The United Nations might run into a little opposition with its latest idea:  Encouraging more people to eat insects to fight obesity and world hunger. 

As for the former, I’m probably going to stick with the Subway diet for a while.

But for fighting world hunger, the UN report points out that 2 billion people already supplement their diets with insect meat.  There are almost 2,000 edible insect species on the planet, and 40 tons of them for every human.

“Insects are everywhere, they reproduce quickly, and they have high growth and feed conversion rates, and a low environmental footprint,” according to the report.  Insects are also “extremely efficient” in converting feed into edible meat.

Crickets, for example, need 12 times less feed than cattle to produce the same amount of protein.

The authors admit that “consumer disgust” remains a large barrier in many Western countries.