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Comment by Pet_Ant | Hacker News Reader

What if ground crickets were added to like 75% ground beef? You'd never know and it be healthier and have less impact on the environment.

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I'd wait until some longer term studies come out on the meat. Humans have no tradition of eating them (edit: looks like i was wrong on this point). I'm not conceived it's healthier and I'm totally convinced the people pushing it don't care about us.

I'd also like to see the ultra-wealthy social planners eat bugs, at least at the opulent summits where they plan it for our class of people. As long as they're eating steaks it's a bad look (same as them owning yachts, taking a private plane to an event then biking the last two blocks and talking about how private car ownership needs to be abolished).

> Humans have no tradition of eating them

Bugs are very common food in Asian, African and South American cultures.

Edit: I also remember seeing some ant stuff in Mexico. And I’ve read about indigenous cultures in Australia and North America also having insects as part of their food. I’m sure if I look for it, I’ll find something on European cultures as well. Modern food is just a representation of food that got commercialized, but in reality human diet used to be much more varied than we are used to seeing now.

I wasn't aware of that. Are they similar and eaten as a significant source of protein?

Yes. There’s plenty of YouTube channels exploring this if you’re interested.

https://youtu.be/nZ3Zc1DJOgY

"Humans have no tradition of eating them"

Of course they do. Try some survival courses, our ancestors ate everything, they could stomach. Only (or mostly) the western culture stopped doing it for whatever reason.

"If you think eating insects is gross, you may be in the cultural minority. Throughout history, people have relished insects as food. Today, many cultures still do."

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/eating-bu...

The same cultures that recoil from eating bugs also pay top-dollar to eat shrimp, crab, and lobster, the latter of which used to be considered garbage food unfit to be served even to prisoners.

Cultural value plays a major role even with traditional kinds of food. Tuna was considered garbage catch in the US, only good for cat food, until sushi became popular, and tuna became premium, on par with trout.

"Entomophagy has a long and rich history in human culture. In fact, insects have been a part of human diets for thousands of years, with evidence of their consumption found in prehistoric archaeological sites." [0]

[0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10455489/

Also chiming in on the insects bit: most mass produced food can contain insect remnants (among other things).

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/04/health/insect-rodent-filth-in...

Humans eat bugs for a very long time, and are doing that right now. Read a bit about bugs in native Central African and South American cuisines.

I apologize if this seems blunt and incurious, but I think I can speak for MANY people when I say: absolutely not.

Chances are you, and everyone youre speaking for, has likely surreptitiously already eaten many unsavory things

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Food_Defect_Action_Levels

There's a big difference between eating trace amounts of stuff you can't totally eliminate (at least not easily) and making it a component on purpose.

Why? I have no problem with this.

There was an experiment done where they stood outside of a supermarket and asked people if they would buy dolphin friendly tuna only. The vast majority said yes. Then they compared that to actual sales and discovered that people basically voted with their wallets, with the vast majority picking the cheaper can of fish regardless of dolphin status

(Aside, dolphin friendly tuna is a scam, don’t believe it.)

And this is also how we got Walmart and Amazon.

Too late, if you're in the US. The FDA has an allowable level of insects or insect fragments in much of the food you eat. So you're probably getting a decent amount of insects and other things (probably best not to think about) in your food. A ground beef/insect blend only adjusts that ratio upward, and would be more transparent about it. Bon appetite, lol.

The amounts allowed by the FDA are restricted to certain food types, and vastly lower amounts than would be present if it were an intentional additive.

The discourse around the subject seems to be overwhelming disgust by the people who would be victimized by it and unending enthusiasm by the rich who would not be forced to eat bugs.

I think at this point it's sane to say that if this trend continues the only option left will be violence against the people pushing this (as well as their beneficiaries) onto broader society, if government will not step in to stop businesses from pursuing this agenda.

Replace "eat bugs" with "verb thing" and you've pretty much described the entire dynamic of class struggle spanning several centuries. The "verb thing" baseline has just shifted as humanity makes some progress.

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