Black soldier fly: a new perspective as a functional and sustainable ingredient

The world population has been expected by the Food and Agriculture Organization ( of the United Nations to rise to over 9 billion by 2050 requiring an intensification in food production While the increase in human population efforts the demand for food, there is a concomitant decrease in accessible land resources needed to produce this food, which is likely to be exacerbated by global warming (Lange and Nakamura, 2021 The production and use of edible insects has arisen as one of the most fascinating alternative sources of proteins Insect rearing has several advantages related to environmental sustainability comparing to cattle raising, namely insects emit less greenhouse gases, require less land and water and present high feed conversion efficiency Insects are a highly nutritious source of food, with high protein, fat, vitamin, mineral and fiber content The nutritional profile of edible insects depends on the species and can be highly variable (Borges et al 2023 Lange and Nakamura, 2021 Hermetia illucens designated as black soldier fly ( is attractive as a food/feed because is a non infesting species contrary to Musca domestica (i e common fly) BSF larvae ( are avid consumers of decomposing organic matter and able to convert efficiently huge amounts of waste or spoiled food into biomass As for its chemical components, BSF prepupa is composed to 37 g/ 100 g lipids, 32 g/ 100 g proteins, 19 g/ 100 g mineral salts (including micronutrients, such as iron and zinc), and 9 g/ 100 g chitin (Montevecchi et al 2021 BSFL are a well recognized nutritious source with a high protein content In this context, enzymatic hydrolysis can be a promising process for the development of new insect based ingredients with improved bioactive properties This approach is widely used as a way to obtain bioactive peptides from various food matrices such soy protein milk protein, fish protein, egg white protein, among others Therefore, this work aimed to evaluate the potential of BSFL to generate bioactive peptides via enzymatic hydrolysis, with antioxidant and anti hypertensive potential