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We eat birds and animals because they have high efficiency skeletons and circulation systems so they grow to large sizes and so their muscles become larger. Ins

by aurizon 11y ago

We eat birds and animals because they have high efficiency skeletons and circulation systems so they grow to large sizes and so their muscles become larger. Insects have exoskeletons and the spiracle based (air pipes throughout their flesh) respiratory system places limits on their sizes. If grasshoppers grew to be as big as cows, I am sure they would provide harvestable muscle masses to eat. As it is, the work of harvesting 10,000 grashopper legs and extractin their muscles, just ruins the economics of it. Same with grubs, although the Australian witchetty grub. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witchetty_grub https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witchetty_grub https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNsCpRZXq68 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNsCpRZXq68 is comparable to small shrimps as a edible lump. I am not sure if they need deveining, like shrimps where the lower intestine is removed from the tail to leave the entire peeled tail as high quality fat and protein. A 200 pound witchetty grub might offer witchetty steaks etc. If we selectively bred insects in high oxygen environment to grow them to large sizes, we might change the ease of harvesting grasshopper steaks etc - but that is for ~~100 years in the future

shalmanese 11y ago
You don't need to individually butcher insects. You can just dump a whole load of crickets into a deep fryer and eat them like potato chips.
- SwellJoe 11y ago
  That's not a meal, though. It's a somewhat unhealthy snack, comparable to pork rinds, perhaps (more protein and less fat, perhaps, but still unhealthy). A vision of a future that has humans consuming insects on a large scale needs to involve meals made of insects, not snack foods that are much more expensive and only moderately more nutritive than their plant or animal based alternatives. The environmental and economic cost has to be lower than the current alternatives (if not now, during the infancy of the market, then eventually, once mass production has been figured out), or it doesn't make sense to pursue it. It's already an uphill battle to convince people that bugs are food.

by aurizon 11y ago

shalmanese 11y ago

You don't need to individually butcher insects. You can just dump a whole load of crickets into a deep fryer and eat them like potato chips.

SwellJoe 11y ago
That's not a meal, though. It's a somewhat unhealthy snack, comparable to pork rinds, perhaps (more protein and less fat, perhaps, but still unhealthy). A vision of a future that has humans consuming insects on a large scale needs to involve meals made of insects, not snack foods that are much more expensive and only moderately more nutritive than their plant or animal based alternatives. The environmental and economic cost has to be lower than the current alternatives (if not now, during the infancy of the market, then eventually, once mass production has been figured out), or it doesn't make sense to pursue it. It's already an uphill battle to convince people that bugs are food.