

We should all be eating insects - userulluipeste
http://qz.com/84127/five-reasons-we-should-all-be-eating-insects/

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joonix
Except food is already so cheap in America that there is no incentive to eat
bugs. The raw fish example doesn't work because raw fish is a delicacy.

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ImprovedSilence
Soooo, make crickets a delicacy, get some good pr up and running to make it
socially acceptable, and charge health-conscious yuppies $40/lb for em, and
it'll sell. It's all about presentation, appearances, and marketing.

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kasbah
Can you really see that happening though? The negative associations attached
to insect eating are too great. I think it would take more than marketing to
change such social norms.

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rthomas6
Don't be so sure. How many untraveled Americans would consider raw fish a
delicacy 50 years ago? Marketing has already created and changed more social
norms than we'd like to admit.

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bluedino
On the same note, not many Americans at raw (rare, rather) beef 50 years ago.

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binarymax
I agree with this article, unfortunately many of us are so psychologically
averse to the thought, that it would be very difficult and require a cultural
shift. I can't imagine eating them (even when ground up, or even if they had a
"better name"), but maybe my children or grandchildren will (or must).

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dcminter
Are you sure you don't already? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmine>

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yareally
I believe there's also an allocated % of accidental bug material that is
allowed in food by the FDA because it can't always be avoided. If you've ever
had ketchup, you've most certainly had a little bit of additional protein in
there with it :)

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grimtrigger
Is there anyone who grew up in a non-insecting-eating society who has acquired
a taste for them? If so it'd be interesting to hear how they made the switch.
I'm not talking about eating bugs just to know that they're like, but someone
who actually enjoys them.

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ImprovedSilence
I grew up in a big college town. Every year the university would have an
"insect fair", where among other things, they had a big tent with all sorts of
insect food. I remember eating millworm soup, some type of bugs in pasta,
chocolate covered crickets, and probably some other stuff too. I thought it
was pretty tasty, and now I consider myself very willing to eat insects as
food every now and then or at a fancy restaurant. Then again, I also consider
myself much more open to new experiences and tastes than most of my peers. So
in short, yes, I enjoy them, but I don't eat them on a regular basis, or
necessarily seek them out.

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tellarin
In many places people have no trouble eating them; some are even considered a
delicacy.

From the ones I've tried, some are actually pretty tasty. The best are: bamboo
worm, barbecued silk worm, fried spider, water roach, and fried crickets.

If anybody is curious, I can comment more on these and others. :)

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mkl
Spiders and crickets seem like they would be mostly exoskeleton. Which bits do
you eat, and how do you avoid getting all that chitin in your teeth?

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dsirijus
Don't know about spiders, but as for grasshoppers, crickets and locusts,
gently swat with clothes to kill, remove anteannae, wings and leg spurs.
Roasting is the best as it kills potential parasites and they taste best that
way (as well as helping to easier powderize all that chitin).

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lightweb2
Chickens and other poultry eat insects if they are raised on pasture. They
directly convert this abundant food source for us. Chickens taste better and
are easy enough for anyone to raise.

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tellarin
I disagree that chickens taste better than most insects. My experience is
quite the opposite.

Chicken is usually more bland, I guess. While insects vary a lot. Some can be
pretty tasty, others quite awful.

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guard-of-terra
In my opinion, chickens' white meat is the tastiest meat out there.

WRT "bland", that's why you cook your food. Throw in some spices and soy sauce
and combine with greens or pasta.

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tellarin
The cooking and spices comment applies to insects too. I didn't say you have
to eat insects by themselves. I still prefer them over chicken.

If we're talking about not using much seasoning/condiments/side dishes, then
nothing beats nice beef.

And, in my opinion, chicken's dark meat is much better than the white.

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lightweb2
You have never actually tasted a truly "pastured" chicken if you still think
it tastes "bland". Read everything you can from Joel Salatin. :-)

The chickens we raised on pasture had the deepest flavor of anything we ever
experienced and our birds were some of the healthiest I've ever seen.

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petepete
There was a very interesting documentary by Stefan Gates on this very subject
a month ago on BBC4.

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01599yk>

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karamazov
Why does the food supply need to double to feed an extra 2 billion people?

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joshuahedlund
I believe the theory is that we are currently on an unsustainable path that is
drawing down our existing inventories of global food faster than we are
replenishing them (ex. overfishing of oceans), so to feed 1) our first-world
selves, 2) our third-world friends who are becoming first-word (i.e. eating
more food), _and_ 3) an additional 2/7 population... that will require a
growth in the food supply. I think some of those on the more doom-mongering
side tend to underestimate the general agricultural innovations of both past
and future, and the market forces that drive them, but there are some
compelling arguments that this may not be enough.

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hkarthik
I've long believed this to be true, so it's interesting to see this article.

I grew up in a traditional Hindu family where nearly everyone was vegetarian.
When I came to the US, many of us started eating meat. 15-20 years ago, this
horrified many of my cousins who stayed in India and remained vegetarian.

Fast forward to today, many of those same cousins have started eating meat in
India. I read an article the other day saying the traditional Hindu vegetarian
diet is falling by the wayside, and poultry consumption in the subcontinent
has skyrocketed. In another generation, I expect to see a large rise in red
meat consumption where the natural resource needs are much higher.

This got me thinking, can the planet really sustain another 1 billion, full-
time meat eaters? If humans have such high protein requirements that can't be
satisfied by a plant-based diet, isn't eating bugs the only ecologically
sustainable choice?

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subsection1h

        If humans have such high protein requirements that
        can't be satisfied by a plant-based diet
    

Do we have such requirements? Beans, lentils, quinoa, etc. aren't enough?

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hkarthik
Clearly not. We domesticated those plants thousands of years ago and they
weren't enough to replace meat in most diets.

Maybe it's more a question of taste than health, but for whatever reason,
animal protein has and always will be a major part of the human diet.

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pstuart
Perhaps indirectly. I've been researching raising Black Soldier Flies as fish
food -- there are some interesting possibilities there: they feed on waste and
"self harvest" (when larvae are ready to pupate they climb up, and if a ramp
is set up for that they go up the ramp and drop into a container.

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jecs321
I am totally up for eating insects. I've had them before in Korea. I wish
there were a place to get them in the US.

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zeidrich
What about that soylent diet?

There's other reasons we eat than just nutrition. If it was just nutriment we
were looking for I'm sure we could do it easier than eating bugs.

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guard-of-terra
I try to do everything to avoid eating invertebrates.

The only reasonable exception is shrimp and alike.

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contingencies
Excellent quote from a famed Japanese microbiologist: "During the war, when I
worked at the research center, I was assigned to determine what insects in
Southeast Asia could be eaten. When I investigated this matter, I was amazed
to discover that almost any insect is edible. For example, no one would think
that lice or fleas could be of any use at all, but lice, ground up and eaten
with winter grain, are a 'remedy for epilepsy, and fleas are a medicine for
frostbite. All insect larvae are quite edible, but they must be alive. Poring
over the old texts, I found stories having to do with "delicacies" prepared
from maggots from the outhouse, and the flavor of the familiar silkworm was
said to be exquisite." <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masanobu_Fukuoka>

