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Livestock are highly optimized mobile nutrient concentrators and animal husbandry is an inconceivably ancient, nearly universal tradition. In traditional practice, they collect nutrients in environments where human-edible crops aren't possible or efficient, can synthesize essential nutrients not available in local crops, and can store and supply nutrients when crops or stockpiles fail.

All of those things are valuable and ecologically low-impact ways to provide resiliency to total human food supply.

The motivating factor for stuff like this is not meat consumption itself, but the problems invented by industrial meat production, which falsely promises cheap, uniform meat to everyone everywhere -- promises just as falsely made by industrial agriculture. The idea of scaling industrial agriculture to displace industrial meat production (yours) is not really all that different than what's suggested in the article. It's still just a patchwork fix to a much bigger problem, which is that industrially producing Modern Western Diet for the entire world is an unsustainable idea in itself.

If you want to advocate an environmentally conscious social change, it'd be to restore more geographically appropriate menus and not worry about whether people in (say) mountainous arid climates are eating local meats that could have been replaced by diesel-freighted Digicorn 3.0 shipped from Iowa.

> It’s amazing to me that as a society we’re so attached to animal protein that we’d rather farm bugs than just eat vegetables.

Hold up, are you suggesting consumers want to buy processed grasshopper-protein over of processed vegetable-protein because they're so very emotionally attached to it coming from a squirming insect?

That seems like quite an unnecessary reach.

Surely a much simpler answer is that those options are simply not the same when it comes to culinary-science and/or manufacturing requirements.

I'm not saying this justifies the ethical problems and environmental impact, but I think we cannot dismiss the emotional significance that meat-eating has to many cultures.

Cooking is a major way in which families bond and connect with their ancestors. Traditional cuisine in Italy, France, the American South, etc. all prominently feature meat.

I remember talking to my mother about the ethical issues of animal farmimg once (we're both meat-eaters). She looked like she was going to cry as I explained to her that all the recipes she'd learned from my grandmother and then lovingly cooked for us for years were rooted in dystopian animal misery and environmental destruction.

I have huge respect for vegans and vegetarians. From a moral point of view, you folks are doing the right thing. That said, I'm more interested in reducing my meat intake and sourcing meat from hunters and small-scale local ranchers than I am interested in eliminating my own meat intake.

> It’s amazing to me that as a society we’re so attached to animal protein that we’d rather farm bugs than just eat vegetables.

I think we generally feel equally strong attachments to almost every facet of behavior that is deeply rooted in our evolutionary history. We're animals and we evolved to want to do certain behaviors. Birds want to fly, moles want to dig, lions want to hunt.

If anything, we should be surprised that our society can remove us so far from the obvious fact of our animal nature that we consider these behaviors surprising. We're omnivores and meat is calorie dense. Of course we like eating it, just like we like exploring, sex, grooming each other, eating fresh fruit, etc.

Apes gonna ape.

That doesn't mean we have to do these things. But it should certainly be entirely unsurprising that we want to do them.

It is critical for optimal human health that we eat large quantities of meat.

Food is not fungible. Proteins are not fungible. Fats are not fungible.

There are dozens of chemically and metabolically significant differences between what you get when you eat vegetables vs fruits vs bugs vs chicken vs beef. Protein uptake ratios, SFA/MUFA/PUFA ratios, indigestible protein (chitin etc.) ratios, etc.

It is, quite simply, not feasible to maintain the standard of health and vitality that I personally require while eating vegetables (or bugs).

> Is meat addictive like sugar?

No, it's addictive like water.

> Are meat and sugar so overwhelmingly pleasurable to us

Sugar is pleasurable because it's an unnatural hyperstimulus that we aren't well-adapted for. Meat is pleasurable because it's one of the most nutritious possible foods for humans (perhaps second only to milk). It's not a hyperstimulus at all; your body is accurately reflecting its nutritional value.

> a huge proportion of grain grown now goes to feed animals.

That doesn't mean that humans want to eat those grains, even if they were to consume the same kinds of grains.

You've probably noticed that human-grade grains are considerably more expensive. It is in the interest of the farmer to produce those higher quality grains for the sake of profitability, but sometimes the Mother Nature just doesn't play nice.

Sometimes all you can produce is animal-grade food. Being able to also capture those calories helps feed the large and growing human population.

> So rather than reduce the animal protein in our diets, we’re determined to farm insects to supplement it.

Protein is really important for our diets. Many adults even in the first world are not getting enough of it. It's not some "luxury" macromolecule the we should just consume less of (like sugar). Most peoples diets (at least in the US) have too many carbs and sugars (plants) and not enough protein (meat). You can get the protein you need from plant based sources, but you have to be really intentional about it and work hard at it. Meat contains every nutrient your body needs besides vitamin C.

This sounds like letting perfect be the enemy of good. Insect protein would be a new addition to the protein supply and the food supply. It would provide an additional alternative to meat. It might actually reduce the demand for meat, which would be good. I guess I don't see why the option of insect protein would be bad. In fact, it seems it would be good.

My understanding has been that genetic traits common in Asia make processing plant proteins much more efficient, and that without those traits, uptake is always suboptimal. That said, I've read that arthropod protein has much the same problem.

At the very least, you'd think more people would be willing to, say, keep a consistent meat consumption of 50% their current level.

> So rather than reduce the animal protein

Dont forget the meat lobby and the government incentives in place. Its not just driven by consumers

Animals can be very useful workers that fertilize and till the soil to make vegetable growing more productive. Bugs are probably best used as a supplement to the diet of chickens. WP article is paywalled so I haven't read it.

A long food chain is a good food chain.

I'd guess it's something "deeper" since humans wouldn't have existed without meat.