Can the Dutch Get the World to Eat Bugs?
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
Have you ever seen a wild strawberry or a wild carrot? Many examples of the former are little mean things whose entire surface is seed, and the latter can have the consistency of wood. (Sometimes fully domesticated carrots can have woody parts in the center.)
In general, the domesticated versions of plants are an order of magnitude tastier than their wild ancestors, and a great deal of adaptation can be managed with animals as well. Insects, with their small size and short lifespans, should be even easier to domesticate, once we set our minds to it.
Also, it's pretty clear that the 'western palate' is super open to change from social pressures. You guys seem to love raw fish now.
The things about bugs that make them unpalatable to Western palates have very little to do with the physical aspects and food. It's all an image problem,.
They're only "bugs" if you're incompetent at marketing.
For everybody else, seaweed, legumes, or whatever. You really don't need Western levels of protein consumption, as evidenced by e.g. it being a minuscule portion of the traditional diets of Non-Western nations without peacetime food problems, like, say, Japan.
Plus after they're rich they can overconsume meat like we do. It practically defines being a rich country when your local poor people eat meat regularly.
Statements like "local poor people eat meat regularly." are just flat out ignorant. I've known families that save up for bulk rice. "Seaweed, legumes or whatever" is so unrealistic it is absurd. People with time and money have those luxuries.
I mostly agree with what you said, with the addendum that poor Americans do have the tendency to buy cheap, bulk process foods for the same reason they wouldn't be able to afford "Seaweed, legumes or whatever". I'm not saying that families who need to save money for rice do this, but families with a little more money seem to always have alot of processed food.
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/1990/09/how-poor-ar...
Search for "Food Consumption of Poor Children", read the following two paragraphs. USDA data shows poor people eat a) more protein than non-poor people (yes, really), b) more meat than average citizens of many rich nations (like Japan or the UK), and c) vastly more meat than average citizens of Mexico/Brazil/etc.
http://www.fns.usda.gov/oane/MENU/Published/CNP/FILES/NHANES...
Data from the National School Lunch Program suggests the same thing. Protein deficiency is not statistically a challenge faced by Americans living below the poverty line. You can disagree with Heritage's politics (I certainly do), but it's naive to suggest that they're simply fabricating their underlying data.
Even if we grant that protein deficiency itself is not a huge problem for America's poor, it nevertheless remains that the protein (and food generally) available to our poor is of the lowest quality.
That's too bad, because I have a lot of thoughts about protein quality, and I think you'd probably agree with them. Unfortunately, you're in a place where you seem more inclined to troll threads with politics, so, maybe some other time.
Heritage's data come from a Dept of Ag study. This seems like an excellent example of why we should try to cite original authors instead of intermediaries.
I honestly didn't mean to do anything trollish. And what's with "quality" in scare quotes?
Next time someone who does not share your exact political beliefs (or your orthodoxy in ensuring that his/her tertiary sources have unimpeachable credentials), I suggest you actually read what they're saying and come back with facts. The reality is that in a community of professionals, you're unlikely to find yourself conversing solely with people who agree with your worldview.
The irony is, I probably do agree with your politics, but I find the way you handled this particular wrinkle of the discussion so repellant that I've been driven somewhat apey.
That having been said, I think you misunderstand me. I'm quite eager to learn from people who don't share my beliefs; it's the only reason I spend any time slogging through these comments in the first place. The spirit of my original reply, and what I should have said, is that bringing the Heritage Foundation into the discussion can only serve to muddle things.
We're OK. Sorry to drag this out. It's been an annoying day.
Only if you choose to let it. Here on HN, we usually don't.
You mention in your profile that the quality of discussion here is "slightly better than most places on the web". This is not an accident; it's a result of our strong community standards. Name-calling or ad hominem is generally rewarded with downvotes. Our preference is to look deeper into data and disagree in productive ways [0], not to get upset at the mention of a politically slanted organization.
You've had a rough introduction to our community. I hope you stay a while, learn our standards, and have a productive time here.
So, with about the same efficiency as chicken. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_ratio
The mexicas (from prehispanic era) used to have a variety of insects in their menu.
Here you can find a table with a list of some of the species currently included in people's diet: http://entomologia.net/idolina.htm
It's in Spanish, but they have the scientific order and family name.
I've tried purposely maximizing dietary diversity, and it seems to make a difference for me.
You can even extend this reasoning to most delicacies of the sea, clams and oysters don't look any better.
I find oysters disappointing though, especially for their high price. They're just textureless, wet salty things.
French people also eat snails. With truckloads of garlic, to mask the dirt taste, they're quite nice to eat too.
