Thursday 22 May 2014

Could worms be astronauts' new diet? - Delhi Daily News

Debarjun Saha | 17:27 |

Could worms be astronauts' new diet?

Studies claimed that insects can add low fat protein to a person?s diet and can work as an environment-friendly alternative to meat.

In a recent Chinese Space Programme experiment, three volunteers managed to survive by eating worm diet for more than three months. The people associated with this experiment claimed that humans are capable of enduring long space journeys with a diet that includes insects.

Some Chinese scientists had first proposed the idea of a worm diet in 2009, saying that it could help the astronauts not face food woes on longer space journeys.

During the study, the volunteers were enclosed in the Moon Palace One, a man-made biosphere at the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, which is the largest facility in China. This facility also develops self-sustaining life support systems in space.

The volunteers were fed a diet which included the larvae of a beetle called Tenebrio and they survived for 1 05 days. It is to be noted that none of the volunteers had eaten worms before. The scientists said that diet did not contain only insects, 45 percent of the meal was supplemented with vegetables which were grown in the same controlled atmosphere. The scientists said that they would soon conduct another experiment based on a 100 percent larvae diet.



via Science - Google News http://ift.tt/1t0kswv

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