而富含蛋白质。现在看来，所有这些都是昆虫实现营养循环的合理目标饲料，但消费者是否愿意吃用虫子喂养的牛肉，还有待观察。■This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline "Bug-fed steak”本文刊印于纸质版杂志科学和技术版块，标题为“虫饲牛排”
