Production of micronutrient enriched algae, microorganisms and insects for food and feed: Perspectives and updates

The high demand of proteins has led to an excessive production of meat, causing many problems such as greenhouse gas emissions and an insufficient supply for the actual protein demand. Although, numerous new sources of proteins have been introduced in the market recently, this has only contributed to the hike in prices of basic food supplies. Thus, researchers and traditional dietricians have found several alternative solutions for meeting the protein requirements, including algae, microorganisms and insects. But there are some issues that need to be overcome before these resources can be completely implemented in the large scale food industry, e.g. health effects, approval from country wise food and agricultural agencies, economical profitability, large scale production and optimization of water requirements, harvesting and downstream processing. This mini-review highlights the perspectives of using algae, microorganisms, enzymes, easily available worms and insects as sources of proteins and ascertains its protein efficiency ratio (PER).