
Ways to start eating insects - d_a_robson
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/five-ways-to-start-eating-insects-180957346/?no-ist
======
GordonS
> what they’re doing is feeding fly larvae on food waste to raise maggots. The
> maggots are processed into meal, which can be used as a high-protein feed
> for chickens, fish and pigs. The maggot meal stands to be more sustainable

Now _this_ I find interesting! It would be a much easier sell than humans
eating the insects.

I'd like to know more about the sustainability claims though - anyone know
anything about this?

~~~
sawwit
This site has some numbers:
[http://www.kunger.at/161540/1591397/overview/farm-432-insect...](http://www.kunger.at/161540/1591397/overview/farm-432-insect-
breeding)

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phreeza
So why should we eat insects? The standard answer is: it is a cheap and
sustainable source of protein. But I have yet to see a convincing argument
that it is cheaper and more sustainable than soy protein, aka tofu.

~~~
ekianjo
> But I have yet to see a convincing argument that it is cheaper and more
> sustainable than soy protein, aka tofu.

This, and I'd like to see a convincing argument that it's actually delicious
to eat. Eating is not just about surviving, it should be a pleasure as well,
and I think you need to overcome a lot of barriers before you can actually put
an insect in your mouth, no matter how "good" it's supposed to be for your
health.

~~~
vlehto
I'd like to taste a convincing argument that tofu is actually delicious to
eat.

I'd rather eat fried ants.

~~~
SwellJoe
Do you live in a large city? Know a really good Thai or Chinese or Vietnamese
restaurant there? Go there. Order a curry with tofu, or kung pao tofu, or
lemongrass tofu. If that isn't at least as tasty and satisfying for you as the
same dish with chicken or beef, I'll be very surprised. I prefer the tofu
version of all of them over the meat option (I am vegetarian, but have not
always been so...I remember the taste and texture of the meat options).

~~~
vlehto
It doesn't even have to taste like meat. I just don't like to eat tasteless
rubber.

Then the next problem is that I'm poor bastard. I can buy groung pork for
4,50e/kg, or half a chicken for 2,50e/kg. Tofu costs 12e/kg in supermarket, I
could eat pretty decent beef for that price. I usually can afford eating in a
restaurant maybe once in a month. So if I find good tofu, it's really not
going to change my diet.

According to some studies beef/pork/chicken production consumes resources in
that order. Also they churn out CO2 and other pollutants in that order. And
they cost money in that order. Price is roughly proportionate to enviromental
impact. Why is tofu so freaking expencive?

~~~
SwellJoe
Ah, so you've never had well prepared tofu. That is an entirely understandable
situation to be in; I was an adult before I'd eaten good tofu, even growing up
in a city that had a reasonably large Asian population. It can be tricky to
get it right (when preparing it at home, without a pro gas wok cooker, for
most types of fried or sauteed tofu, draining, pressing, and then freezing it
provides a nice texture and makes it easier to marinate effectively, as the
freezing puts tiny holes in it).

As for price, I don't know. That's not been my experience. In the U.S., even
small cities with limited options, it is never much more than $2/pound, which
is, I believe, competitive with most meats, though it has been a long time
since I've bought meat (I was regularly buying chicken for my dog a few years
ago when she had cancer and had a poor appetite, and I seem to recall it was a
couple bucks a pound). Asian markets are consistently the cheapest place to
buy tofu, and often have fresh, locally made, tofu for good prices. At least
that is true for much of the U.S. and Canada. Where do you live? Is there a
"little China" or "Chinatown" in your city? That might be a place to go to
check out your low priced tofu options.

Other vegan alternatives to meat include seitan (made from wheat gluten and
costs about $3/pound to make using expensive organic wheat gluten and organic
packaged vegetable broth...I've made it much cheaper than that) tempeh
(expensive when packaged but can be made at home with all sorts of beans,
including soy), and, of course just eating nuts, beans, lentils, etc. There
doesn't have to be a slab of "meat" on the plate for a meal to be satisfying
and delicious. I've gone years without buying tofu (only eating it when eating
out, since it took me a while to figure out how to make it well), or eating
any of the faux meats. There are plenty of vegans and vegetarians that don't
eat tofu. I happen to really like it, especially now that I've learned a few
ways to prepare it that are really tasty.

~~~
vlehto
I live in Helsinki, Finland.

There is kind of China Town in my city. The local technology university has
somewhat high Chinese population. I lived at the uni campus and there was this
incident about shady van going around and distributing weird packages to
Chinese in exchange of money. Someone called cops because "maybe there is
drugs!". It turned out they had organized tofu van, because they could not
find cheap good tofu anyway else.

~~~
SwellJoe
I love the idea of a tofu van! We have many, many, food trucks in Austin, but
they're for prepared foods. If I could get fresh tofu delivered at a
reasonable cost I would be very happy.

