The food that can feed, and maybe save, the planet: Bugs

Article Updated 1:33 PM ET, Fri October 25, 2019

(CNN) - On a morning in the not-too-distant future, you might toast bread made with cricket flour, drink a protein smoothie made from locust powder, and eat scrambled eggs (made extra-creamy with the fat from mopane caterpillars) with a side of mealworm bacon.

That meal will give you four times the iron, more than three times the protein and more key vitamins and minerals than the bread, smoothie, eggs and bacon you eat today -- all while saving the planet.

No way you'll eat bugs, you say?

Well, sorry to break this to you, but if you eat chocolate, pizza and spaghetti, you are already eating insects -- and worse.

The US Food and Drug Administration allows 30 or more insect parts and some rodent hair in every bar of chocolate; nearly two maggots in a 16 ounce can of tomatoes or pizza sauce; and up to 450 insect parts and nine rodent hairs in every 16 ounce box of spaghetti.

There's just no way to get rid of all the creatures that might hitch a ride along the food processing chain, so the FDA has to allow what they call "food defects," which you eat without knowing. They are in many of our foods -- even peanut butter and jelly.