The Rise of Edible Insect Farming | Hacker News Reader

The Rise of Edible Insect Farming

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162 pointsOsiris30203 comments

As someone who was eating insects long before cricket protein bars became in vogue, I don't see entomophagy becoming anything more than a fad in the west, especially America.

The taste of insects simply does not compare to meat and poultry. Granted, this has a lot to do with cultural expectations, but that's exactly why I don't think that people are going to gradually shift to consuming a very different flavor.

Also, as someone who used to be heavily into protein, I don't buy the notion that people need more protein than what they are currently getting. A human body really doesn't need that much protein, and even body builders don't need as much protein as they often consume. If someone is telling you that you need to consume protein, it's probably because they're trying to sell you something. Even more so if they are calling it a "super-food".

Maybe things will actually change. I dunno. The insects that I thought were the most tasty(moth caterpillars) are the ones that people are least likely to want to eat. People might be fine with dried crickets and meal worms, but I challenge them to eat something more substantial.

Every "bug person" I used to follow on social media warns us of a looming food crisis and that insects will save the world. I thought it no coincidence that most of them either give paid lectures, sell books, or are associated with a "bug startup".

I agree with your assessments about entomophagy. However, I think it no coincidence that most of the “tech people“ on this blog either give paid lectures, sell books, or are associated with a “tech startup”.

> most of the “tech people“ on this blog either give paid lectures, sell books, or are associated with a “tech startup”

That's false, you're vastly under-estimating the size of HN. There are tens of thousands of users and millions of HN readers. Dang noted three years ago that there were 300k daily uniques and ~3m monthly uniques.

A small fraction of those give paid lectures, author/sell books, or are associated with a start-up. Most is an extreme exaggeration. It's closer to 1%-5% than 51%.

Your precision is noted. I was indulging in a bit of satire.

The whole idea of directly eating insects is stupid. They can be fed to animals we normally eat (e.g. fish). The advantage is that insects can process stuff that we would otherwise throw away, and are very efficient.

I don't think that your conclusion follows from your argument. You could say the same thing about directly eating vegetables -- they can be fed to animals we normally eat (e.g., cattle).

More directly to your point, isn't there significant energy inefficiency from eating higher on the food chain?

It’s less efficient higher up the food chain. I think the point being made is a grasshopper, goats or cows can digest plants a human could never and get sustenance out of. They have different food processing stomachs

I agree with your points - each step of processing feed material leaks some of the efficiencies gained by harvesting at lower levels. Generally the benefits from chaining production come from the lower level consuming the waste products of the higher level, like fertilizing aquatic plants with fish waste.

Where insects could make a big difference is replacing more expensive or less effective inputs into higher-level products, ideally commodities. For example, if we could produce breads using crickets that have higher caloric densities for the same price that would be a huge global win. We're not there yet though.

Every step up on the food chain loses roughly 90% of the energy.

I do not understand how the first sentence was supported by the next two sentences. Hundreds of millions of people eat insects daily, and it seems way more efficient than using them as an intermediary food source.

If it keeps cows alive it should be good enough for humans too.

I wondering how switching to a diet of grass would work out for the average human...

Grasses are some of the most common food staples. Wheat, rye, barley, rice, maize, oats, and others

As we have only one stomach and lack symbiotic bacteria that allow ruminants to digest cellulose the average human would quickly starve.

"Also, as someone who used to be heavily into protein, I don't buy the notion that people need more protein than what they are currently getting. A human body really doesn't need that much protein, and even body builders don't need as much protein as they often consume. If someone is telling you that you need to consume protein, it's probably because they're trying to sell you something. Even more so if they are calling it a "super-food"."

Totally agree. Most people need more exercise, not more protein. Maybe once they exercise 6x a week for 2 hours we should think about getting more protein.

Wait, are there people out there that consume absurd amounts of protein for "health" reasons without doing any exercise?

Do they seriously think they have a protein deficiency?

Yes! I have seen this a lot in the US. Some overweight guy/gal will proclaim "I need some protein right now" (no idea on what this determination is based on) or ask me (vegetarian) "where do you get your protein?".

I've seen cereal boxes that say "good source of protein", and I feel like the sports bars section has a new brand of protein cookie or brownie every time I walk by it. Like yeah, you'll get diabeetus, but you'll have your protein!

*diabetes

woosh

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/diabeetus

Is it me or are Americans are more protein-minded than Europeans? Americans talking about health and food will often bring up protein in the first sentence, whereas a European (at least here in the Netherlands) more often will talk about fats, antioxidants, fibers. Protein is almost an afterthought. This is pure anecdotal evidence of course.

I think it's a new fad, tons of this "protein food" is popping up everywhere, even at gas stations.

Often marketed in the same way as energy drinks are marketed "You do hard work, you need the proteins."

And because nearly everybody thinks of themselves as "doing hard work", even in an office, people buy the stuff like an "all-in-one meal" solution.

As somebody who works in medical nutrition I'm kinda sour about this, for years I've been telling people at work that this will be a big thing soon and we'd be in exactly the right place, with exactly the kind of experience, to get in early on this.

Like most of my ideas it was deemed too far-fetched and so we did nothing, now the stuff is popping up everywhere, sold by companies with no real background in nutrition, kinda similar to Soylent.

Part of the problem is indeed that people don't understand that if you work in an office you should almost certainly think of yourself as sedentary even if you spend a huge chunk of your spare time on physical activities, as most people seem to exclude those 8hours + commute when they picture who they are in terms of activity.

So people plug in their numbers in online calculators and mark themselves as "active" and get numbers out that often make no sense for their actual activity levels.

I always found Soylent funny, as my mom had been consuming a similar local product for the past 20 years. Only superficial difference to Soylent was that this product was intentionally low on calories, but otherwise a full meal replacement.

Being an entrepreneur is hard, though. It's a huge gamble, so it's hard to pull people in.

Well protein is more filling and you may actually consume less total calories that way. Just guessing.

Too much protein just makes you fat. There is nothing good about it.

Too much of any food makes you fat, it’s right there in the label “too much” after all. The issue is to what degree you can use protein and fiber to suppress appetite, not whether it’s possible to overeat protein (it definitely is).

If you combine it with insoluble and soluble fiber it's very filling. Guess what the macros are for beans and legumes?

That's true, but it's also a balancing act since after a certain point the body converts protein into glucose.

I remember how, after years of eating high-carb low-fat foods, I discovered how satiating protein-rich meal could be. Well, that and one high in fat. No longer did I feel the constant craving, but at the same time it became easy to go "woohoo!" and eat way more protein than was necessary. I'm sure years from now doctors will ask me what the hell I was doing when they find my kidneys have been wrecked.

