Beijing (Reuter, 1/26) - China's official Xinhua news agency, which announced this week that maggot extract is a good source of nutrition, urged people Thursday to add ants to their diet with a set of recipes cooked up by a professor.

Wu Zhicheng, "an expert on ant diet" based in the central city of Nanjing, has worked out dozens of recipes for ant-based cakes, teas and wines in an effort to promote ant eating, it said. "Ants are a miniature nutritious treasury," Xinhua quoted Wu as saying, adding that ants contained more zinc than either soybeans or pig liver.

Xinhua said Chinese have been eating ants for more than 3,000 years and "the longevity of many old people who are now over 100 years old has been found to be connected with an ant diet."

The edible ant suggestion follows Xinhua's report Saturday that announced a scientific team had worked out a way to develop maggots as a "huge new source of nourishment for the 1990s."

"Maggot products are surprisingly appealing," Xinhua said.

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