Home production of tofu is possible, just not at all simple. It's very time-
consuming, and getting the equipment and consumables to make it well would add
up to a not inconsequential sum. I plan to try it someday, but not while I'm
living in a travel trailer (very small kitchen, very little spare storage for
supplies).

Seitan is definitely the easier of the meat substitutes to make at home; only
takes an hour and a half, only 20 minutes of which is prep time, the rest is
simmering, boiling, steaming, or baking. I just made a seitan roast, with
stuffing and mushroom gravy, for Thanksgiving. I posted the recipe because a
friend asked me to: [http://foodcite.org/recipe/seitan-roast-a-vegan-turkey-
alter...](http://foodcite.org/recipe/seitan-roast-a-vegan-turkey-alternative/)

I've also used the Post Punk Kitchen seitan recipe:
[http://www.theppk.com/2009/11/homemade-
seitan/](http://www.theppk.com/2009/11/homemade-seitan/) (I recommended
reducing the soy sauce dramatically, as it's just way too salty, when
following the recipe exactly; also I use about half the recommended amount of
boiling broth for twice the amount of seitan. It's just hard to use up that
much broth before it goes bad in the fridge. I usually make gravy and maybe
seitan and dumplings with the remaining broth.)

I still haven't figured out how to make Chinese style seitan, which is also
really good and tends to have a very soft texture, while still being properly
cooked (my seitan gets chewy, kinda roast beef-like or like a chicken breast,
by the time it is finished cooking, no matter whether I'm boiling, steaming,
or baking it). But, you can often buy it cheaply in dry chunks at Asian
markets. Canned wheat gluten is also a common thing, and not very expensive.

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pilsetnieks
I somehow don't think this is what they mean with "eating insects is the
future" with the $700 worm hive and $300 ant booze.

~~~
dvdcxn
Well there isn't much industrialization on this front so of course these
things are a luxury, and cost as such.

Before pineapples were able to be cheaply grown and imported so the masses
could afford them, they were revered as a treat only reserved for the upper
echelon of society. Now, they're just another cheap fruit in the supermarket.

~~~
pilsetnieks
Side note: sometimes they weren't even a treat for the elite, they were rented
to display in parties, and then returned.

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jamoes
In terms of sustainability, I agree with Rob Rhinehart [1] that single-cell
protein (e.g. from algae) is the best path forward. It doesn't have the gross
factor that insects have, and once the process is perfected, it should be one
of the most efficient ways to produce protein.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/soylent/comments/3afdfp/i_am_rob_am...](https://www.reddit.com/r/soylent/comments/3afdfp/i_am_rob_ama/csc6fhp?context=1)

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ams6110
I'd rather we keep working on synthetically grown meat tissues. If we can grow
the equivalent of a flank steak without needing to kill an animal to get it,
eating meat becomes no more of an ethical problem than eating plants.

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lucozade
6) Cycle with your mouth open

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aurizon
We eat birds and animals because they have high efficiency skeletons and
circulation systems so they grow to large sizes and so their muscles become
larger. Insects have exoskeletons and the spiracle based (air pipes throughout
their flesh) respiratory system places limits on their sizes. If grasshoppers
grew to be as big as cows, I am sure they would provide harvestable muscle
masses to eat. As it is, the work of harvesting 10,000 grashopper legs and
extractin their muscles, just ruins the economics of it.

Same with grubs, although the Australian witchetty grub.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witchetty_grub](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witchetty_grub)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNsCpRZXq68](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNsCpRZXq68)

is comparable to small shrimps as a edible lump. I am not sure if they need
deveining, like shrimps where the lower intestine is removed from the tail to
leave the entire peeled tail as high quality fat and protein. A 200 pound
witchetty grub might offer witchetty steaks etc. If we selectively bred
insects in high oxygen environment to grow them to large sizes, we might
change the ease of harvesting grasshopper steaks etc - but that is for ~~100
years in the future

~~~
shalmanese
You don't need to individually butcher insects. You can just dump a whole load
of crickets into a deep fryer and eat them like potato chips.

~~~
SwellJoe
That's not a meal, though. It's a somewhat unhealthy snack, comparable to pork
rinds, perhaps (more protein and less fat, perhaps, but still unhealthy). A
vision of a future that has humans consuming insects on a large scale needs to
involve meals made of insects, not snack foods that are much more expensive
and only moderately more nutritive than their plant or animal based
alternatives.

The environmental and economic cost has to be lower than the current
alternatives (if not now, during the infancy of the market, then eventually,
once mass production has been figured out), or it doesn't make sense to pursue
it. It's already an uphill battle to convince people that bugs are food.

------
bitwize
"Your carbon footprint rating for this year is 'fair', but I'll raise your
assessment to 'excellent' if you eat a bug."

------
KevinEldon
I've eaten chapulines (grasshoppers). Their taste reminded me of what I think
slightly toasted grass might taste like. I didn't care for them, but would try
them again if someone who liked them recommended a different preparation and I
wouldn't hesitate to eat them if I needed protein.

~~~
jordigh
I find it weird that people do that with language. Did you also drink agua,
breathe aire, walk on calles, or sleep on camas?

Why is it we only do this for some things but not others?