Just look at alot of paleo diets....they try to replace the carb calories with fat/protein.

The reality is most people should be eating large amounts of vegetables (not starchy ones like corn), meat once a day, some fruit, some milk products.

If people _really_ wanted to be healthy they'd be eating things like riced broccoli with a vegetarian curry with low fat content for lunch/dinner. (i.e. Vindaloo with beans)

For breakfast, have some yogurt, meat, carbs.

Paleo is a little overzealous IMO, as I don't think there's really a problem with some dairy, some rice, and fruit here and there. All of the foods you mentioned are better than a typical high carb, high sugar diet. I think the main value of any diet, whether it's paleo, Atkins, South Beach, etc., is that they are low sugar. It's really sugar, in my experience, that is a major contributor to keeping people overweight and hooked on unhealthy food.

However, I would encourage you to do some research and test your assumption that people shouldn't eat much fat(which seems to be what you're implying).

I wasn't discouraging milk products, sorry.

I'm not really a pure "Paleo" type. I get all my fat from whole milk, the one-a-day meat dish, cheese, yogurt, and oil/butter I use to cook stuff with. One curry + vegetable dish, for instance, is like 25% of your expected fat consumption.

I eat less fat and sugar than a normal American but I still have a couple ounces of fat with every meal. I probably eat about 80% of the recommended about of fat. To me, the thing most fail to notice is how much fat they add to their cooking.

The advantage of protein is that you can build tissue, and also turn it into glucose/fat. You can't build protein out of carbs or fat though. In case of doubt, more protein is the safe option. But I agree more often than not there's no actual doubt.

Well, if you're unable to produce all the protein needed for all ongoing tissue building, you have a deficiency. Anything more than that will just be metabolized. And, well, you're very unlikely to be under that limit.

The companies who are advertising the protein content are probably doing very little if anything to "bump up" their protein content. It's probably all about marketing what is currently selling things. Kind of like how vegetable oils used to (and maybe they still do) advertise that they're "cholesterol free".

They're doing some. You can taste the difference very clearly in most cases, and people expect high protein bars etc. to taste like saw dust. I've yet to taste a single "high protein" product that does not taste awful. And I've tried a lot, to find the ones I consider sufficiently inoffensive to supplement my diet with.

The thing is they don't need to do much. Adding some whey or casein is cheap and easy enough, and they don't need to add much to supplement the protein content that's already there.

0.31-0.36 grams per lbs as recommended by Valter Longo if you are below the age of 65. that’s probably indeed less that many intake

https://valterlongo.com/daily-longevity-diet/

Even most people who exercise a lot don't need it. I used to lift heavy weights 5x a week. "Heavy" in this context was 190kg squats, 140kg bench etc., which put me withing striking distance of competitive powerlifting levels for my weight class (for drug tested meets anyway).

I used protein supplements on and off, and there was really no noticeable difference in performance. For most who lift a lot it is mostly because once you get to that level, your increases have levelled off so much that if it increases your performance 1%, that's significant.

Meanwhile, when I first started, I doubled my lifts in the first month or two, and now, after a year off from lifting I'm adding ~5% a week at the moment (those increases will slow down quickly)

So if you really want to reach your very peak, you're willing to put up with a lot of things for 1% here, 0.5% there. While if you just want to stay healthy, you just need to be over a fairly trivially achievable minimum.

That said, my one reason for still paying attention to my protein intake, is that if you set a rough calorie goal, and make sure to eat a lot of protein, my experience at least is that it's a lot easier to keep my carb intake down (put another way: try eating 500kcal of lean chicken breast vs. 500kcal of chocolate and see which one keeps you from eating more the longest) - making sure my first meal of the day is protein rich makes it a lot easier for me to stick to diets and that's a much more important effect for me than whatever tiny effect I get on my lifts.

Speaking as a vegan, veg protein powder is very convenient compared to always having to include alt-meats and protein rich foods (like soy, tvp or vital wheat gluten) in my meals. For breakfast I get 30g to start my day with, it's nice. Iirc, my daily recommended intake is somewhere around 50g, which can occasionally be a challenge to meet daily.

> I don't think that people are going to gradually shift to consuming a very different flavor.

How do they taste?

Musty, and the bigger ones taste like what they eat. Grasshoppers have a strong chlorophyll flavor, and not in a good way.

Personally if I need protein, I’d rather eat beans and lentils if I’m avoiding meat and fish. Bugs are never going to be cheaper or more efficient than lentils!

Most of them are relatively tasteless and people season them with lots of chili, salt and pepper, its the texture and gooey insides that turns people off.

I've had cicadas, scorpions and silk worms along with the normal crickets etc.

its the texture and gooey insides that turns people off

and the intestines full of insect shit, bluntly.

That's a common perception, although usually insects are supposed to be "purged" for a day or two to clear their intestines. In the case of caterpillars, they can be easily eviscerated(although it's a disgusting process).

Not like a whole lot, usually. :) In my experience, the taste ranges between earthy, nutty, and sometimes "crustaceany". Even when they hit some of the better flavors(according to my cultural background), they're nothing to write home about.

It's really things like grubs and caterpillars that have the protein, the fats, and the flavor. The sphinx moth caterpillar tacos I've made were easily comparable to shrimp tacos, and were some of the best tacos I've ever eaten. (I did this as a sort of personal study as I never hear of people eating them today but apparently they were a staple of some native peoples.)

Good luck getting people to eat wiggly, squirmy things, though.

This "gap" will be easier to bridge than people seem to think.

Think about a classic hamburger. It doesn't resemble a "grazing, hairy thing" at all. An insect based hamburger (so based on ground insect 'meat' instead of cow) wound't resemble a "wiggly, squirmy thing" either.

Ditto chicken and pork. Honestly if our animal-based foods looked more like the animal there would probably be more vegetarians :)

Honestly if our animal-based foods looked more like the animal there would probably be more vegetarians :)

I have a one word rebuttal: ribs. More broadly whole hog bbq, roast pig, whole fish, whole roast birds, etc. Stereotypes aside, a lot of the world’s favorite foods are clearly body parts, or the whole body, and people enjoy gnawing on the bones. Don’t underestimate the degree to which deliciousness overcomes squeamishness.

Bugs tend not to be delicious, although they are nutritious, that’s less of a draw. People struggle to eat fruits and veggies which evolved to look appealing, because a steak tastes better to them. If you want people to eat bugs they need to compete on deliciousness with other available foodstuffs. If a bug burger doesn’t taste as good as a hamburger, or Impossible burger, or veggie burger... it will mot be adopted. The bugs I’ve eaten range from OK, through bland (with good seasonings doing the work) through unappealing. That’s not going to get beyond novelty, or niche adoption. People will eat a grilled portobello mushroom or bean burger before they eat fried crickets, because the burgers taste better.

