Plant protein is easier to grow and perfectly adequate for human nutrition. This obsession with animal protein is unscientific.
That said, insects are way more efficient than mammals at converting plants into human-edible calories thanks in part to their lack of internal temperature control and growth rate.[0] If you had to choose an animal to use as a protein-constructor, crickets would be a great choice.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_ratio#Insects
That just seems to me like a choice that very few humans are actually going to make.
It seems very HN to take the perspective of an aloof farmer-of-humans rather than that of an actual human.
No no, not you. All the poor people. They're the ones who will be fed "efficiently". You and I and most people on HN will retain our privilege to eat what we want.
My comment stands. You would be forced to eat crickets and I wouldn't (be forced to eat them). That's the whole idea with feeding people "efficiently". Piss-poor people who can't get a living wage are already fed the most unhealthy food because it's cheap and easy to mass-produce, whereas those who are well-off can eat whatever we want, whatever we think is healthy and nutritious, or just pleasant to eat. And all this talk of efficiency means is that more cheaply produced, low-quality food can keep being sold to those who need to watch their wallet more than they care to watch their waistline.
Yeah the more I think about it, it's probably just a cultural thing and not a "whole humanity" thing.
As it's been discussed here, in some cultures crickets are sold as a snack on streetcorners and people grow up eating them.
And I think the whole "piss-poor people" thing might just be eating unhealthy garbage because, just maybe, the cheap high-sugar high-carb stuff releases endorphins in most humans, and they are just trying to get a small reprieve in their desperate lives.
I haven't had the courage to try them myself yet.
I say novelty as they’re not generally available as food where I live.
Some people like eating things beyond just basic nutritional subsistence. It's why meat is so popular. We've also been eating it since time immemorial. The demand for meat isn't going away no matter how many cricket/insect ads you shove in people's faces. If anything, it just breeds resentment for sustainable food practices, because the rich and powerful will always still have access to meat products.
Making meat into a luxury product like the days of yore will not work. The monkey's out of the bottle on that one. We need to work with this fact, not around it.
That said I think lab grown meats look pretty promising.