We should all be eating insects | Hacker News Reader

We should all be eating insects

qz.com

Except food is already so cheap in America that there is no incentive to eat bugs. The raw fish example doesn't work because raw fish is a delicacy.

Soooo, make crickets a delicacy, get some good pr up and running to make it socially acceptable, and charge health-conscious yuppies $40/lb for em, and it'll sell. It's all about presentation, appearances, and marketing.

Can you really see that happening though? The negative associations attached to insect eating are too great. I think it would take more than marketing to change such social norms.

You obviously haven't watched Mad Men. Just toast them!

;)

A committed sub-group could also change things.

I'm part of the paleo community. I'd love to try eating bugs, and I think most of the people I know in the community would agree.

It could then spread out from that and similar groups. This has already happened with such things as eating offal, which is experiencing a resurgence among paleo groups (and probably foodies, but i'm not one).

Don't be so sure. How many untraveled Americans would consider raw fish a delicacy 50 years ago? Marketing has already created and changed more social norms than we'd like to admit.

On the same note, not many Americans at raw (rare, rather) beef 50 years ago.

Most of the world population is in Asia, where many don't have that negativity. Other huge chunks of people in Africa.

I can definitely see, with time, other places "adapting".

Upto the mid-19th century eating lobster was a mark of poverty : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobster#History . So it definately is possible.

Yes it's possible. Lobsters were once considered the cockroaches of the see and only poor people would ever eat those disgusting creatures. Now it's a delicacy.

Not quite. Raw fish wasn't a big leap because we've been eating cooked fish for thousands of years. You can start with tuna "steaks," which look like a rare beef steak, and go from there. There is nothing like insect "meat" in our diet. The closest thing we have to a bunch of small crickets is a bowl of cereal in terms of shape and form.

>> There is nothing like insect "meat" in our diet.

Shrimp are pretty disgusting to look at. Live shrimp are pretty "insect like" I'd say. as mentioned elsewhere, lobsters too.

When you take a step back though, lots of our current food practices are pretty "weird" too. Like, milking mammals for their mothers milk, and then letting it turn sour and harden, calling it cheese, and eating it? Just because "it's been done for thousands of years" doesn't mean holistically it isnt a pretty weird thing to do...

I agree with this article, unfortunately many of us are so psychologically averse to the thought, that it would be very difficult and require a cultural shift. I can't imagine eating them (even when ground up, or even if they had a "better name"), but maybe my children or grandchildren will (or must).

Are you sure you don't already? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmine

I believe there's also an allocated % of accidental bug material that is allowed in food by the FDA because it can't always be avoided. If you've ever had ketchup, you've most certainly had a little bit of additional protein in there with it :)

I think the easy way to do this is not eat them in their regular form. Mix them up and add them to a recipe. You might not want to eat a spoonful of beetles but if they're ground up into a sauce, you'd never know.

I can imagine eating them. but I'm not much of a foodie to start with.

I'm right there with you. Imagining crunching on a bug's exoskeleton and swallowing it nearly makes me gag. Repeatedly imagining it kills my apetite and makes me feel nauseous. However, I think there's hope for you and I.

For a few years growing up my mom (a single mother) had trouble putting food on the table, so most nights we'd eat spaghetti with olive oil and broccoli. She was very anti-hunting, but she started dating a guy who hunted deer. After a while the prospect of large amounts of high-quality free meat (we almost never had meat) was too appealing to turn down. I remember the first time I witnessed a deer being butchered I experienced the same revulsion I describe above. My mom's boyfriend had a trick up his sleeve, however. Before we ever saw him butcher a deer, he made sure that we tried (and enjoyed) fresh deer loin and deer heart (sounds gross, but smooth muscle is delicious if prepared correctly). He didn't tell us what it was at first, and he cooked it in a way that pretty much any self-respecting meat-eater would love.

