
Edible insects are a novelty today, but they'll be mainstream tomorrow - DanI-S
http://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/R-D/Tiny-Farms-Edible-insects-will-be-be-mainstream-in-future
======
tehchromic
The article capitalizes on a popular foreboding about resource limits with a
thrilling "ick" factor, but it's premise is unsubstantial.

I once met an ancient Jewish gentleman who, due to poverty, had been forced to
eat lobsters as a youth. In that day they were considered on par with rats as
a food source (not to mention they were forbidden by his religious culture)
and he had never recovered from the experience, and still considered them
revolting.

I can relate: if it became popular with the youth of tomorrow to broil rats
and serve them at market price, I'd probably never get on board.

Like insects, Lobster was once a cheap and common food resource. Money could
be made by packing and shipping it of to places where it was exotic and
unheard of to the majority of people, and so it's image was specially crafted
to make profit.

But unlike insects, lobster had the advantage of a fresh market. It was only
viewed as the food of impoverished immigrants in port cities where it was
common.

The vast majority of the market, at least in the USA, considers insects icky
to look at our touch, let alone to eat.

More substantially, I think any serious study would find that people's eating
habits rarely change based on broad, even minded assessment of future resource
limits. Current rates of meat consumption are a good example: we know it can't
last, but few people change their diet so that their great grandchildren can
eat more chicken.

I do think insects will be a food source in the future, but that will be
because a clever marketer discovers the killer bug that is both exotic and
delicious. In general I think it will be a very long and slow process by which
everyday insects like crickets become palatable to the status quo.

~~~
cgh
The article is about cricket flour, not eating whole crickets. Cricket flour
products are already on sale in hundreds of stores. The key is to mass produce
the flour as right now it's quite expensive. That's what's specifically
addressed in the article, not the issue of convincing people to eat it in the
first place.

~~~
7952
I understand that Cricket Powder contains protein and other nutrients. But is
it more efficient than just using plants as a source of those things? Surely
the choice is not steak vs crickets but crickets vs soya?

~~~
cgh
Plant protein is subpar because of its amino acid profiles. I'm not being
anti-vegetarian here, it's the basic truth and it's why strength athletes etc.
don't count plants as significant sources of protein.

Basically, bugs are better, comparable to any other animal source.

------
computerjunkie
I grew up in Zimbabwe, Southern Africa. I speak in general that eating insects
is a delicacy and is favoured as a snack most of the time.An example, the [1]
_mopani worm_ is an excellent source of protein and is increadibly cheap in
Southern Africa.The guts are removed, cleaned and dried in the sun before
being packaged for sale. They also taste delicious once fried in butter and
mixed with vegetables.

It might be a novelty right now in the western world but its been years of
tradition in African or Asian countries.

[1] -
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonimbrasia_belina](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonimbrasia_belina)

~~~
MengerSponge
I'm pretty sure most things are delicious once fried in butter and mixed with
vegetables.

Incidentally, I'd love for microlivestock to be more widespread in the US--it
_could_ be such an affordable protein source!

~~~
computerjunkie
It will be a interesting perspective as it becomes more common to eat insects
in Western countries. The main barrier to break down would be the 'ick/ew'
factor, which has been mentioned in this threads comments, that is usually
cultural.

But judging from the way some domestic animals are treated by some farms, the
ick/ew factor of eating insects becomes less of a barrier.

------
pistle
I'd try it. I eat raw fish, urchins, rare eggs, rare-ish meat of mammals and
fowl. Who knows? Who would know if I would like it better than me?

I've eaten whole insects including crickets and the flavor was whatever. The
texture of the legs was like trying to eat the tail of a shrimp - impossible.
I'll be interested to see what the processing is like as I'm not sure about
the utility of a flour that includes fine grains of exoskeleton. Proteins turn
into magical things during cooking and shells don't do quite as well. Flour
hints at baking, but I don't think it would function nearly as well.

From the first link on google, the baking results look like it doesn't form
anything that can trap air or steam, so dense and mushy seems likely.

~~~
mmanfrin
I've had cookies made with cricket flour, they tasted normal; wouldn't have
been able to tell you anything was different from the taste/texture alone.

------
Nursie
People have been publishing this article every few months for as long as I can
remember.