It's kind of a cultural thing. I was not a big fish eater before I came to Japan. I grew up in Winnipeg, which is far from the sea and even now I don't like river/lake fish. But even when I had fish in Canada (or saw it in the store), it was fillets (or fingers :-) ). In Japan, you are often served a recognisable fish. For small fish, you often eat the whole thing -- head and all! I had the strangest experience a few years ago when I went to the aquarium and they had a big school of shishamo fish. The first thing that came to my mind was, "They look delicious".

I think it's just that cultural programming -- what does food look like? Once you start to associate that thing with good food, it seems delicious no matter what it is.

It's really ironic that Westerners are disgusted by fish heads but Asians will fight over them at communal meals. I spent time in Japan and China and I'm a convert too. The heads are full of delicious fat. Whole fish in spicy Sichuan sauce is my absolute favorite splurge item at Chinese restaurants.

It really depends on the Westerners. If you mean Americans, then you’ll be right in regards to a large number of them. If you mean South and Central Americans, and many Europeans then you’re probably off base. “Westerner” is no more a useful label than “Easterner” in this.

Round patties of ground beef were around long before someone put them inbetween slices of bread, cheese, and vegetables.

They've been a Russian staple for at least a few centuries.

Thanks for the reply. Yeah, I also have my doubts. I'm not so sure Americans could do wiggly squirmy things. It would take me a lot of effort to get comfortable eating live grubs. Then again, 50 years ago I doubt most people would have guessed how popular sushi would become.

I would actually be OK with something like a sausage that's 40% pig, 60% crickets, if it's possible. I also wouldn't mind if half of my McDonalds burger was made of crickets. A reduction in demand for meat might also have the positive effect of enabling the production of higher-quality meat from better-cared-for livestock.

That's pretty brilliant.

Why bother with 40% pig? Why not replace it with 40% plant based fibers?

Probably so it still tastes good.

Then you probably don't want crickets which aren't known for their tasty flavor or sausage like texture.

If you're willing to dilute pork you can also use a much more flavorful and fatty cut than you would otherwise.

For the past few months Sonic had offered their "Signature Slinger" burger whose patty was a 60% beef and 40% mushroom blend. My wife and I adored it, but sadly they pulled it from the menu just recently.

Optimum adaptation for weight lifters is 1.3 - 1.8g for each kg of bodyweight. So, a 180lb person that weightlifts should eat ~144g protein. But, you can do better

>Elevated protein consumption, as high as 1.8-2.0 g · kg(-1) · day(-1) depending on the caloric deficit, may be advantageous in preventing lean mass losses during periods of energy restriction to promote fat loss.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22150425

The ".8g per pound of bodyweight" rule is pretty solid.

It makes a difference, but the difference is small enough that unless you're a serious lifter (or on a really drastic diet) you won't get anywhere near noticing it.

It matters for a serious lifter because the year over year improvements once you're past your "newbie gains" are so low that every tiny little advantage you can get matters if you care about maximising your lifts.

But we're talking about maybe the top 5% of gym goers, and a much smaller proportion of people in general.

I'm not sure if there are numbers but it seems a lot of people I know have very carb rich diets. It would probably be good for them to switch some of that out for protein.

...and fat.

I switched out my morning half-and-half in my coffee w/ one tbsp of organic unsalted butter and one tbsp of coconut oil.

It has helped me lose body fat and curbed my appetite.

You put butter in coffee?

Yes.

Initially, I thought it would be gross, but it actually tastes good, and I tend to drink less because the caffeine seems more powerful.

You can't prove that your change in coffee additives was what caused a loss of body fat or reduction in appetite. It could have been caused by other factors and there was no experimental control.

This is not really a good idea, especially if they are getting enough protein in their diets already (about 0.8g per kg of bodyweight) which most people have no problem getting. Eating too much protein-rich food increases the risk of excessive uric acid build-up and can lead to all sorts of fun problems like gout and kidney stress.

Despite what fad diets say, carbs are not bad for you. You will gain weight if you eat too many carbs, but that is the same for too much fat or too much protein.

Unless you already have kidney problems, most people will find it exceedingly difficult to eat enough protein for it to be a problem.

Really you just need 52-58g per day of protein for men if I recall correctly.

Don't throw stones at me here, I'm just the messenger... if you are living an active life style and would like to have some muscle, the golden rule at the gym is that you need at least 1 gram of protein per pound in your body (daily intake). An though I find that there's tons of mis-information out there about what's needed, the 1g per pound is surprisingly consistent throughout most researchers on the subject.

It's been a super long time since I looked at this (decades), but at least when I did a lot of reading on it, this kind of recommendation is based on making sure you have protein availability in the bloodstream when it is being taken up for muscle building. It's not so much the amount as the timing. Again, at least at the time when I was reading about this stuff, there were lots of recommendations for having 5-7 meals a day, or splitting your carb and protein intake (for example eating your protein 1 hour after eating your carbs in order to take advantage of the insulin rush).

There are dangers corresponding too much protein intake -- calcium depletion, for example. It's also pretty hard on your kidneys. A lot of advice in the gym is not necessarily geared towards health as much as it is to maximise muscle development/protection. I will also say that nutrition research is chock full of poor science and worse explanations of that science by well meaning popular books. It was my hobby when I was at university (hence decades ago) to look up the actual papers referenced by popular sports nutrition theorists and never once did I find that it held up (either the papers they were referencing were horrible studies, or they got the conclusions completely wrong). It's been a long time since I've had access to a good library, so I've completely lost touch, but I suspect that little has changed.

I do wonder about some sports teams and whether or not they are puzzling things out. For example, the Sky cycling team is famous for their "marginal gains" approach -- trying to get a tenth of a percentage of improvement from anywhere. But I haven't found them to be particularly forthcoming about nutrition, for example.

https://bayesianbodybuilding.com/the-myth-of-1glb-optimal-pr...

Most people will find it damn hard to eat that much protein without getting a far too high calorie intake for their activity level.

Having lifted for 14 years, with some shorter breaks, with protein intake ranging from less than half of that to meeting that, I feel confident that you need nothing like those amounts. If you're a competitive lifter, you might want to push your intake up towards those levels, but the improvements you can expect are tiny.

The research indeed does show improvements, at higher intake, but the difference is small enough that it really is irrelevant to most people.

Most people will take years of serious lifting with a strict focus on increasing strength/volume (rather than "just" staying healthy) before they lift heavy enough for it to be something to even think about. As someone else said, timing might play in a bit more, but total daily intake does not need to be that high.