I remember when I was little, I enjoyed fish- but my family once visited a fairly authentic Chinese restaurant, and ordered fish which came with the head and tail attached... I had such a hard time eating any with those empty eye-sockets staring at me.
When eating shrimp and lobster, you are typically eating the processed muscle mass (and shell, if you are into that), rather than the whole animal in one bite.
It is hard, very hard, to overcome the feelings that have
been instilled into us from our youth upwards; but still I
foresee the day when the slug will be as popular in
England as its luscious namesake the Trepang, or sea-slug,
is in China, and a dish of grasshoppers fried in butter as
much relished by the English peasant as a similarly
treated dish of locusts is by an Arab or Hottentot. There
are many reasons why this is to be hoped for. Firstly,
philosophy bids us neglect no wholesome source of food.
Secondly, what a pleasant change from the labourer's
unvarying meal of bread, lard, and bacon, or bread and
lard without bacon, or bread without lard or bacon, would
be a good dish of fried cockchafers or grasshoppers. "How
the poor live!" Badly, I know; but they neglect wholesome
foods, from a foolish prejudice which it should be the
task of their betters, by their example, to overcome.
10 kilograms of feed will generate just 1kg of beef, 3kg of pork, and 5kg of chicken. It generates 9kg of locusts.
And that is why we should be eating insects, end of story.
One other thought- you assume you can or would eat bug feed.
Locusts, for example, eat: leaves, flowers, bark, stems, fruit, and seeds. While it is true humans can eat all of these things, it is typically only from select plants. When was the last time you ate a rice plant, or bark that wasn't Cinnamon?
But what I didn't from the article get was, how is eating insects considered in line with the vegatarian mindset? Insects are living things, too, no?
There are a couple of reasons why some vegetarions (pescetarians) eat fish and not other meat. The main one is health, since it is really difficult to get a healthy and varied diet, with enough protein and fat, through eating just plants. A lot of people also don't believe that fish suffers as much as other animals.
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/local/san_fran...
I don't think they can ever completely replace beef or pork, but the article was pretty dead on when they described them as something crunchy that could be added to fried rice or whatever.
Who's forcing you to eat cattle?
We must be in dramatically different parts of the world... I never really considered the east coast particularly good for that particular kind of variety either.. ..but I have no problem eating vegetarian most of the time.
It does vary even more, now that you mention it: I remember San Jose in Costa Rica having many different vegan (not vegetarian) option.
I wonder why do we, as humans, consider eating bugs strange, and why haven't they evolved as a regular part of the modern human diet? Is it only for historical reasons, social, or is it something physical or biological?
Eating bugs is very common around most of the world actually:
The question of course is, what animals are sentient. I don't know. But I find it plausible that, say worms, are not really sentient. And from that perspective it's pretty ok to eat worms. Since I do not know where to draw the line, I play safe and avoid meat, but others would choose differently.
Some of my friends are also vegetarians, not because they think killing animals is wrong, but because they believe animal farming has a negative impact on the environment. If insect farming does not have the same impact, it could be a reason for them to consider eating insects.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/science/15food.html?_r=2
I mean, you are not left with absolutely nothing to eat, but all you've got that I can think of is dairy, fruit and nuts. You could technically eat grains, but harvesting enough grain without killing the plant is difficult.
You should see what's allowed to get into the ingredients by the FDA in food processing plants.
3.1.2 Wheat flour shall be free from abnormal flavours, odours, and living insects. 3.1.3 Wheat flour shall be free from filth (impurities of animal origin, including dead insects) in amounts which may represent a hazard to human health.
According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's The Food Defect Action Levels booklet.[39] Contamination on the average of 150 or more insect fragments per 100 grams of wheat flour, or below poses no health hazard.
For instance it is suspected that the prevalence of peanut allergies is connected to the fact that stored peanuts usually have cockroach infestations. The FDA limit on acceptable levels are 30 insect parts per 100 grams. (See http://www.fda.gov/food/guidancecomplianceregulatoryinformat... for verification.)
When mine arrived, I fearfully picked up a grasshopper and brought it to my tongue...
...and had to restrain myself from gobbling the rest up by the fistful.
In less than a second, my opinion of grasshoppers had gone from "creepy" to "tasty." I expect most others won't be much harder to convince.
I'm a lot more enthused by the thought of petri-dish-grown steak than mealworm.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/23/110523fa_fact_...
Organic vegetables take up - more ecosystem. More passes thru the field to baby them, more loss to insects etc so less yield. And they are labor-intensive so load them with the cost of raising the humans that tend them. Humans are Really eco-unfriendly, especially when used as laborers.
A quick Google search showed roughly similar stats.