“It tastes like falafel,” says |30-year-old entrepreneur Max Kraemer.

But this patty isn’t made from ground beef – it’s made from buffalo worms and vegetable produce.

Kraemer and his 28-year-old partner Baris Ozel, founders of the German company Bugfoundation, want to launch their insect-based “Bux Burger” in a continent – Europe – that is famously pernickety about sources of protein.

Kraemer first tried eating insects on a trip to Thailand several years ago as a student.

“I wrote about it in my thesis and came across a lot of prejudices against insects as a source of food,” he says

On the continents of Africa, Asia and Australia, insects already belong to the everyday diets of 2 billion people, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

But in the West, grilled, deep-fried or stewed maggots, worms and ants are more of a novelty item on menus.

But why shouldn’t insects play a greater role in feeding Europeans?

“The most important advantage is that insects taste good,” says Kraemer.

There are around 2,000 edible and tasty varieties, he says. “That’s already one basic requirement needed to make a business out of them.” Putting patties between two buns is one of the most popular ways in Europe of serving food quickly and conveniently.

Experts say there are many advantages to eating insects.

“Insects are very sustainable,” says Sergiy Smetana, who is studying for a doctorate at the German Institute of Food Technologies (DIL).

According to the FAO, insects are healthy and nutritious, and rich in protein and healthy fats, as well as calcium, iron and zinc.

Farming them is significantly less damaging to the environment than raising most other kinds of animals. That’s partly because they require less water and also because they need less food; to produce the same amount of protein, grasshoppers require a twelfth of the amount of food needed by cattle and half as much as pigs or chickens.

They also need less land.

“Farming insects is therefore particularly suitable for urban areas,” says Smetana. That’s an important argument in an increasingly urbanized world.

Apart from being more environmentally friendly, insects are healthier than other types of meat, according to Kraemer.

“The proteins are digested very easily by the body,” he says.

Unlike beef and pork, they hardly contain any saturated fats, responsible for many first-world illnesses, and are rich in vitamin B12, he adds.

Nevertheless, Kraemer’s business idea has one key obstacle to overcome, in Europe at least.

It’s not forbidden to eat whole insects in the European Union, but processed insect products, including ground insects and insect burgers, are banned.

“It’s a new food, and that first needs to be tested for its compatibility [with EU food regulations],” says Smetana.

Lots more research is needed, he adds, because not all insects are suited for human consumption.

As a consequence, the Bux Burgers are still illegal in Europe. However the EU legislation regulating “novel foods”, which include insects, was recently updated, though it doesn’t |come into effect until January 2018.

“We now have to put in some intensive research and prove that our burgers aren’t dangerous,” says Ozel.

They’re collaborating with research partners in Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany over the next two years.

There are in fact two restaurants in Belgium which already offer the burger -apparently the food authorities there are not as strict as elsewhere in Europe.

Demand isn’t great, but those who have tried the burgers gave good feedback, says Ozel.

“The burger is sold at least twice a day and it gets eaten,” he says.

The next goal for the company, based in Osnabrueck, northwest Germany, is to supply between 30 and 40 restaurants in Belgium.

They’re also keen to emphasise one thing: they’re not out to replace meat.

“Our goal is to create a new category alongside meat, fish and vegetarian foods,” says Kraemer.

Smetana agrees. Projects like this aren’t about forcing people to start eating only insects and plants, he says. “We have to diversify our food.”

But unlike most transgender people in Asia, who are left to self-administer hormone supplements, Chalit is being helped by a pioneering clinic.

“I am in the hands of doctors,” said Chalit, who was born female, but identifies as a man.

“I’m not doing it by myself, so it isn’t dangerous,” the software company worker said.

Several days after receiving his first testosterone injection, Chalit returned to get a blood test at Tangerine, the new clinic inside a Red Cross centre in downtown Bangkok.

The centre is a pilot programme that organisers hope could be replicated across Asia.

Its location is no accident – Thailand has a large and visible transgender population and is one of the world’s top destinations for sex-reassignment surgery.

But just like elsewhere in Asia-Pacific, a region home to more than nine million transgender people according UN estimates, long-term care for patients is patchy at best.

The clinic is a rare place providing follow-up treatment, both physical and mental, for those who have undergone sex-reassignment surgeries, procedures where patients are often at risk of infection.

“Most of the centres where the surgery is performed only provide short-term post-surgical care,” explains Nittaya Phanuphak, the head doctor at Tangerine.

In Thailand, hormones are commonly purchased on the Internet or in local pharmacies, and administered on advice gleaned from friends or web forums.

Recent university graduate Benyapon Chimsud, who was born a man but identifies as female, has been taking hormones for two years.

“I have been taking hormones by myself for two years, I consult with my friends,” to determine the proper doses of contraceptive pills, she explains.

She also gets monthly black market oestrogen injections at a rudimentary neighbourhood clinic.

That leaves her cut off from regulated healthcare, prone to receiving inaccurate medical advice and at risk of over-consuming hormones in a rush to see rapid results.

Chalit, on the other hand, met with a psychiatrist several times before receiving his first injection to prepare for the changes to his body.

“The psychiatrist asked me how long I’ve wanted to be a man, and whether my friends and other people around me would accept it if I changed,” Chalit says.

Now he is getting hormone injections every two weeks.

“The hormones will stop my periods, change my voice, give me a beard and moustache, and develop my muscles,” he says. “All things that will help me no longer be a woman anymore.”