They may well be an efficient form of protein but... squick. Basically.

~~~
Brakenshire
It's just unfamiliarity - you would have the same reaction to a prawn if you
hadn't grown up with it. And many outsiders would have a similar reaction to
squid cooked in its ink (Spain), half-rotted herring (Scandinavia), or even
just strongly flavoured blue cheese (everywhere). For that matter, lots of
people feel icky about fresh tomatoes.

It's not likely to become something which is mainstream overnight, but there
are large parts of the population in the West who actively seek out different
experiences. Or, to put it another way, the food market is heavily segmented
by interest, class, age, location (national, regional, and
metropolitan/rural), and so on. In the short term, you're likely to get
movement into early/adventurous adopter parts of the market.

~~~
nate_meurer
Or any kind of meat -- just a fuckin chuck of animal muscle, tendon, gristle,
sometimes even skin.

I think there'd be a lot more vegetarians if everyone had to do their own
butchering.

~~~
TylerE
I suspect there'd be a lot more carnivores if people had to grow their own
veggies, too.

------
eltondegeneres
Isn't cricket feed mostly corn and soy? Seems like it would be more efficient
to eat the raw ingredients rather than the crickets.

~~~
_abattoir
Crickets are less metabolically demanding than humans. We need tricksy things
like fiber and animal protein, but crickets can get by on simple sugars and
cellulose.

------
perdunov
Don't think so. We'll rather have lab-grown meat.

~~~
towelguy
I'm looking forward more at Soylent[0] than lab-grown meat.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_%28drink%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_%28drink%29)

~~~
dothething
Enjoy! [http://www.meghantelpner.com/blog/the-soylent-
killer/](http://www.meghantelpner.com/blog/the-soylent-killer/)

~~~
towelguy
That article is attacking the current implementation, but I'm looking more at
the idea and want to see where it goes. Implementations can be made better.

~~~
soylentemployee
Like ensure or enfamil?

------
robhack
Am I the only one bothered by the sheer amount of killing this means? You
might have to feed poultry 2lb to get 1lb of food, but you kill only one
living creature. With insects, how many living creatures are you going to kill
to get 1lb ? (even though that would only require 1lb of feeding). Yes I know,
they are not conscious at the same level, and are killed in a way so that they
don't suffer, but still.

~~~
mattchew
I'm sure you're not the only one, but you're pretty unusual.

Eating meat doesn't bother me, but if I imagine myself attaching more moral
value to nonhumans, I would rate insects a lot lower than chickens a lot lower
than pigs, and switching to insects being a net gain morally.

Does it bother you to eat plants? Things made with yeast? Do other activities
that kill lots of insects bother you?

Not trying to needle you and I hope I am not setting off your scrupulosity,
I'm just wondering how far it goes. I am also curious if this is a "thing" in
the West now, I know something similar is sometimes practiced in India.

~~~
seszett
I have had the same reaction as him.

I know insects and plants are not "at the same level" as mammals or birds, but
I always have the thought that squashing insects or eating plants is still
killing living beings and I can't help being bothered by it. Yes, I also _do_
have a thought for the yeast I'm using when baking bread, waking it up from
stasis just for baking it in the oven soon after... but unicellular beings
seem much less important as they're mostly clones, they don't have the same
individuality.

I grow plants as a hobby, and having a few small trees that have grown from
seeds, in pots where they entirely depend on me for their life, makes me
really see them as individuals - especially since the genetic variation that
comes with growing seeds also means they have observably different behaviours.

On the other hand... I _do_ eat some meat, and for some reason I don't have a
single thought for the pigs that have to get killed to make the dry sausages
or cured ham I eat. I guess that is because I am just so used to eating these,
and they are less recognizable as animal parts than, say, chicken wings.

In the end, you just can't live healthily by only eating things that don't
harm any living being, so I just live with it, knowing that I have to kill
things to eat.

About the India thing, I have thought like this for a very long time, I
remember in kindergarten trying to stop other kids from stomping on ants, and
(a bit later of course) my parents being amused when I talked about plant
being like ununderstandable aliens. So I don't think this has much to do with
trends, it's just a thinking you can come up with on your own.

------
tehchromic
I can say that bee larvae taste like raw almonds and cow milk butter and I eat
on sight.

~~~
0xdeadbeefbabe
I'm going to be seriously disappointed if bee larvae in my region taste
differently than raw almonds and cow milk butter.

------
putzdown
If I agreed that edible insects were a novelty today I might be persuaded that
they'll be mainstream tomorrow. Since I believe that edible insects are a
source of revulsion to most Westerners (at least) today, I'm doubtful that
they'll be mainstream tomorrow. There's a general principle of argumentation
here: if you want me to believe your apodosis, make sure we're on the same
page with your protasis.