It's kind of a tradition for the hunters in my hometown to cook up a fresh loin (and liver) they day they butcher a deer. Quite often that cut of meat never makes it into the fridge, and it's the best damn meal that animal will produce. Writing this it's hard not to salivate thinking about fresh loin sautéed in butter and garlic. Needless to say, after going through the process several times I went from being disgusted by the gutting, skinning, and butchering to being excited to participate and hungry for the results it would produce.

If I can have that drastic a change over one type of food, why can't I over another?

Is there anyone who grew up in a non-insecting-eating society who has acquired a taste for them? If so it'd be interesting to hear how they made the switch. I'm not talking about eating bugs just to know that they're like, but someone who actually enjoys them.

I guess I qualify. I usually make a point of trying new food, and insects were no exception. After trying some I really became fond of them.

Of course, occasionally I try some new ones that turn out to have an awful taste. :) But the same applies to other food anyways.

I grew up in a big college town. Every year the university would have an "insect fair", where among other things, they had a big tent with all sorts of insect food. I remember eating millworm soup, some type of bugs in pasta, chocolate covered crickets, and probably some other stuff too. I thought it was pretty tasty, and now I consider myself very willing to eat insects as food every now and then or at a fancy restaurant. Then again, I also consider myself much more open to new experiences and tastes than most of my peers. So in short, yes, I enjoy them, but I don't eat them on a regular basis, or necessarily seek them out.

after couple meals of deep fried bugs, you will see them as good as french fries.

In many places people have no trouble eating them; some are even considered a delicacy.

From the ones I've tried, some are actually pretty tasty. The best are: bamboo worm, barbecued silk worm, fried spider, water roach, and fried crickets.

If anybody is curious, I can comment more on these and others. :)

Spiders and crickets seem like they would be mostly exoskeleton. Which bits do you eat, and how do you avoid getting all that chitin in your teeth?

For crickets, yes, when fried they just become salty and crunchy. And you can eat the whole thing. Which is great with beer. :)

For spiders, I've only had the larger ones. So there is actually some "meat". And the taste reminds me of crab.

Don't know about spiders, but as for grasshoppers, crickets and locusts, gently swat with clothes to kill, remove anteannae, wings and leg spurs. Roasting is the best as it kills potential parasites and they taste best that way (as well as helping to easier powderize all that chitin).

Where do I go to get them, and how do I prepare them?

I currently live in Asia, so it's relatively easy for me to find them. Where are you based? If in the US, I suggest looking on the Internet for some cicada recipes! Roasted.

Most insects can just be fried. Sometimes people add some salt, or some other sauce/seasoning and that's it.

I'm guessing the tastiness is just from the seasoning / barbecue flavor on the outside?

It depends. Some coconut larvae taste great by themselves. The squishy inside of barbecued silk worms are also pretty good, for example.

But for many insects, yes, the seasoning is what counts. Or they can be just part of a more elaborate dish.

Chickens and other poultry eat insects if they are raised on pasture. They directly convert this abundant food source for us. Chickens taste better and are easy enough for anyone to raise.

Chickens are also easy to infect with a variety of diseases that can affect humans.

And there's the small but significant risk of a bird flu developing in the poultry population.

Chickens are easy to infect when they are genetically compromised as you get with birds raised on commercial poultry feed and living in confined spaces.

Birds raised on pasture are much less susceptible to this. There is a world of difference between the two. Much has been written on this subject.

Not really. Especifically in the case of the bird flu, that was mentioned above, chicken get them from birds in the wild. So commercial poultry sometimes might have its advantages.

Or so you've been told by whatever industry...

I take all of that with a grain of salt and concentrate on providing the best farm environment possible and allowing nature to mitigate the issues for me. This is way it was done for millenia before corporate agriculture and media got involved. Non-mainstream education is paramount in this area.

I disagree that chickens taste better than most insects. My experience is quite the opposite.

Chicken is usually more bland, I guess. While insects vary a lot. Some can be pretty tasty, others quite awful.

