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Comment by jpmoyn | Hacker News Reader

I could see cockroaches as a food source for farm animals maybe, but I have my doubts about roaches ever making the mainstream western diet. If it costs less, and is more environmentally friendl, to produce a pound of roaches than it does a pound of corn, why not turn it into pig food?

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The cycle in the article is kitchen waste => cockroach => cockroach flour as chicken feed => chicken => kitchen

Seems reasonable. Or maybe I should just go vegan at this point...

Well seems like you are already vegan seeing as you stock your kitchen full of chicken feed.

It's made of cockroaches.

We supplement our dogs raw diet with grasshopper flour.[1] I chose that along with eggs as a more humane source of protein.

I've eaten bugs in Thailand(they were actually quite tasty), but I haven't had the urge to try this flour yet.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Cricket-powder-made-100-22/dp/B00OMCT...

Or skip the pigs and the roaches and everyone eat lentils and beans and grains and all those other delicious plants. Save the planet and our health (not to mention billions of animals), yeehaw!

As happy as I am to save the planet, the alternative to "we breed 90% of the animals on earth for food" is not "now all those animals are free".

I'm not sure what your point is? I'm going to assume you meant that I thought we could literally set all the current livestock in the world free, which is not what I meant. Rather, we would just stop breeding them in the first place as the demand would go down.

Shrimp and roaches are pretty much the same thing..one lives in the ocean, the other on land...

Honest question: how so?

I am fairly sure I am not alone in a severe and visceral aversion to roaches whereas shrimp excite no such sentiment. I have always wondered why that is - it seems so irrational. Also, roaches have some capabilities that make them somewhat special [1] - let's hope the super-size trend that applies to other farmed products does not make its way to this creature.

[1] http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141021-the-fastest-insect-i...

Few people turn on the kitchen light and see dozens of shrimp scurry away under the kitchen cabinets.

If I thought shrimp was crawling all of my food, I might be more adverse to shrimp. Instead, I've only seen shrimp as food.

Plus many people have never seen live or even raw shrimp - their only exposure is the tasty red shrimp body on their plate (or freezer bag), not the pale grey translucent body with many legs, big eyes and antenna. They are certainly a lot less appetizing in their natural state.

I've heard people refer to diving for lobsters in South Florida as diving for "bugs". It kind of makes you think of them differently.

Interesting fact - "Lobster was also commonly served in prisons, much to the displeasure of inmates. American lobster was initially deemed worthy only of being used as fertilizer or fish bait, and until well into the 20th century, it was not viewed as more than a low-priced canned staple food."

Perception is key.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobster

I read that a big part of this sentiment was because it was all ground up, shell, guts, and all, when served.

It's not an accident. Roaches carry diseases that infect humans. They feed on human faeces when they get access to sewage, and they often do. Shrimps are bottom feeders too, but while I'm not an expert, I believe that the great difference of the pathogens common at sea and those found in land is the reason we're not very disgusted of shrimps.

Personally I'm also not very disgusted by those meaty worms that people in Africa and the Amazon eat. They don't look appetizing, but also not very disgusting. Maybe it's an accident or cultural bias, but I strongly believe that cockroaches and similar incests are disgusting because we're hardcoded to find them disgusting. I'm sure even kids do, before any influence.

They aren't even close, shrimp have actual soft flesh and tissue. The only characteristic I can really see them sharing is they have an exoskeleton.

Shrimp don't fly around and chase you either.

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