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The Rise of Edible Insect Farming

• bcatanzaro 8y ago
  I'm much more enthusiastic about plant-based foods than insects. The impossible burger is pretty fantastic - there's no cultural barrier to overcome, and I expect it's even better for the planet than crickets.
  • tomcam 8y ago
    You would need to quantify what you mean by better for the planet. The number of insects, worms, rodents, frogs, and other small animals destroyed by mechanized farming is staggering. Also, I have had the impossible burger and was not at all impressed, though it looks absolutely perfect.
    • VBprogrammer 8y ago
      Given what it takes to turn vegetable mass into something resembling a burger, if it came down to it, I'd rather stick to real vegetables. I think its fair to say that processed food is generally not very good for you. I don't see why that situation is improved because the food being processed is from a vegan source.
      • bcatanzaro 8y ago
        I think we have to evaluate each processed food on its own merits rather than just saying there’s a negative correlation.
      • HillaryBriss 8y ago
        > I don't see why that situation is improved because the food being processed is from a vegan source. my favorite example of this is the plastic package of organic vegan marshmallows i saw at Whole Foods once
        • InitialLastName 8y ago
          > my favorite example of this is the plastic package of organic vegan marshmallows i saw at Whole Foods once Is this funny because of all the non-vegan marshmallows that come in non-plastic packaging, making the vegan ones worse for the environment? Any change has to be weighed against the actual alternatives.
          • HillaryBriss 8y ago
            the alternative i was thinking of was non-processed food. but, ok, good point point about the packaging. almost every fruit and vegetable from a supermarket's produce section ends up in a plastic bag.
      • Nasrudith 8y ago
        Processed food always being bad is an oversimplification. Try having eating a raw potato sometime and you'll see what I mean (seriously don't they are toxic). Cooking is a basic form of processing to make the foods nutrition actually processable or processable more efficiently. The 'processing' most associated with the term are optimized for taste and shelf life often at the expense of nutrition or too much of a good thing. For instance protein - it is held up as a holy grail 'good nutrient' but it turns out that going too high is bad for the kidneys and thus general health. That isn't unique to processed foods either - Steve Job's fruit based diet put Ashton Kutcher in the hospital with pancreatic issues when he tried it for getting into character! Past failures at making something more healthy have failed to measure an additional variable - say margarine being better before a sufficient understanding of transfats and back when they thought all cholesterol was the same.
    • bcatanzaro 8y ago
      I mean that eating plants directly likely emits less carbon and takes up less land than processing plants through cricket bodies. And I eat the impossible burger often. I like it a lot.
    • tdb7893 8y ago
      Animals require much more feed in than you get usable meat out. Meat production increases the amount of plants you need to farm so even though plant agriculture is bad for the environment generally the best way to actually reduce it is to eat less meat.
  • sampo 8y ago
    > The impossible burger This is a wheat and potato proteins based burger, where they add leghemoglobin grown in yeast, to give some of that bloody, irony taste. And coconut oil for fat. If you're in New York City area or New Jersey, or Chicago area, your nearest White Castle probably has the "impossible slider" for $1.99.
    • HillaryBriss 8y ago
      Very cool. I hadn't heard about them at White Castle. Nice to know. Fatburger has also started to serve Impossible Burgers. Interestingly at our local Fatburger the price was the same $6 for either a regular Fatburger or for an "Impossible" Fatburger. The way I see it, either way, it's a Fatburger. Fatburger.
      • hotpockets 8y ago
        So does Wahlburger.
    • tim333 8y ago
      Full Ingredient List: Water, Textured Wheat Protein, Coconut Oil, Potato Protein, Natural Flavors, 2% or less of: Leghemoglobin (Soy), Yeast Extract, Salt, Konjac Gum, Xanthan Gum, Soy Protein Isolate, Vitamin E, Vitamin C, Thiamin (Vitamin B1), Zinc, Niacin, Vitamin B6, Riboflavin (Vitamin B2), Vitamin B12 Give me that rather than icky bugs!
  • phil248 8y ago
    "there's no cultural barrier to overcome" There is indeed a cultural barrier in the United States when it comes to vegetarian diets. Many Americans avoid "fake meat" due to their cultural beliefs.
    • RandallBrown 8y ago
      Yeah, but you won't find any Americans that avoid eating things made of plants. You will definitely find Americans that avoid eating things made of bugs.