~~~
abecedarius
I'm a Westerner and just don't understand the revulsion, except from a vegan.
Yes, I wouldn't chomp down on a raw cricket from the backyard, but the same
goes for a rabbit, only more so -- a rabbit seems more conscious.

I gave a friend some cricket bars and he thought I was joking about the
ingredient until after he'd tried it. Well, that's one answer to the ick
factor.

------
gumby
That article was fascinating but ignored the branding factor. I realize that
was intentional, but it is an important factor. What's considered food is
basically a cultural/fashion issue, and can be explicitly changed by marketing
(e.g. rapeseed can sound horrible in the US but was made acceptable by
rebranding it "Canola", and likewise the Chinese gooseberry was much more
successful as the Kiwi Fruit).

This is different from passive shifts of food from scorned to fashion, such as
lobster or oysters, or how açai briefly swept the Whole Foods set -- that's
more of a Veblen issue. Once the technical issues are worked out, someone's
going to make a killing (literally I suppose) by rebranding ground up mice and
crickets as "Natural Field Protein"

BTW I enjoyed this quote: > "Journalists always ask me what do you say to
people that can't get over the psychological hurdle of eating insects?", said
Crowley. "I say, 'nothing' \- we're not targeting these people. We're
targeting people that are receptive to our message, that will be our early
adopters."

Good for him!

------
magic_beans
When will crickets NOT be $40 a pound? And then I'll consider it...

------
tbrownaw
Which is sushi, novelty or mainstream? Or tofu, or non-wheat flour?

Or maybe there's a middle ground where things are neither.

~~~
robertfw
Sushi in Vancouver or Tokyo? Mainstream. Boise, Idaho? It's all relative to
where you are.

Eating insects here is currently novelty. But in many parts of the world, it
is a part of daily life.

------
GFK_of_xmaspast
Kind of interesting how many people would rather eat bugs than not eat meat at
all.

~~~
axlprose
Not really, considering the nutritional profile of insects. There are some
nutrients you can't readily get from plant-based foods, or only in poor
amounts, like DHA/EPA, carosine, lysine, etc. Not to mention all the things
you'd normally miss out on with traditional meat, because we're not used to
eating the bones and innards of large animals here, but that you get from
insects cause you'd eat them whole, so you'd get plenty more minerals,
vitamins, and rarer amino acids that way.

I recommend reading this book if anybody's interested in more specifics about
insect-based nutrition, and why it's actually more unique and useful than most
people realize:

[http://www.amazon.com/Edible-Adventure-Eating-Insects-
Planet...](http://www.amazon.com/Edible-Adventure-Eating-Insects-
Planet/dp/0544114353)

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
Beans are full of lysine and, for ovo-lacto vegetarians, so are eggs.