In my opinion, chickens' white meat is the tastiest meat out there.

WRT "bland", that's why you cook your food. Throw in some spices and soy sauce and combine with greens or pasta.

The cooking and spices comment applies to insects too. I didn't say you have to eat insects by themselves. I still prefer them over chicken.

If we're talking about not using much seasoning/condiments/side dishes, then nothing beats nice beef.

And, in my opinion, chicken's dark meat is much better than the white.

You have never actually tasted a truly "pastured" chicken if you still think it tastes "bland". Read everything you can from Joel Salatin. :-)

The chickens we raised on pasture had the deepest flavor of anything we ever experienced and our birds were some of the healthiest I've ever seen.

There was a very interesting documentary by Stefan Gates on this very subject a month ago on BBC4.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01599yk

Why does the food supply need to double to feed an extra 2 billion people?

A lot of today's population is underfed or suffers from nutrient deficiencies. To "feed" today's population we already need to increase the global food supply.

Here's a UN press release from 2009 titled "Food Production Must Double by 2050 to Meet Demand From World's Growing Population":

http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2009/gaef3242.doc.htm

I believe the theory is that we are currently on an unsustainable path that is drawing down our existing inventories of global food faster than we are replenishing them (ex. overfishing of oceans), so to feed 1) our first-world selves, 2) our third-world friends who are becoming first-word (i.e. eating more food), and 3) an additional 2/7 population... that will require a growth in the food supply. I think some of those on the more doom-mongering side tend to underestimate the general agricultural innovations of both past and future, and the market forces that drive them, but there are some compelling arguments that this may not be enough.

I've long believed this to be true, so it's interesting to see this article.

I grew up in a traditional Hindu family where nearly everyone was vegetarian. When I came to the US, many of us started eating meat. 15-20 years ago, this horrified many of my cousins who stayed in India and remained vegetarian.

Fast forward to today, many of those same cousins have started eating meat in India. I read an article the other day saying the traditional Hindu vegetarian diet is falling by the wayside, and poultry consumption in the subcontinent has skyrocketed. In another generation, I expect to see a large rise in red meat consumption where the natural resource needs are much higher.

This got me thinking, can the planet really sustain another 1 billion, full-time meat eaters? If humans have such high protein requirements that can't be satisfied by a plant-based diet, isn't eating bugs the only ecologically sustainable choice?

    If humans have such high protein requirements that
    can't be satisfied by a plant-based diet

Do we have such requirements? Beans, lentils, quinoa, etc. aren't enough?

Clearly not. We domesticated those plants thousands of years ago and they weren't enough to replace meat in most diets.

Maybe it's more a question of taste than health, but for whatever reason, animal protein has and always will be a major part of the human diet.

Perhaps indirectly. I've been researching raising Black Soldier Flies as fish food -- there are some interesting possibilities there: they feed on waste and "self harvest" (when larvae are ready to pupate they climb up, and if a ramp is set up for that they go up the ramp and drop into a container.

I am totally up for eating insects. I've had them before in Korea. I wish there were a place to get them in the US.

What about that soylent diet?

There's other reasons we eat than just nutrition. If it was just nutriment we were looking for I'm sure we could do it easier than eating bugs.

I try to do everything to avoid eating invertebrates.

The only reasonable exception is shrimp and alike.

Excellent quote from a famed Japanese microbiologist: "During the war, when I worked at the research center, I was assigned to determine what insects in Southeast Asia could be eaten. When I investigated this matter, I was amazed to discover that almost any insect is edible. For example, no one would think that lice or fleas could be of any use at all, but lice, ground up and eaten with winter grain, are a 'remedy for epilepsy, and fleas are a medicine for frostbite. All insect larvae are quite edible, but they must be alive. Poring over the old texts, I found stories having to do with "delicacies" prepared from maggots from the outhouse, and the flavor of the familiar silkworm was said to be exquisite." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masanobu_Fukuoka

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