      • evilolive 8y ago
        as a european living in America I would somewhat disagree I've had more than one colleague who modifies anything on a menu until it's mostly meat, carbs & cheese
        • Nasrudith 8y ago
          Carbs in the colloquial sense are still plant based - disregarding the comparative traces of carbs in animal products.
      • phil248 8y ago
        Many Americans avoid eating things made out of plants. For example, tofu or veggie burgers. Like I said, this is a cultural phenomenon, similar to but less severe than the cultural proclivity to avoid eating insects. Though many Americans don't seem to mind eating snails.
        • adrianN 8y ago
          I eat tofu quite often, but I don't eat fake meat. If I want meat, I buy meat. I don't like the idea of plant protein being tortured until it resembles a completely different product.
          • phil248 8y ago
  • HillaryBriss 8y ago
    i agree that the taste and texture are similar to eating a meat hamburger. but, i just hope these companies (Impossible Burger, Beyond Burger, et al) can bring down the price. we bought frozen Beyond Burgers recently "on sale" from our local grocery store for $3.00 per 4 oz burger. good quality ground beef is cheaper than that.
    • Pfhreak 8y ago
      Where are you finding good quality ground beef for <$3.00/lb? Good quality, to me, implies the animals were not mistreated, were fed a reasonable (preferably grain free) diet, the farm is sustainably ranching the animals it grows, etc. I recently bought a whole beef from a local farmer, and it was organic, 100% grass fed, and it worked out to $7/lb. I'd be shocked to learn there was a waaay cheaper option out there.
      • HillaryBriss 8y ago
        sorry for the confusion. a frozen package containing just two 4 oz Beyond Burger patties cost us $6.00. i.e. we paid $3.00 for each one quarter pound Beyond Burger. so, if you can find hamburger meat for less than $12 a pound, you're paying less than we paid for Beyond Burgers.
        • o_____________o 8y ago
          This would reverse overnight in the US if we redirected our agricultural subsidies.
          • jlavine 8y ago
            You can buy pasture-raised / grass-fed ground beef from Australia, and US-raised ground bison, in US supermarkets for $9-10 per pound, so no, it wouldn't. Even for cheap corn- and soy-fed CAFO-raised meat, agricultural subsidies lower the cost by a negligeable fraction.
    • HillaryBriss 8y ago
  • jpao79 8y ago
    As a side note, I've often pondered what would have the outcome if Subway had 'leaned in' and actually promoted its "50% chicken-50% soy but tastes the same as 100% chicken" as an environmentally sustainable and healthier option instead of trying to hide it and then getting caught. https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/03/food-scientists-weigh-in-on-50-subway-chicken-test-its-100-weird/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/03/food-scientists-weig...
• always_good 8y ago
  The imminent insects-as-food transition has been "just around the corner" at least since I was reading Popular Science magazine in middle school. Always with the same scare-pretext of "whelp, we'll have no choice! get ready to knock back some crickets whether you like it or not ;)". Then it plots out how much meat Americans eat and shows how it's unsustainable. It just doesn't follow logically to me. What seems more likely is that we will ween off of the idea that we need meat in every single meal. And once you also factor in the possibility of pricing in externalities, meat will become – at least – a dinner treat. Meat is already subsidized by animal neglect, sketchy tactics, and mass pollution. I wouldn't mind if we were paying the honest price of meat at the market today. We'd get this cultural change on the roll, and we'd probably have something better already. And it won't be bugs.
  • foolfoolz 8y ago
    i think even more likely: we will find a way to make our consumption of meat more sustainable
    • izzydata 8y ago
      Like all that "just around the corner" lab grown meat?
      • codefined 8y ago
        We seem to have seen a massive, measurable improvement in lab grown meat in the past 2-3 years. Going down from hundreds of thousands of dollars to single digit prices[0]. I don't know how the market is going to respond, but if we get a similar decrease in price it should get a large market share, having no noticeable negative attributes. [0] https://bigthink.com/ideafeed/answering-how-a-sausage-gets-made-will-be-more-complicated-in-2020 https://bigthink.com/ideafeed/answering-how-a-sausage-gets-m... [1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/clean-meat-lab-grown-available-restaurants-2018-global-warming-greenhouse-emissions-a8236676.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/clean-meat-lab-gr...
