Insect Diets ― Science and Technology

Dr. Allen Carson Cohen’s new edition of Insect Diets: Science and Technology continues to provide a current, integrated review of the field of insect diets. It reaffirms and expands upon the belief that the science of diet development and the technology of diet application in rearing programs require formal foundations and guidelines. Cohen argues for a data-driven approach as well as a focus on humane treatment in insect rearing programs. He also calls for academics and industries to make a new push toward statistical process control (SPC) in their approaches to rearing in general, using his own work with insects as a paradigm. This approach yields the benefits of careful scientific analysis by addressing issues of quality and efficiency in academic research and industrial practices and applications.

This edition expands upon the role of food science in the use of artificial diets in rearing programs, especially texture analysis with rheological techniques. It includes an entirely new chapter focused solely on the subject of food quality in insect diets. The book also revisits microbial relationships to insect diets as a powerful influence on their feeding processes and emphasizes a new, better understanding and utilization of the relationship between insects and microbes in artificial diets.

Cohen also expands his vision of the future of insect rearing, including the use of insects themselves as a potential food source for a rapidly expanding global human population. To that end, this book gives you guidelines to develop, use, and evaluate artificial diets in order to improve their cost and scientific efficiency in the rearing of insects, because as the author urges, it is important to "know your insect." This understanding will serve the multifaceted goals of using insect rearing for research and teaching, pest management strategies and biocontrol agents, as food for other organisms, and for many other purposes.

Allen Carson Cohen completed his high school education in Chicago, Illinois and went to university in California for a BA and MA in English and a teaching credential. He later returned to college for an MA in biology, specializing in the physiological ecology of rattlesnakes. He completed his PhD in entomology at the University of California, Riverside (1978). He has served for seven years as editor for insect diets, insect rearing, and insect feeding biology for theJournal of Insect Science and serves as a mentor for students, researchers, and professionals in diet and rearing science and technology. He holds six U.S. patents, has published more than 125 refereed papers, and has received several technology transfer awards for his work on insect diets. He is currently research professor and coordinator of the Insect Rearing Education and Research Program at North Carolina State University, where he teaches online and in-person courses on insect rearing and conducts research on developing and improving insect rearing systems.