Eating the bugs?
Eating the bugs?
In some parts of the world many cultures consider insects, larvae and other creepy crawlies to be a delicacy. In fact, a U.N. report says over 2 billion peop...
Honestly I haven't tried it but I wouldn't mind certain things containing bug parts (on purpose) to make up for protein in them. And honestly that crunch sounds quite good.
It has one of the same inherent inefficiencies as animal meat: they need to eat something to grow. Therefore we need to use a lot of resources to produce a lot of food for them to eat, before we can eat them.
It always seems much more efficient to use those resources to grow food for us to eat directly. Also, getting Americans to eat a vegetable is slightly easier than getting them to eat a bug.
I think the "magic" of bugs is that they can eat things that would be inedible or unhealthy for other omnivores (like pigs). If we can convert some of our food and paper waste into protein and chitin, it might be worth the investment.
This only works for small farms but regular animals already fill that spot there too. Chicken and pigs are mainly fed kitchen scraps in these settings. The issue is once you go into large-scale commercial farming it becomes way too inefficient to use waste products and buying feed is more economical viable. Doesn't matter if it's insects or mammals or.
A lot of animal feed is already made up of a lot of "food waste". Rice bran, maize and wheat offal, fish meal, and bone meal, all of that are byproducts of food for human consumption and commonly found in animal feed. You can even find some that have things like sawdust or other wood products inside. There are even studies into using waste paper for cattle. And while this might sound wrong, it doesn't harm the animal. But the issue is, humans don't want to eat something that ate something we don't like. And I don't see that changing with insects either.
Might be a convenient talking point, but imho plant-based should definitely be the priority.
Bugs are always a trophic level above plants. It's always more efficient to 'cut out the middle man' and eat plants instead.
I think this is a good alternative on paper, but aren't we in the sixth mass extinction and isn't the insect phyla the largest at risk?