~~~
pvaldes
And we say viva Las Vegas instead to 'cheer the river banks', also.

Is because there is not an exact equivalent to the name 'chapulin' in english,
and is a distinctive name, so is useful to keep the word.

~~~
jordigh
But chapulín means exactly the same thing as grasshopper. Anything that an
English speaker would call grasshopper a Mexican would call a chapulín.

I guess I understand why people do this. It's obviously not wrong, because
nobody can speak incorrectly. It just strikes me as a bit of a cultural
misunderstanding, but that's how things are.

~~~
pvaldes
The spanish common word for the animal is 'saltamontes', that could be
translated as 'mounts-jumper'. Samely as 'grasshopper' this word (used mainly
for short-horned grasshoppers) do not have any edible or culinary
connotations. Is just an animal (and sometimes 'a disciple').

Chapulín have a richer meaning, can be used to name a dish, a type of insect
(including some crickets), can be easily interchanged as toddler, or as 'a
dishonest politic' (that jumps to another party), and is also a beloved super-
antihero of a popular series for children in the mexican tv that was later
photocop... parodied again in the simpsons to make fun of latino spanish
speakers (bumblebee man).

~~~
jordigh
I guess you believe that piscina and alberca have different meanings too...

There is a train of thought in linguistics that there is no such thing as an
exact synonym.

[http://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/2062/do-
absol...](http://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/2062/do-absolute-
synonyms-exist)

~~~
pvaldes
Of course, the main purpose of an alberca is not to swimming. A piscina is a
swimming pool.

~~~
jordigh
Not in Mexico. They're used as exact synonyms as far as I can tell. But you
seem convinced that absolute synonyms don't exist. As a corollary to this,
exact synonyms between languages don't exist either, so exact translation is
impossible. I'll agree that exact translation is impossible, but I think a
good translator's job is to convey the closest possible linguistic experience
possible. In this case, a chapulín is the closest Mexican equivalent to
saltamontes or grasshopper. Although Mexicans will understand the word
"saltamontes", it sounds a bit foreign and will resort to chapulín instead.

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FoeNyx
The Carmine [1] — a red dye most often made from boiled and dried Cochineals
[2] — is frequently used in a lot of food products like ice-cream, candy,
yogurt, juices, cake, sausage, etc.

So most of us probably unknowingly started to swallow insects laced food since
long ago.

Only became aware of it because one of my ex-colleague has severe allergic
reactions to it.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmine)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochineal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochineal)

~~~
ams6110
For that matter, there are USDA allowable limits for "insect parts" in most
food.

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nradov
Why bother raising maggots on food waste and then feed them to pigs? Wouldn't
it be easier to just give the food waste directly to the pigs? That's what my
uncle always did. The pigs didn't seem to mind.

~~~
alextgordon
Depends on the kind of food waste. Last thing you want to do is create Pig
BSE.

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voidz
And here you see why modern media is referring to computer issues as
_glitches_ instead of bugs: bugs are food!

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xefer
Mechanisms for sustainability and productivity - the Haber-Bosch process,
genetic engineering, the "green revolution", etc. - are a bit of a two-edge
sword in that they have allowed for massive population growth. New highways
ultimately increase traffic through induced demand. Is not a similar effect at
play with these technologies?

I don't want to have to start eating bugs just to make room for a few billion
more fellow bug-eaters.

~~~
adwn
What a cynical, inhuman, and shortsighted comment.

The right way to stop population growth is not to starve poor countries to
death, but to bring them to a higher level of wealth, education, and
stability. Do this, and overpopulation (and a bunch of other problems) will
solve itself.

~~~
xefer
I think you've wildly misinterpreted my point. Perhaps it's my fault for how I
phrased things. I think these technologies, while undoubtably beneficial, have
for many decades only pushed back the Malthusian limits imposed by nature
which allowed exponential population growth while just as many people remained
hungry and destitute.

We're finally turning the corner where the population growth rate has slowed
somewhat (recent UN population projections where increased significantly; e.g.
Sub-Saharan Africa alone is projected to have a population of 4.5 billion(!)
by 2100) allowing people to get ahead of the rate of increased food
production. But we're still basically just using up most of the increased
production.

Vaclav Smil has pointed out that population growth has been directly
corollated to the amount of artificial fertilizers. He points out that even if
every bit of arable land was used to its maximum extent, only 3 billion people
could be supported. So just think, by 2100 when the UN projects a population
of 11 billion, 8 billion of those people will only be alive because the
proteins in their bodies use nitrogen from factories producing artificial
fertilizers.

~~~
Retra
If those limits can be pushed back, then nature isn't actually imposing them
on us.

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hyperion2010
I figure we're all going to be eating mealworms in 50 years or many of us are
going to be eating at all.