Oh yeah, absolutely, I'm just talking minimums for body maintenance and staying "healthy". If you're wanting to get gains, you'll need more but not as much as people think. I've had plenty of talks with nutritionists, dieticians, and training/PT specialists over the years when I played sports competitively. There is an upper curve on grams per pound though when it's just converted into energy; it's also not the best equation because you should really be converting based on lean body mass rather than gross body pass (incl. fat). This is the type of stuff that my coaches preached and taught: https://www.livestrong.com/article/489271-minimum-protein-in...

> The taste of insects simply does not compare to meat and poultry.

Poultry, especially the meat of chicken and turkeys is close to tasteless. I would argue the opposite, the average consumer doesn't really care for the taste of the meat itself as long as the marinade is delicious.

You mean "factory farmed poultry" ...wild bird meat is amazing, and free-range chicken (and their eggs) has a nice flavor too. When they eat a lot of insects and other foods they find in nature it makes a huge difference.

> wild bird meat > free-range chicken

Words don't suffice do describe the difference. Anyone with enough time and space should get a few chickens. They're amazing at converting insects and weeds into food, and they're quite funny as pets too.

Which makes me wonder, what would industrialized farming and eating of insects do to the taste?

They would taste like chicken.

Depends what you mean by taste, but chicken is a blank canvas to be painted with flavors. What it does provide is an excellent texture that I doubt can be replaced with insect protein.

Dark meat roasted chicken is hardly tasteless

I have to disagree, chicken tastes really great when cooked with spices and seasoning, I lived in Mexico City for 3 years, tried maybe 4-5 different insect dishes at fancy spots as well as ones in the market. Insects at best taste like maybe crispy paper, with spices and seasoning, they didnt get much better- I think people ate insects when they were starving.

Nothing beats homemade chicken stock. There is no packaged food that can replicate the taste of homemade chicken stock.

White meat is tasteless; the society as a whole got super into it because it's lower-fat and "healthier".

I would think insect protein could easily play the role that soy protein does in lots of 'mystery meat' processed foods like hot dogs or hamburgers. That said, I am skeptical it could be produced more cheaply than soy.

IDK, the reason soy works so well there is the texture you're able to produce with it. I feel like one of the largest issues most people have with insects are the texture.

The bigger issue here becomes all the side effects of consuming large quantities of soy and how it affects hormone production. Not saying cricket flour wouldn't have a new set of health problems associated with it, but it could be a reason for people to move into insect protein.

There is no hormonal side effect for humans consuming large quantities of soy.

I’d like to believe this, but there’s too much published research to the contrary.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soybean-fertility...

If only that article linked to actual studies to backup those claims. The article also discusses rats at length, but doesn't support any of its claims with human studies. The one link I attempted to follow is a dead link. That being said, my confidence in the author's ability to speak intelligently on this subject is pretty damn low.

So here are actual human studies with data.

Clinical studies show no effects of soy protein or isoflavones on reproductive hormones in men: results of a meta-analysis.[1]

Isoflavones made simple - genistein's agonist activity for the beta-type estrogen receptor mediates their health benefits.[2]

Soy food and isoflavone intake in relation to semen quality parameters among men from an infertility clinic. [3]

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19524224 [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16513288 [3] https://academic.oup.com/humrep/article/23/11/2584/2913898

There are of course hundreds of millions of people in Asia eating large quantities of soy every day - presumably if that correlated with hormonal disruption it would be hard to ignore. Now, it's possible that other aspects of their diets influence how that impacts them, but there are plenty of people elsewhere in the world eating tofu etc. frequently.

Also, it seems to be questionable how efficient crickets actually are when it comes to Protein according to some studies:

> Although it has been suggested that crickets reared for human or livestock consumption may result in a more sustainable supply of protein, this study finds that such conclusions will depend, in large part, on what the crickets are fed and which systems of livestock production they are compared to. When fed grain-based diets at a scale of economic relevance, populations of crickets in this study showed little improvement in PCE compared to broiler chickens fed similar diets. When fed processed, organic side-streams of relatively high quality, cricket populations achieved a harvestable size. Yet, whether crickets could be raised economically on substrates of similar quality and level of processing requires further analysis. The unprocessed and lower-quality organic side-streams tested in this study could not support adequate growth and survival of cricket populations. Therefore, the potential for crickets to supplement the global supply of dietary protein appears to be more limited than has been recently suggested.

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....

This study was just on grain-based diets, which aren't the first thing that comes to mind when I think of cricket harvesting.

For efficiency, you need a cold-blooded animal that eats plants.

Many fish qualify, but they take up space and foul the water.

How about iguanas?

I have heard that insects taste like roasted almonds or other nuts. If this is true, why would Americans even feel the need to start eating them? I still freak out every time I see a big moth in my house. I can't touch them. I can only touch small bugs ~ fruit fly.

Insects can give some different texture to a dish. Just don't do an "only insect with some seasonning" dish: make something like veggies or pasta and add some insects for the crunchy feel. Think Paella, not barbecued steak.

You know, traditional paellas already have snails as an ingredient, which aren't insects but I think still have the cultural unfamiliarity to Western palates.

Take them out of their shell and tell people they're a type of clam and they'll never know the difference.

As a Frenchman I had to taste snails. Dreadful. There is no taste, just some earthy blob drowning in butter and garlic.

I tried three times in three different restaurants and I was disappointed every time.

>As someone who was eating insects long before cricket protein bars became in vogue, I don't see entomophagy becoming anything more than a fad in the west, especially America.

Entirely agree. I've been reading those articles for the "rise of bug farming" for the last 30+ years.

It's like those "holographic disks" -- something that's always coming in the next 10 years.

I don't doubt some such business exist. I doubt they'll become anything substantial, both here and even over there where they traditionally eat some insects anyway.

The food industry already intentionally feeds us insects, though most people don't know it. The red dye in many food products, for example, often originates from industrially squished insects.

https://www.wired.com/2015/09/cochineal-bug-feature/

>The taste of insects simply does not compare to meat and poultry. Granted, this has a lot to do with cultural expectations, but that's exactly why I don't think that people are going to gradually shift to consuming a very different flavor.

Not even the taste, if you process it into something like a bar or a protein powder the texture is not terribly palatable.

The imminent insects-as-food transition has been "just around the corner" at least since I was reading Popular Science magazine in middle school.

Always with the same scare-pretext of "whelp, we'll have no choice! get ready to knock back some crickets whether you like it or not ;)". Then it plots out how much meat Americans eat and shows how it's unsustainable.

It just doesn't follow logically to me.

What seems more likely is that we will ween off of the idea that we need meat in every single meal. And once you also factor in the possibility of pricing in externalities, meat will become – at least – a dinner treat.