• ravenstine 8y ago
  As someone who was eating insects long before cricket protein bars became in vogue, I don't see entomophagy becoming anything more than a fad in the west, especially America. The taste of insects simply does not compare to meat and poultry. Granted, this has a lot to do with cultural expectations, but that's exactly why I don't think that people are going to gradually shift to consuming a very different flavor. Also, as someone who used to be heavily into protein, I don't buy the notion that people need more protein than what they are currently getting. A human body really doesn't need that much protein, and even body builders don't need as much protein as they often consume. If someone is telling you that you need to consume protein, it's probably because they're trying to sell you something. Even more so if they are calling it a "super-food". Maybe things will actually change. I dunno. The insects that I thought were the most tasty(moth caterpillars) are the ones that people are least likely to want to eat. People might be fine with dried crickets and meal worms, but I challenge them to eat something more substantial. Every "bug person" I used to follow on social media warns us of a looming food crisis and that insects will save the world. I thought it no coincidence that most of them either give paid lectures, sell books, or are associated with a "bug startup".
  • tomcam 8y ago
    I agree with your assessments about entomophagy. However, I think it no coincidence that most of the “tech people“ on this blog either give paid lectures, sell books, or are associated with a “tech startup”.
    • adventured 8y ago
      > most of the “tech people“ on this blog either give paid lectures, sell books, or are associated with a “tech startup” That's false, you're vastly under-estimating the size of HN. There are tens of thousands of users and millions of HN readers. Dang noted three years ago that there were 300k daily uniques and ~3m monthly uniques. A small fraction of those give paid lectures, author/sell books, or are associated with a start-up. Most is an extreme exaggeration. It's closer to 1%-5% than 51%.
      • 8y ago
• bluedino 8y ago
  Grind insects into a fine powder. Start adding them to things. We've magically added protein to every food, it's more filling and 'better' for us. It's not like anybody really knows what's in veggie burgers and things of that nature. Here's my questions: Is there some biological downside to mass-farming insects for food? Do they release methane or some other gas that's harmful to our planet? Cows turn grass or corn into meat which has things like iron, vitamin B, and monosaturated fat in it. Do insects have these kind of advantages?
  • thinkcontext 8y ago
    Both of your questions are answered in the article.
• 1996 8y ago
  As a kid I hated eating insects. I still do - I don't understand how people can. However, my definition of insects includes crawfish, lobster, urchins etc. They are fancy insects, but I do not see much difference between most seafood and bugs, except the size maybe. It is socially acceptable to eat seafood. It wasn't always like that. New England had rules against feeding your employees lobster more than once a week! Give it time, a generation or two, and people will eat bugs. After all, it's just food! What we used to say round my place: it it moves, kill it. If it's dead, cook it, and eat it.
  • nkrisc 8y ago
    Most people don't think about it that way, but you're right. Insects and crustaceans are all arthropods and similar in many ways. Personally, I always imagined whoever the first person to eat a lobster was must have been very hungry indeed.
    • 1996 8y ago
      Biology rules :-)
  • Mindstormy 8y ago
    The lobsters they were given were pretty old by the time they got to the consumer so they were more than likely rotten.
  • Steko 8y ago
    Relevant xkcd: https://www.xkcd.com/1268/ https://www.xkcd.com/1268/
• patorjk 8y ago
  > Some people say it will be like sushi in 20 years. I am really optimistic that it may be a lot faster This outlook does not seem realistic. 20 years ago I remember watching a news segment on Australian TV about how eating bugs was the future. The people they interviewed were mostly grossed out. I don't think much has changed. I think it's more likely that you'll see people take up a more vegetarian diet if meat starts to become scarce.
  • kpil 8y ago
    I think it might be more than just "culture". Bugs, maggots and worms are associated with disease, decay, and death. I doubt I've learned to jump when I see a spider, or gross out when I find maggots in the garbage can,there's probably a large portion of instinct there. I just about tolerate eating shrimp mainly because it tastes so darn good. If it would taste so so, I'd pass. The whole thing seem more related to lobbying so that large corporations can sell even cheaper junk to us as food. I have no doubts that they would scoop up and sell us processed waste directly from the sewer if they got away with it.
    • lookACamel 8y ago
      The association is mostly due to urbanization and the effect that has had on the human psyche.
  • voltagex_ 8y ago
    A while ago, an icecream company had "free samples" of cricket icecream in capital cities. You could see the crickets - of course people are going to freak out. https://concreteplayground.com/sydney/event/feeding-future-pop/ https://concreteplayground.com/sydney/event/feeding-future-p... I mean come on - the photo on that page is good for headlines but it's got to be terrible for business.
• smurphy 8y ago
  This idea is terrible. Chitin, the sugar in bug exoskeletons, activates the innate human immune system. Switching out our proteins with bugs would surely cause a rise in inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chitin#Humans_and_other_mammals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chitin#Humans_and_other_mammal...
