Will you be eating insects any time soon?

[peter]

I wondered if this topic should be in the galley, but decided that that was more a place for what we are actually eating now than for what we might be eating in the future (if the World Economic Forum and others have their way).

Behind this post is the gathering momentum that is being displayed by our Governments and by the elitist/celebrity commentariat that 'alternative protein sources' represent the way forward towards a more sustainable future for mankind and the planet.

To this end, there is a concerted effort, rapidly gathering momentum, to bring about a change in perceptions about the eating of insects, or insect derived protein, in the public at large. This is, we are reliably informed, a perfectly common practice in many parts of the world, and the source of protein it represents is an important additional resource which we in the West, would be well advised to take up. Celebrities such as Angelina Jolie have been seconded into the roles of influencers on the subject, and promotional materials supplied to schools, health industry outlets and the broader media at large.

One method of overcoming our natural disinclination to eat bugs is to process them into unrecognisable form and then to even incorporate them into traditional foods that we are used to eating, in small quantities that it is thought, will not provoke too much resistance. An example of this is the use of meal-worm flour as a substitute flour in the baking of bread. Less underhandedly, the use of ground meal-worm protein in burgers is now being practiced, particularly in Germany and Austria where there is a sort of trendy movement towards the eating of bugs.

Along with meal-worms, crickets and locust seem to be favoured candidates for introduction into the Western diet, and to this end a quiet but sustained campaign is being prosecuted to achieve this desired end. As I note, it will be via the children that the practice will be introduced to the older generations, creating as it were,a double pronged attack on our sensibilities.

So what do you think? Will you be tucking into a plate full of crispy locusts for dinner one evening in the near future? Or taking your new girlfriend/boyfriend out to dine on grasshopper burgers by way of impressing them?

Tell me do!

(On a personal note, I can say the following. On one occasion, riding my motorcycle as a youth, I inadvertently rode into a great fat shit-fly that went right into the back of my throat. I had no choice (at seventy miles an hour) other than to close my mouth and force myself to swallow the beastly thing, which, I swear, repeated on me for the rest of the day. We also, at school, for whatever reason is not clear to me, had a tank of cockroaches in the biology lab. I don't remember much about them other than that they stank like shit! (Not literally, just like, really horrid!) On the basis of these two things alone, I can say with absolute certainty that, despite what Angelina Jolie may say, and even if they taste like pumpkin pie (to paraphrase the movie) I won't be eating the mothers!)

[Wosbald]

+JMJ+

[Avatar]

Eh, while I doubt I would be willing to tuck into a plate of them, there's little doubt that they will become increasingly prevalent in the form of protein powders and the like, and indeed, perhaps even essential in the face of the growing challenges of food security etc.

Since most of my issues are texture ones, something fortified with insect protein powder is unlikely to bother me.

--A

[Fist and Faith]

Several thoughts...

I'll eat most anything. It wouldn't bother me at all if it was on the menu or the shelves. But I'm sure any insect items on the menu or the shelves will be way too expensive for me. That's the way of things, eh?

I don't think there's a shortage of food in the world. Pretty sure we could feed everybody. I don't think adding insects to our diet will get the food to the people who need it.

I wonder why we don't do this already. I'd certainly do it if I was hungry and couldn't buy food. I guess it's not easy to forage enough to live on, and people don't know how to "farm" them. I saw a show where there are annual swarms of some kind of fly somewhere in africa. The people know it's coming, and they're prepared. Everybody's outside with nets just swinging them through the air gathering them by the thousands. Then they mash them up and form them like hamburgers. I don't remember if they were looking at it as a rare treat, or if it was a welcome extra meal in an area where everyone was usually hungry.

George Carlin said the problem with eating insects is that they're too small. If cows were the size of grasshoppers we wouldn't eat them. But we would carve up a 6-ft grasshopper no problem.

[peter]

Ha Ha!

You guys are remarkably sanguine in your responses, but for me it is Wos's Bear Grylls video clip that sums it up.

It's a strange one, because I'll tuck into a dish of Dublin Bay prawns or crab without so much as a second thought. Raw oysters - I'll schlurp em down by the dozen. But the idea of locusts, I don't know, it just turns me.

One lady I saw talking about it said that in Africa somewhere she had been given a roasted locust or whatever and had contemplated eating it. She didn't like the look of the wings so tore them off and discarded them. Similarly the legs she found off-putting so dumped them as well and then decided that the head wasn't helping either and so that went. All that left was the thorax and it hardly seemed worth the effort so she threw that away as well. So ended her foray into the world of insect eating.

[Fist and Faith]

Yeah, that's the problem with them. I don't imagine the nutritional value is enough to be worth the effort of getting rid of all the stuff that you probably shouldn't be eating. How many beetle shells can you have in your stomach before you're in trouble of blockages or whatever.