Meat is already subsidized by animal neglect, sketchy tactics, and mass pollution. I wouldn't mind if we were paying the honest price of meat at the market today. We'd get this cultural change on the roll, and we'd probably have something better already. And it won't be bugs.

i think even more likely: we will find a way to make our consumption of meat more sustainable

Like all that "just around the corner" lab grown meat?

We seem to have seen a massive, measurable improvement in lab grown meat in the past 2-3 years. Going down from hundreds of thousands of dollars to single digit prices[0].

I don't know how the market is going to respond, but if we get a similar decrease in price it should get a large market share, having no noticeable negative attributes.

[0] https://bigthink.com/ideafeed/answering-how-a-sausage-gets-m... [1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/clean-meat-lab-gr...

I'm looking for the source for that number; it seems to come from Mark Post (head of a company in the space), and the closest I can find to an original quote is him saying last year that "it's possible" to grow at $80/kilo (i.e. single-digits per hamburger patty).

I would be very skeptical of that specific number while there are no market transactions going on.

Or meat will become more expensive and people will move towards vegetable based diets.

I've mostly cut meat out of my diet and it's saving me probably $50 per week. I don't eat those expensive meat replacements like quorn though.

I didn't cut meat out specifically for financial reasons, or any particular reason really, I just stopped wanting to eat meat. The financial benefits are just a bonus.

Many Native American tribes practiced land fishing, where long nets were strung out and left for a day to catch grasshoppers and whatever else got stuck in them. I'm having trouble finding links though:

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/history-of-eating-bugs...

http://www.hollowtop.com/finl_html/amerindians.htm

http://labs.russell.wisc.edu/insectsasfood/files/2012/09/Boo... <- warning PDF

"En'neh, or grasshoppers, are eaten by the Konkau. They catch them with nets, or by driving them into pits, then roast them and reduce them to powder for preservation."

You can live very well off the land (even in deserts) if you are willing to eat insects, because their combined mass can be higher than the visible wildlife. Ethically if I had to choose between hunting and butchering animals or having more food than I could handle from passively-caught grasshoppers, I might choose the latter!

This idea is terrible. Chitin, the sugar in bug exoskeletons, activates the innate human immune system. Switching out our proteins with bugs would surely cause a rise in inflammatory and autoimmune diseases.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chitin#Humans_and_other_mammal...

Can't you crush the insects into powder and remove the chitin afterwards?

Wow, cool. I'm skeptical that this poses a substantial impediment, but that's incredibly fascinating in its own right.

Can we observe this effect among heavy mushroom eaters?

I practice a yeast-free diet in order to control an autoimmune disease. So anecdotally, yes.

There is tons of research demonstrating the immuno-moduating effects of mushrooms and yeast.

Non-human chitinases would simply be added as a processing step. This might be as simple as canning the grubs in tomato sauce, or serving them with avocado.

People do eat mushrooms and shellfish, after all.

Larger insects can have their exoskeletons removed or partially removed, and those can be turned into chitosan, just like the shells from peeled shrimp.

The Wikipedia article mentions that chitin's degradation products are still recognized. Do you think these chitinases would break the bonds enough to bypass immune recognition?

It was not clear to me whether the degradation products of human chitinase and non-human chitinases are the same, which is why I explicitly specified non-human chitinases.

It seems likely to me that people with latex-fruit allergies would also be allergic to the breakdown products from non-human chitinases, whereas those with shellfish and dust mite allergies would also be allergic to the breakdown products from human chitinase. Either way, it is likely to be a food allergen.

Ugh I always forget this, and about every 5 years I'll accidentally eat some crab in shell. My face will turn red, lungs tighten up, and any part of my skin that touches it turns into a red rash. It is a real thing.

It's probably not chitin you are allergic to. It is also in mushrooms, and if you can eat those without a problem it is something else.

I tested positive for chitin allergy from my doctor via a skin test.

To be honest, I'm holding out for clean meat, eating insects just seems unnecessary to me, especially because of welfare considerations—insects potentially have the capacity to feel pain and you have to kill a significant amount of insects just to make a small amount of food.

"Considerable empirical evidence supports the assertion that insects feel pain and are conscious of their sensations. In so far as their pain matters to them, they have an interest in not being pained and their lives are worsened by pain. Furthermore, as conscious beings, insects have future (even if immediate) plans with regard to their own lives, and the death of insects frustrates these plans. In that sentience appears to be an ethically sound, scientifically viable basis for granting moral status and in consideration of previous arguments which establish a reasonable expectation of consciousness and pain in insects, I propose the following, minimum ethic: We ought to refrain from actions which may be reasonably expected to kill or cause nontrivial pain in insects when avoiding these actions has no, or only trivial, costs to our own welfare." — Jeffery A. Lockwood

http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...

I'm much more enthusiastic about plant-based foods than insects. The impossible burger is pretty fantastic - there's no cultural barrier to overcome, and I expect it's even better for the planet than crickets.

You would need to quantify what you mean by better for the planet. The number of insects, worms, rodents, frogs, and other small animals destroyed by mechanized farming is staggering. Also, I have had the impossible burger and was not at all impressed, though it looks absolutely perfect.

Given what it takes to turn vegetable mass into something resembling a burger, if it came down to it, I'd rather stick to real vegetables.

I think its fair to say that processed food is generally not very good for you. I don't see why that situation is improved because the food being processed is from a vegan source.

I think we have to evaluate each processed food on its own merits rather than just saying there’s a negative correlation.

> I don't see why that situation is improved because the food being processed is from a vegan source.

my favorite example of this is the plastic package of organic vegan marshmallows i saw at Whole Foods once

> my favorite example of this is the plastic package of organic vegan marshmallows i saw at Whole Foods once

Is this funny because of all the non-vegan marshmallows that come in non-plastic packaging, making the vegan ones worse for the environment? Any change has to be weighed against the actual alternatives.

the alternative i was thinking of was non-processed food.

but, ok, good point point about the packaging. almost every fruit and vegetable from a supermarket's produce section ends up in a plastic bag.

Processed food always being bad is an oversimplification. Try having eating a raw potato sometime and you'll see what I mean (seriously don't they are toxic). Cooking is a basic form of processing to make the foods nutrition actually processable or processable more efficiently. The 'processing' most associated with the term are optimized for taste and shelf life often at the expense of nutrition or too much of a good thing. For instance protein - it is held up as a holy grail 'good nutrient' but it turns out that going too high is bad for the kidneys and thus general health. That isn't unique to processed foods either - Steve Job's fruit based diet put Ashton Kutcher in the hospital with pancreatic issues when he tried it for getting into character!