  • Asooka 8y ago
    Can't you crush the insects into powder and remove the chitin afterwards?
  • wahern 8y ago
    Wow, cool. I'm skeptical that this poses a substantial impediment, but that's incredibly fascinating in its own right.
  • YokoZar 8y ago
    Can we observe this effect among heavy mushroom eaters?
    • smurphy 8y ago
      I practice a yeast-free diet in order to control an autoimmune disease. So anecdotally, yes. There is tons of research demonstrating the immuno-moduating effects of mushrooms and yeast.
  • logfromblammo 8y ago
    Non-human chitinases would simply be added as a processing step. This might be as simple as canning the grubs in tomato sauce, or serving them with avocado. People do eat mushrooms and shellfish, after all. Larger insects can have their exoskeletons removed or partially removed, and those can be turned into chitosan, just like the shells from peeled shrimp.
    • smurphy 8y ago
      The Wikipedia article mentions that chitin's degradation products are still recognized. Do you think these chitinases would break the bonds enough to bypass immune recognition?
• zackmorris 8y ago
  Many Native American tribes practiced land fishing, where long nets were strung out and left for a day to catch grasshoppers and whatever else got stuck in them. I'm having trouble finding links though: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/history-of-eating-bugs-america https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/history-of-eating-bugs... http://www.hollowtop.com/finl_html/amerindians.htm http://www.hollowtop.com/finl_html/amerindians.htm http://labs.russell.wisc.edu/insectsasfood/files/2012/09/Book_Chapter_2.pdf http://labs.russell.wisc.edu/insectsasfood/files/2012/09/Boo... <- warning PDF "En'neh, or grasshoppers, are eaten by the Konkau. They catch them with nets, or by driving them into pits, then roast them and reduce them to powder for preservation." You can live very well off the land (even in deserts) if you are willing to eat insects, because their combined mass can be higher than the visible wildlife. Ethically if I had to choose between hunting and butchering animals or having more food than I could handle from passively-caught grasshoppers, I might choose the latter!
• chriselles 8y ago
  A couple of folks I helped mentor at a Startup Weekend founded a company called Anteater. I’m not much of a believer in a western culture change that will see us eating whole insects like we’re living in dystopian Soylent Green. But I can see protein powder derived from insects being palatable for western audiences. But can it be produced profitably at scale? I’ve eaten a bug on a stick streetfood in Cambodia, I’m not a fan.
  • baybal2 8y ago
    >But I can see protein powder derived from insects being palatable for western audiences. In early nineties Russia, one brand of instant noodles immensely popular. A translator made an error on its packaging, translating "soy protein" as "insect protein" and it was there for, I think, like 3 or 4 years. And for those 3 years, Russians genuinely believed that those brownish-pinkish crumbs inside were something of insect origin. Yes, but they still ate it.
    • chriselles 8y ago
      That’s really interesting. I wonder if the macho factor like often seen with extra hot sauce comes into play with such labeling?
  • InitialLastName 8y ago
    > I’m not much of a believer in a western culture change that will see us eating whole insects like we’re living in dystopian Soylent Green How much of a change is it, really, from [0]? [0] https://www.foodandwine.com/seafood/shellfish/13-best-places-eat-crab-in-maryland-summer https://www.foodandwine.com/seafood/shellfish/13-best-places...
    • chriselles 8y ago
      Good point! Marketing for lobster changed from a food for poor folks to food for rich folks over time. Maybe a name change too. Like what happened with the seriously ugly Patagonian Toothfish remarketed as Chilean Sea Bass.
• buovjaga 8y ago
  In a study conducted by University of Turku, 70% of the Finnish respondents were interested in edible insects and 50% said they would buy food made of insects, if it were available [0]. Supermarkets in my area here in Helsinki have sold insect foods (breads, bars) for several months already. I can't comment on the taste as I am a vegetarian :) [0]: http://www.utu.fi/fi/yksikot/fff/palvelut/kehitysprojektit/hyonteiset/Documents/Hy%C3%B6nteiset%20ruokaketjussa%20loppuraportti%20(julkinen).pdf http://www.utu.fi/fi/yksikot/fff/palvelut/kehitysprojektit/h...
• tomjen3 8y ago
  Somebody brought a bunch of salty crisp mealworms to work. It was a little wierd first, but they basically taste like thin paper chips; not at all a bad taste. For those of you on diets, if I recall correctly they had pretty high fat, pretty high protein (like 50ish %) and very low amounts of carbs). Might be worth considering for health issue.