(I don't consider dha/epa and carnosine to be essential nutrients.)

~~~
axlprose
> I don't consider dha/epa and carnosine to be essential nutrients

We're at a point where we don't even know what we don't know about nutrition,
so it's fair to have "beliefs" like this I suppose. But there is substantial
evidence for DHA's impact on brain development if nothing else, including the
brain development of children birthed from mothers low in DHA stores. Not much
significant evidence suggests equivalent impact from ALA/plant-based fatty
acids, nor do they convert predictably in the body to forms the forms that are
actually directly useful. I will grant you that EPA is more debatable, but DHA
is pretty solid. And while I don't trust speculative 'evolutionary' evidence,
it does make sense that human brain development (and thus human development in
general) supposedly started to take off once they migrated near the coasts
where there was an abundance of seafood to hunt.

Not to mention that plant fats/oils are the largest contributors to the
problem of having imbalanced omega-6 to omega-3 ratios to begin with:

[http://nutritiondata.self.com/foods-000141000000000000000-w....](http://nutritiondata.self.com/foods-000141000000000000000-w.html)

Either way, "essential nutrients" and nutrition in general aren't things that
we can assume as being settled, because much of what we "know" about all that
will almost certainly become outdated in a few short generations. In the
meantime, I think moderate diversification of nutrients isn't a bad idea.

Edit: I also made no mention of vegetarianism/veganism, I simply referred to
plant-based food sources specifically, because many animal-derived products
(including eggs as you mentioned), most certainly still have the benefits I
was describing. It's not about lifestyle or ideology, it's about finding
quality sources of things that promote optimal human functioning.

------
jqm
I suspect it won't be terribly long before we have genetically modified plants
to produce a more complete fat and amino acid profile, and this will
essentially replace meat in most cases. Probably this will happen before
anything like cricket eating goes mainstream. I wouldn't bet on this at all.

------
jotux
Japan got over the ickiness of insects a long time ago:
[http://aeon.co/magazine/society/why-the-west-fears-
insects-w...](http://aeon.co/magazine/society/why-the-west-fears-insects-
while-japan-reveres-them/)

------
smackfu
You can buy some on Amazon today for $40 a pound: [http://www.amazon.com/JR-
Unique-Foods-Cricket-Flour/dp/B00OM...](http://www.amazon.com/JR-Unique-Foods-
Cricket-Flour/dp/B00OMCTODQ)

------
desireco42
I don't know how much of the process of raising and making flower from insects
is proprietary, but some kind of open source knowledge base might provide
appeal for people to refine production and innovate on consumption.

------
Scarfleece
Why is there a push for crickets, grinded-up-bug-meatballs and insect flour
when there's one that people aren't actually disgusted by -- escargot?

------
gogoBitz
Cricket bars are yummy. For me, they pass the taste test. Not a lot of real
kick factor. Hope they get the price down with mass production.

------
icey
If anyone wants to get into this game, I'll sell you edible-insects.com and
[https://twitter.com/edibleinsects](https://twitter.com/edibleinsects) :)

------
jff
And you thought chicken farms were disgusting...

~~~
SwellJoe
I definitely think chicken farms are disgusting (and I've been a vegetarian
for 21 years for that reason among many others). Cricket farming, on the other
hand, I've considered trying. I'm not entirely confident of the ethics of
eating bugs, but it's so vastly superior to the environmental disaster and
suffering caused by eating meat, that I think making bugs a part of the
average human diet is a net win.

If it tastes good, is healthy, requires less land/water/resources to products,
and leads to lower meat consumption, I don't see how it can be a bad thing.

Unfortunately, costs are still very high. I'm not sure why that is, given all
the hype about "bugs are a low cost protein!"

~~~
technomancy
> Unfortunately, costs are still very high. I'm not sure why that is, given
> all the hype about "bugs are a low cost protein!"

My guess is that while bugs are more efficient than most animals at converting
energy, the equipment and methods to raise the bugs and convert them into
human-ready products have not had the centuries of optimization that
mainstream animal husbandry enjoys.

------
Dewie
Insects might be more economical, or at least eventually when their production
is more mainstream. But food is relatively cheap today anyway; what is
expensive is rent/or mortgage. Food for a single, working person doesn't
really make such a dent in the budget that they are forced to thin "damn,
there has to be some alternative to this", compared to what they spend on
their rent. So I don't think it's that much incentive to eat insects, from an
economical perspective.

~~~
technomancy
If this were the case, why does Coke contain cheap corn syrup instead of good-
tasting cane sugar?

Even if there's not enough of a difference for an individual to choose one
over the other it doesn't mean companies with huge economies of scale won't
choose differently.

------
ppereira
As with bacteria, human living conditions will get quite ugly near our
population's stationary phase.[1] Exponential growth does not last forever.

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

------
tomjen3
Unlikely. They are icky, unappealing and do not have the "man" quality one
gets from real meat.

Food is mostly about taste and convenience today, because we have access to
enough of it - insects doesn't really give you either.

In short it is highly unlikely that I will wake up tomorrow and eat insects,
nor that the majority in the developed world will.

And yes shrimp may technically be insects. Technically correct does nothing
for the ick factor.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Lobster is a bug; it used to be 'ick' and now its 'yum'. The ick factor is
cultural. No reason the OP can't be right - if bugs are tasty, and some people
start eating them, and then more people, they could easily become a regular
thing.

~~~
Nursie
I have a friend who is an entomologist, a doctor of entomology no less. He
doesn't eat lobster, or any other type of mollusc, on the basis that they
filter-feed and will quite happily chow down on faeces, just like any other
insect.

Mind you he finds the texture of boiled eggs repulsive too, so it might just
be him.

~~~
dragonwriter
> lobster, or any other type of mollusc

Lobsters aren't molluscs, they're crustaceans.

Not even the same phylum.

~~~
Nursie
I didn't say _I_ was a doctor of entomology :)