Past failures at making something more healthy have failed to measure an additional variable - say margarine being better before a sufficient understanding of transfats and back when they thought all cholesterol was the same.

I mean that eating plants directly likely emits less carbon and takes up less land than processing plants through cricket bodies.

And I eat the impossible burger often. I like it a lot.

Animals require much more feed in than you get usable meat out. Meat production increases the amount of plants you need to farm so even though plant agriculture is bad for the environment generally the best way to actually reduce it is to eat less meat.

> The impossible burger

This is a wheat and potato proteins based burger, where they add leghemoglobin grown in yeast, to give some of that bloody, irony taste. And coconut oil for fat.

If you're in New York City area or New Jersey, or Chicago area, your nearest White Castle probably has the "impossible slider" for $1.99.

Very cool. I hadn't heard about them at White Castle. Nice to know.

Fatburger has also started to serve Impossible Burgers. Interestingly at our local Fatburger the price was the same $6 for either a regular Fatburger or for an "Impossible" Fatburger. The way I see it, either way, it's a Fatburger. Fatburger.

So does Wahlburger.

Full Ingredient List: Water, Textured Wheat Protein, Coconut Oil, Potato Protein, Natural Flavors, 2% or less of: Leghemoglobin (Soy), Yeast Extract, Salt, Konjac Gum, Xanthan Gum, Soy Protein Isolate, Vitamin E, Vitamin C, Thiamin (Vitamin B1), Zinc, Niacin, Vitamin B6, Riboflavin (Vitamin B2), Vitamin B12

Give me that rather than icky bugs!

i agree that the taste and texture are similar to eating a meat hamburger. but, i just hope these companies (Impossible Burger, Beyond Burger, et al) can bring down the price.

we bought frozen Beyond Burgers recently "on sale" from our local grocery store for $3.00 per 4 oz burger. good quality ground beef is cheaper than that.

Where are you finding good quality ground beef for <$3.00/lb?

Good quality, to me, implies the animals were not mistreated, were fed a reasonable (preferably grain free) diet, the farm is sustainably ranching the animals it grows, etc.

I recently bought a whole beef from a local farmer, and it was organic, 100% grass fed, and it worked out to $7/lb. I'd be shocked to learn there was a waaay cheaper option out there.

sorry for the confusion. a frozen package containing just two 4 oz Beyond Burger patties cost us $6.00. i.e. we paid $3.00 for each one quarter pound Beyond Burger.

so, if you can find hamburger meat for less than $12 a pound, you're paying less than we paid for Beyond Burgers.

This would reverse overnight in the US if we redirected our agricultural subsidies.

You can buy pasture-raised / grass-fed ground beef from Australia, and US-raised ground bison, in US supermarkets for $9-10 per pound, so no, it wouldn't. Even for cheap corn- and soy-fed CAFO-raised meat, agricultural subsidies lower the cost by a negligeable fraction.

hmmm. my comment was down voted. i'm wondering if someone might be able to offer some explanatory notes about that. not sure what was offensive about it.

"there's no cultural barrier to overcome"

There is indeed a cultural barrier in the United States when it comes to vegetarian diets. Many Americans avoid "fake meat" due to their cultural beliefs.

Yeah, but you won't find any Americans that avoid eating things made of plants. You will definitely find Americans that avoid eating things made of bugs.

as a european living in America I would somewhat disagree

I've had more than one colleague who modifies anything on a menu until it's mostly meat, carbs & cheese

Carbs in the colloquial sense are still plant based - disregarding the comparative traces of carbs in animal products.

Many Americans avoid eating things made out of plants. For example, tofu or veggie burgers. Like I said, this is a cultural phenomenon, similar to but less severe than the cultural proclivity to avoid eating insects.

Though many Americans don't seem to mind eating snails.

I eat tofu quite often, but I don't eat fake meat. If I want meat, I buy meat. I don't like the idea of plant protein being tortured until it resembles a completely different product.

Funny use of words, avoiding figuratively "tortured" plant proteins and instead opting for literally tortured animals.

> "Many Americans avoid "fake meat" due to their cultural beliefs."

Can you elaborate on this? Downthread you mention not eating tofu or veggie burgers is due to avoidance of plants. This seems a peculiar way to phrase it. While many Americans probably don't get enough fresh vegetables and fruits, many still do include various vegetables and fruits and grains in their diets. While I do agree that it's culture in the sense that diet does tend to be cultural, "avoidance of plants" or "avoidance of fake meat" due to cultural beliefs seems a particularly odd phrasing. Culinary customs might be better? (I'm trying anemically to think of some parallel characterization of another cultural group, but doing so seems unhelpful.)

I'm surprised this is at all controversial.

Many Americans believe that vegetarianism and veganism are wrong and even offensive belief systems. The foods those people eat instead of meat are part of this wrong belief system, and no 'normal' person who doesn't believe in that system would want to eat those foods. Tofu and veggie burgers being the two biggest offenders.

In my experience, people outside of the big metro areas are not at all shy about sharing the above perspective.

Source: I lived in the Midwest as a vegetarian.

> "Many Americans believe that vegetarianism and veganism are wrong and even offensive belief systems."

These are really strong words. You're also now conflating people who aren't vegetarian with a general dislike of plant food. Someone can be an omnivore and include a lot of plants in their diet. I think most people also think that including plant-based foods in their diet is a good thing (and wish they did more of), even if it's not something they do in their everyday diet.

I've heard of people disagree with strong moralistic positions for vegetarianism/veganism and think strident/militant vegetarians/vegans are "kooky" and are put off by them, but this is due to the stridency, militant, and evangelical nature of those expressing such positions rather than something inherent in vegetarianism/veganism. I can't recall every hearing someone express that vegetarianism is offensive. I've heard people express that vegetarian/vegan diets don't provide full nutrition, so in that sense they think it's wrong, but that's much different from thinking it's morally wrong or offensive.

Sure, you'll get people who aren't tolerant of others viewpoints, but that's generally due to intolerance in general (and on many sides and issues), rather than something inherent in the particular position. And when someone is perceived to have a chip on their shoulder, there's always someone who just wants to push it off for no other reason than that it's there.

You can use "many Americans" to mean many things: there's a lot of people in America, so even a small percentage sharing a particular belief is going to be a lot of people. If you have numbers to support your views, I'd be interested in hearing them. To my reading, you may be particularly sensitive on this issue and in at least some cases reading more into some behavior and statements than may be warranted.

Have a black bean burger and some tempeh on me!

If you're with a group of people at a restaurant that you don't know well and someone says they're gluten free, nobody bats an eye. Even though there's a good chance they're just on a fad diet.