That should insulate him from the dangers of taking the wrong doses of hormones which experts say can lead to liver and cardiovascular problems. HIV is also always a risk if needles are shared.

Rights groups like the Asia-Pacific Transgender Network (APTN) say this public health issue is largely neglected by the mainstream medical community.

“There are no official guidelines on the administration and monitoring of hormones among trans people,” says Joe Wong of the Asia-Pacific Transgender Network (APTN).

Although Thailand can appear tolerant on transgender issues from the outside, many segments of society remain deeply conservative.

The kingdom’s transgenders, often men who become women and are known colloquially as “ladyboys”, are over-represented in the entertainment and sex industries.

Despite high levels of education, many struggle to secure full-time work or prominent positions in the workplace.

Same sex marriage is also still not legally recognised, and up until 2012, transgenders were considered mentally ill by the army.

Tangerine doctor Nittaya says discrimination remains widespread in medical centres, making access to proper healthcare a challenge for many transgenders.

But Chalit is one of a small number of people to have been made aware of the dangers and commitment that comes with long-term hormonal therapy.

Several days after starting his treatment, Chalit, who is considering an operation, got a tattoo of the testosterone molecule on his arm.

“I have to take hormones for the rest of my life,” he says. “This tattoo will also stay with me for the rest of my life.”

“We are facing a paradigm shift which will change the way we live and work. The pace of disruptive technological innovation has gone from linear to parabolic in recent years. Penetration of robots and artificial intelligence has hit every industry sector, and has become an integral part of our daily life.”

Brave words indeed but ones in which Thavida Maneewan, a lecturer at the King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi Institute of FIeld roBOtics (Fibo) firmly believes.

Thavida quoted this excerpt from an article published by Merrill Lynch, the wealth management division of Bank of America, to underscore her conviction that robots will soon play a major role in daily life as society responds to a greying population and growing urbanisation.

Such changes, she told a fascinated audience during a talk marking the institute’s 20th anniversary, will inevitably need to a demand for robots to facilitate our special needs, as artificial intelligence that works is much more effective than the human mind. Thailand, of course, is no exception.

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“Today robots are mainly used in the industrial sector for automobile assembly and the like but the technology is expanding and they will become an integral part of our daily lives,” she says.

While recognising the very human concern that entire careers will be replaced by AI and robots, Thavida is quick to stress that robots will replace humans in a few, mostly traditional areas, but on the positive side will create a new kind of workflow.

She is used to negative reactions having been mildly ridiculed by the press for her own invention, the “Climbing Coconut Tree Robot”, which has yet to appear in its final form. Reporters, she recalls, asked her whether she wanted to bring in a robot to compete with monkeys in climbing coconut trees.

But she is in fact answering a real need. Coconut-based enterprises, it seems, are facing real problems in getting the coconuts down from the trees due to a lack of skilled labourers and well-trained monkeys.

For his part, lecturer Prakarnkiat Youngkong is aiming to create the Thai massage robot. The idea popped into his mind when he discovered that if someone wanted a massage to ease painful muscles or tendons late at night, they were unlikely to find an available trained masseur.

“The massage robot will fill the gap and at the same time it doesn’t replace the human’s job,” says Prakarnkiat who specialises in tools and automation systems for the medical industry.

But while there might be a case for robot engineering creating jobs, most people regard the openings as small compared to other engineering careers. Part of the reason for this is that Thais tend to think of robots either as humanoid or animal-like toys. Robot engineering is actually far more complex, covering such automated systems as robotic arms for use in factories and diagnostic and therapeutic tools for the medical field.

House robots are also becoming more active – think of the vacuum robots that do such a good job in cleaning the house.

Fibo’s anniversary celebrations also included a showcase of the products the institute has come up with over the years, ranging from the industrial robotic arm to medical tools. The latter category includes the sensible tab, which helps stroke victims exercise their arm muscles while simultaneously collecting and evaluating data, the tailgate, a walking analysis for patients, and a dog wheelchair that help dogs to sit and stand.

Prakarnkiat says that robotic engineering can be applied to serve local needs and there is no need to become involved in such high-end machinery as the robotic surgical system Da Vinci.

“If a hospital requires such a high-end robot, then it’s better to import it, as the technology requires a very high investment in research and development. Besides our market is too small to make it profitable,” he says.

His latest product is a medication-dispensing machine for Chulalongkorn Hospital. Imported from Europe and the US, these automated dispensing machines are available in private hospitals here but they are not the answer for public hospitals and clinics.

“The imported machines are expensive and pharmacists need to adapt themselves to the system if it is going to work properly. Our machine is the opposite. Its work is based on what the pharmacists need,” he says.

“Saving time in public hospitals is one of the critical areas in which robotic technology can help. The dispensing machine allows the pharmacists to complete three prescriptions in one minute and that means patients don’t wait too long to receive their medication.”

The machine also solves the problem of drug loss within the system, sometimes through theft, other times through contamination, which is costing the Ministry of Public Health millions of baht every year. The dispenser allows the drugs to go directly to the pharmacists who will give it to patients.

Prakarnkiat is now working on adding more intelligence such as the ability to mix drugs within one prescription.

Thavida adds that there are four simple steps to creating a robot. “You start by making the robot of your dreams and then build a reliable platform to confirm that the robot can work precisely and repeatedly. You then improve the design through field testing and when you are satisfied, you unleash the robot into the real world,” she explains.

“And you should never give up trying despite complains and criticism from others. We have to experiment to see what’s right or wrong and always remember that the first robot will never work as intended.

“If we give up then our robot will never be finished,” she says.