[SoulBiter]

Due to my rural and very southern USA upbringing, I seem to lack opposition to food sources. That giant raw grub looking thing.. yeah I cant see me doing that. But still, locusts or crickets, or the like... I don't mind them. They eat them like popcorn in parts of Mexico.

When I went to China in 2015 for about a month, I became the defacto "try food and tell everyone what I think it tastes like" because I had no aversion to trying new foods.

But I also agree with Fist. I dont think we are anywhere close to being low on food sources. The idea of insects as a primary protein source is more because its considered "greener" than traditional food sources like beef, pork, or chicken.

[Fist and Faith]

If things went this way, it would be huge farms where they raised various insects. And there would be the worry of chemicals and DNA modification. And there would be recalls because this and that. And there would end up being nothing green about it.

[peter]

I'm guessing that insect derived protein would have much less of a methane footprint than beef and dairy- other than that, pound for pound, I'm thinking that you are still going to have the same or similar inefficiencies as you do with other meat products. At the end of the day, conversion of vegetable matter into animal matter is going to involve loss of energy (and by extension similar carbon emission unit costs) irrespective of the type of protein being farmed.

Besides, like a snail I once ate without all the garlic butter and herbs that make them taste nice in a French restaurant, I'm guessing without Mexican spices or Chinese flavourings or whatever, they'd taste like shit.

[Fist and Faith]

Just reading this article about bees feeling pain, and whether or not they are sentient. Coincidentally, it says this:

Many cultures around the world have long eaten insects, but in recent years there’s been a rise in insect factory farming — primarily to supply feed for factory-farmed chicken and fish, rather than for direct human consumption. It’s an emerging trend we might want to think twice about.

If we sourced more protein from insect farms instead of cattle, pig, and chicken farms, it might be a win for human health. But if commonly farmed insects, like crickets and mealworms, can feel pain, it could be a moral catastrophe orders of magnitude worse than livestock farming, given the astronomical numbers of insects that would need to be raised to replace the 70 billion-plus land animals farmed globally each year.

[peter]

That's a significant point Fist. I've already stated my position on eating bugs (not happening) but I would not normally see myself standing in the way of anyone else who was more open to the idea.

But the older I get, the harder I find it to justify even the practice of meat eating that I do indulge in. If I didn't like meat so much, or if a really good imitation product became available I'd stop eating it tomorrow.

On this basis, if it becomes apparent that insect sensitivity to pain is much more pronounced than we have hitherto believed, then it'd be hard for me to justify yet further means whereby we inflict more suffering on sentient beings.

Sounds silly and it doesn't stack up I know, but hey - I never claimed to be one hundred percent rational!

[Fist and Faith]

Not sure it really makes a difference. People eat animals. Always have, and would not have evolved as we did if not. Just the way of nature.

Of course, that doesn't mean we have to be cruel about it. Well see how we treat mealworms before we eat them. Actually, I imagine it's more difficult to abuse the tiny things.

...but hey - I never claimed to be one hundred percent rational!

You dodged a bullet there!

[peter]

Back to the aesthetics of eating insects, damned if I know why I find it off-putting. I eat raw oysters fer Christ's sake.

[Fist and Faith]

Yes, it is difficult to see where you draw the line. mine is Rocky Mountain oysters.

[Avatar]

Me, I'm a very fussy eater.

--A

[peter]

Apparently the University of Ghent has developed an insect 'butter' made by maceration of larvae and mixing the resultant mush with water. The mixture is then left to settle and a yellow scum that rises to the surface is skimmed off and then used as a partial substitute for the real product in the baking of cakes etc. In tests, up to a certain proportion (around twenty five percent iirc) people were unable to detect that something different was being used in replacement of the normal butter, but above this they began to taste something different about the product (some were not overly impressed with the taste either).

My concern is that they will begin to slip these replacement constituents into mass produced foods without clear labelling to make their presence obvious to purchasers. The food industry is more than capable of such underhand shenanigans given the freedom to do so. If insect butter is present in the cakes and biscuits I eat, I want it written clearly and obviously on the front of the packaging of the products so that I can avoid them. By and large I can turn a blind eye to how my food is made, what goes into it, but this is a Rubicon I will not cross. They can buzz off as far as I'm concerned.

[Avatar]

I don't think there's a shortage of food in the world. Pretty sure we could feed everybody.

So why don't we?

--A

[peter]

Because there is no incentive to, maybe?

Shit-loads of non-productive all-consuming humans just producing more of the same?

[Fist and Faith]

Those who have the ability to do or allow it won't. Not enough financial or political reward for them.

[SoulBiter]

There are other issues with feeding the poor. Many of the countries that are sent aid (Like Haiti), the aid never makes it to the people. They instead keep it for themselves or sell it themselves to enrich their own pockets.

Then there is the issue of making entire populations dependent on food aid. You put their local farmers out of business because why purchase locally what you can get for free.