If someone can't eat pork due to their beliefs, same story.

If someone mentions that they're vegetarian/vegan though, guaranteed someone will ask them why and question their beliefs. They'll probably get defensive and state that they could never give up eating steak/bacon/misc flesh, as if the vegetarian is trying to take that away from them.

I disagree that it's guaranteed, but even if that is the case, what you describe here is a far cry from Many Americans believe that vegetarianism and veganism are wrong and even offensive belief systems, Many Americans avoid "fake meat" due to their cultural beliefs, and Many Americans avoid eating things made out of plants. People may question vegetarianism and veganism while these statements can still be false.

> Many Americans avoid "fake meat" due to their cultural beliefs.

Would you order a dish prepared with fake avocado and fake olive oil? If you are happy to eat the genuine product, why would you choose to eat an imitation, barring poverty or lack of availability?

You're abusing the word "fake". Is coconut oil fake olive oil? Just two different substances serving similar purposes, much in the way mushrooms are sometimes used in dishes the way meat might be used. You could call that "fake meat"... or just call it mushrooms.

You used the term "fake meat" in the comment I replied to, I repeated it. I'm a meat eater and of course that doesn't mean I won't order or eat mushrooms. It means I'm unlikely to purchase Morning Star Farms soy-based "Bacon Strips", or other meat imitation products. This is not because of a "cultural belief" it's because I don't have a need to avoid genuine bacon, so why would I buy a soy substitute/imitation?

So would you order a dish with imitation avocado made of soy protein and canola oil?

That's partly because the experience mostly is that they don't taste very satisfying. If I ever tasted vegetarian food that satisfied me the same way bacon or beef does, I'd happily eat more of it. Not ever gotten anywhere close, though.

So I don't think it's so much cultural beliefs as it is experience, coupled with exactly the idea that it is "fake", and coupled with a stereotype of smug vegetarian eating food that people don't expect to taste very nice for ideological reasons. It's associated with choosing away nice tasting food, basically.

Reducing the meat content and adding more of various substitutes would probably work a lot better to change habits than trying to get people to pick vegetarian food, and open the door for cutting more later.

As a side note, I've often pondered what would have the outcome if Subway had 'leaned in' and actually promoted its "50% chicken-50% soy but tastes the same as 100% chicken" as an environmentally sustainable and healthier option instead of trying to hide it and then getting caught.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/03/food-scientists-weig...

As a kid I hated eating insects. I still do - I don't understand how people can.

However, my definition of insects includes crawfish, lobster, urchins etc. They are fancy insects, but I do not see much difference between most seafood and bugs, except the size maybe.

It is socially acceptable to eat seafood. It wasn't always like that. New England had rules against feeding your employees lobster more than once a week!

Give it time, a generation or two, and people will eat bugs. After all, it's just food! What we used to say round my place: it it moves, kill it. If it's dead, cook it, and eat it.

Most people don't think about it that way, but you're right. Insects and crustaceans are all arthropods and similar in many ways.

Personally, I always imagined whoever the first person to eat a lobster was must have been very hungry indeed.

Biology rules :-)

The lobsters they were given were pretty old by the time they got to the consumer so they were more than likely rotten.

Relevant xkcd:

https://www.xkcd.com/1268/

> Some people say it will be like sushi in 20 years. I am really optimistic that it may be a lot faster

This outlook does not seem realistic. 20 years ago I remember watching a news segment on Australian TV about how eating bugs was the future. The people they interviewed were mostly grossed out. I don't think much has changed. I think it's more likely that you'll see people take up a more vegetarian diet if meat starts to become scarce.

I think it might be more than just "culture". Bugs, maggots and worms are associated with disease, decay, and death.

I doubt I've learned to jump when I see a spider, or gross out when I find maggots in the garbage can,there's probably a large portion of instinct there.

I just about tolerate eating shrimp mainly because it tastes so darn good. If it would taste so so, I'd pass.

The whole thing seem more related to lobbying so that large corporations can sell even cheaper junk to us as food. I have no doubts that they would scoop up and sell us processed waste directly from the sewer if they got away with it.

The association is mostly due to urbanization and the effect that has had on the human psyche.

A while ago, an icecream company had "free samples" of cricket icecream in capital cities. You could see the crickets - of course people are going to freak out.

https://concreteplayground.com/sydney/event/feeding-future-p...

I mean come on - the photo on that page is good for headlines but it's got to be terrible for business.

The author of the famous natural farming manifesto The One-Straw Revolution[0], Masanobu Fukuoka[1], was a microbiologist assigned by the Japanese army to evaluate the edibility of various insects encountered by the army as they spread across Southeast Asia. He concluded that almost all of them were edible.

I tried a cricket burger recently at the F&A Next[2] event at Wageningen, Europe's pre-eminent agricultural university[1], which may have even been sourced from the farm in this article. While the taste was OK, I literally woke up early in the morning with stomach pain.

[0] http://www.appropedia.org/images/d/d3/Onestraw.pdf

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

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wageningen_University_and_Rese...

>woke up early in the morning with stomach pain.

Why?

I believe it was the burger, since it was the only thing I ate all day that could have caused such a reaction. Despite the experience I remain a big supporter of vegetarian food and meat alternatives. It's still early days for an industry that has to overturn deep cultural bias.

A couple of folks I helped mentor at a Startup Weekend founded a company called Anteater.

I’m not much of a believer in a western culture change that will see us eating whole insects like we’re living in dystopian Soylent Green.

But I can see protein powder derived from insects being palatable for western audiences.

But can it be produced profitably at scale?

I’ve eaten a bug on a stick streetfood in Cambodia, I’m not a fan.

>But I can see protein powder derived from insects being palatable for western audiences.

In early nineties Russia, one brand of instant noodles immensely popular.

A translator made an error on its packaging, translating "soy protein" as "insect protein" and it was there for, I think, like 3 or 4 years.

And for those 3 years, Russians genuinely believed that those brownish-pinkish crumbs inside were something of insect origin. Yes, but they still ate it.

That’s really interesting.

I wonder if the macho factor like often seen with extra hot sauce comes into play with such labeling?

> I’m not much of a believer in a western culture change that will see us eating whole insects like we’re living in dystopian Soylent Green

How much of a change is it, really, from [0]?

[0] https://www.foodandwine.com/seafood/shellfish/13-best-places...

Good point!

Marketing for lobster changed from a food for poor folks to food for rich folks over time.

Maybe a name change too.

Like what happened with the seriously ugly Patagonian Toothfish remarketed as Chilean Sea Bass.

I think Anteater is an interesting company. Unfortunately I never got round to actually talking to them, despite working in the same building a few times.

It seems that their business model is to target high end restaurants and work down from there. Their product is more of a garnish than an actual food.

They really need to work on their website too.

Admittedly I was quite biased and kept asking about the palatable protein powder.

They’ve had success with high end restaurants like Roots.

Not sure how big a market it is.

Agreed that garnish is a good way of describing it. Accessory rather than core.

Some good folks on the team. Two founders still in it.

They won slots on the last Edmund Hillary Fellowship cohort.

Profitable industrial scaling of insect protein and any other nutrients/byproducts will be interesting to watch.

Particularly any insect bioengineered for food/chemical manufacturing.

But I suspect NZ will NOT be the place for genetic engineering of insects.

Somebody brought a bunch of salty crisp mealworms to work. It was a little wierd first, but they basically taste like thin paper chips; not at all a bad taste.

For those of you on diets, if I recall correctly they had pretty high fat, pretty high protein (like 50ish %) and very low amounts of carbs). Might be worth considering for health issue.

"the muddy pens where as many as 1,200 pigs once wallowed into a climate-controlled cricket farm. It’s on pace to yield 1,500 kilograms (3,300 pounds) of the edible protein this year"

Pigs reach slaughter weight at around 6 months of age at which point it yields around 180lbs of hanging weight meat.

The article further claims a 18/63 ratio of land required per gram of protein in favor of crickets.

Assuming they previously slaughtered 1000 pigs a year -> 180,000 lbs * 63/18 = 630,000lbs is their expected cricket protein capacity which is ~200X more than their current output. Any ideas on why the numbers are so different ?

Edit: I just realized that a pig steak is mostly water and the cricket protein is likely dehydrated. So it more like 50X not 200X.

In a study conducted by University of Turku, 70% of the Finnish respondents were interested in edible insects and 50% said they would buy food made of insects, if it were available [0].

Supermarkets in my area here in Helsinki have sold insect foods (breads, bars) for several months already. I can't comment on the taste as I am a vegetarian :)

[0]: http://www.utu.fi/fi/yksikot/fff/palvelut/kehitysprojektit/h...

If I had to bet between insects and plant-based meat substitutes like the Impossible Burger, I'd bet on the latter. Insects are cool, but they just doesn't make sense as a major food staple.

They don't really taste like much. Texture wise, adult insects have too much chitin. They're not as easy to farm as you think (high death rates).

But the real problem is that they're basically snacks. Finger-food. Toppings. A person who accepts entomology is not going to automatically stop eating beef, pork, chicken and fish.

I met a bunch of people here in Stellenbosch, South Africa at a startup called Gourmet Grubb. Their first product is an ice-cream made from insect milk, trademarked EntoMilk - no kidding! Fascinating stuff, check them out here: https://gourmetgrubb.com/

Ignoring whether people want to eat it, is insect protein really worth it? According to https://entomologytoday.org/2015/04/15/crickets-are-not-a-fr..., it's about as efficient as chicken. And for insects to produce high-quality protein they need high-quality feed.

I had an insect burger lately, consisting of crickets and mealworms. It was a large amount of critters but with a pathetic amount of protein for a relatively large surface area. It didn't feel as fulfilling as a burger. That's when it made me wonder whether it's really that efficient.

I'd be willing to bet there are people who would gladly trade in an equally efficient organism that's lower order cognitively. The mistreatment of animals is why many folks prefer to avoid meat. So while it might not be worth it from an protein-production-efficiency standpoint, it might be worth it from a cruelty-efficiency standpoint.

That's when it made me wonder whether it's really that efficient.

It's probably not. The reason why cultures around the world have historically eaten insects is not because insects are easy to farm but because they are easy to gather from a wild environment. Large scale insect farming as a replacement for other sorts of large scale farming kind of misses the whole point.

Not knowledgeable in this area, but very curious. I know it would be extremely expensive to be concerned with extracting "waste" systems of every insect we consume as we do with other species. What does insect "waste" system consist of that could help me be more inclined to test this food trend, the risks of removing the waste systems obviously don't exist as they do with other species?

My research into the area has shown me that even though insects are supposed to use fewer resources, and are grown as animal feed, they are rather more expensive than most meat sources.

Mainly because of labor costs. Also, counter to intuition, many insects take a longer time to raise to "market size" than many conventional livestock.

I've been hearing recently about roach farming in China. https://qz.com/1257583/a-chinese-farm-is-breeding-6-billion-...

I had some cricket-coated chicken at a bug farm in Pembrokeshire the other day, it was tasty. As the crickets were ground into a powder it was very inoffensive. I don't generally like food that can stare back, such as whole fish, so cricket flour is good for me.

The book "Sourdough" by Robin Sloan touches on eating bugs a bit, as well as some other fun futuristic food concepts. Also, it namedrops pretty much everything that exists in the Bay Area, so that's kinda fun.

We all need some protein and even if we only displace some of that with insects, it would reduce GW emissions. So I applaud the effort, though honestly, it grossed me out.

In Cambodia there's a high standing restaurant with insects instead of proteins. When cooked by a good chef, insects can be delicious and visually pleasing!

I could buy the delicious part, but I don't think there's anything that could be done to insects to make them "visually pleasing" to me, at least as long as they are still recognizable as insects.

Mumbles something about Snowpiercer, shuffles away

Yeah nah this isn't gonna catch on. Synthetic or simulated meats will mature commercially first.

If they are just ground up anyways, I'm not sure I see why they would be better than vegetable protein sources...in fact, wouldn't they almost certainly be less efficient?

Yes, crickets require high-protein feed to grow at a viable rate. I don't understand the logic of using the crickets instead of just using the feed.

Black soldier flies, on the other hand, feed on sewage and rotting waste, things it would be really beneficial to get rid of. Using them as a protein source makes sense to me, on an intellectual level at least.

Would you really want to eat something in the food chain only one step removed from sewage and rotting waste?

Do you eat mushrooms?

I love mushrooms. And let's not forget some of the most expensive foods out there: crabs and lobsters. Early pilgrims in New England refused to eat them because the found them feasting on dead bodies (particularly human) a bit too often... Not kidding. Catfish, carp, crayfish, and many other things live on about the same level, despite being as delicious as Shiitake Mushrooms, which I just ate tonight! :)

Grind insects into a fine powder. Start adding them to things. We've magically added protein to every food, it's more filling and 'better' for us. It's not like anybody really knows what's in veggie burgers and things of that nature.

Here's my questions:

Is there some biological downside to mass-farming insects for food? Do they release methane or some other gas that's harmful to our planet?

Cows turn grass or corn into meat which has things like iron, vitamin B, and monosaturated fat in it. Do insects have these kind of advantages?

Both of your questions are answered in the article.

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