• contingencies 8y ago
  The author of the famous natural farming manifesto The One-Straw Revolution[0], Masanobu Fukuoka[1], was a microbiologist assigned by the Japanese army to evaluate the edibility of various insects encountered by the army as they spread across Southeast Asia. He concluded that almost all of them were edible. I tried a cricket burger recently at the F&A Next[2] event at Wageningen, Europe's pre-eminent agricultural university[1], which may have even been sourced from the farm in this article. While the taste was OK, I literally woke up early in the morning with stomach pain. [0] http://www.appropedia.org/images/d/d3/Onestraw.pdf http://www.appropedia.org/images/d/d3/Onestraw.pdf [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masanobu_Fukuoka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masanobu_Fukuoka [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wageningen_University_and_Research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wageningen_University_and_Rese...
  • baybal2 8y ago
    >woke up early in the morning with stomach pain. Why?
    • contingencies 8y ago
      I believe it was the burger, since it was the only thing I ate all day that could have caused such a reaction. Despite the experience I remain a big supporter of vegetarian food and meat alternatives. It's still early days for an industry that has to overturn deep cultural bias.
• ajharrison 8y ago
  Just eat your goddamn veggies.
  • sctb 8y ago
    Could you please put a little more thought into your comments here? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
• warrenski 8y ago
  I met a bunch of people here in Stellenbosch, South Africa at a startup called Gourmet Grubb. Their first product is an ice-cream made from insect milk, trademarked EntoMilk - no kidding! Fascinating stuff, check them out here: https://gourmetgrubb.com/ https://gourmetgrubb.com/
• komali2 8y ago
  The book "Sourdough" by Robin Sloan touches on eating bugs a bit, as well as some other fun futuristic food concepts. Also, it namedrops pretty much everything that exists in the Bay Area, so that's kinda fun.
• FooBarWidget 8y ago
  Ignoring whether people want to eat it, is insect protein really worth it? According to https://entomologytoday.org/2015/04/15/crickets-are-not-a-free-lunch-protein-conversion-rates-may-be-overestimated/ https://entomologytoday.org/2015/04/15/crickets-are-not-a-fr..., it's about as efficient as chicken. And for insects to produce high-quality protein they need high-quality feed. I had an insect burger lately, consisting of crickets and mealworms. It was a large amount of critters but with a pathetic amount of protein for a relatively large surface area. It didn't feel as fulfilling as a burger. That's when it made me wonder whether it's really that efficient.
  • Pfhreak 8y ago
    I'd be willing to bet there are people who would gladly trade in an equally efficient organism that's lower order cognitively. The mistreatment of animals is why many folks prefer to avoid meat. So while it might not be worth it from an protein-production-efficiency standpoint, it might be worth it from a cruelty-efficiency standpoint.
  • lookACamel 8y ago
    That's when it made me wonder whether it's really that efficient. It's probably not. The reason why cultures around the world have historically eaten insects is not because insects are easy to farm but because they are easy to gather from a wild environment. Large scale insect farming as a replacement for other sorts of large scale farming kind of misses the whole point.
• calebgilbert 8y ago
  Mumbles something about Snowpiercer, shuffles away
• XalvinX 8y ago
  If they are just ground up anyways, I'm not sure I see why they would be better than vegetable protein sources...in fact, wouldn't they almost certainly be less efficient?
  • blacksqr 8y ago
    Yes, crickets require high-protein feed to grow at a viable rate. I don't understand the logic of using the crickets instead of just using the feed. Black soldier flies, on the other hand, feed on sewage and rotting waste, things it would be really beneficial to get rid of. Using them as a protein source makes sense to me, on an intellectual level at least.
    • lookACamel 8y ago
      Would you really want to eat something in the food chain only one step removed from sewage and rotting waste?
      • blacksqr 8y ago
        Do you eat mushrooms?
        • XalvinX 8y ago
          I love mushrooms. And let's not forget some of the most expensive foods out there: crabs and lobsters. Early pilgrims in New England refused to eat them because the found them feasting on dead bodies (particularly human) a bit too often... Not kidding. Catfish, carp, crayfish, and many other things live on about the same level, despite being as delicious as Shiitake Mushrooms, which I just ate tonight! :)
• leoreeves 8y ago
  To be honest, I'm holding out for clean meat, eating insects just seems unnecessary to me, especially because of welfare considerations—insects potentially have the capacity to feel pain and you have to kill a significant amount of insects just to make a small amount of food. "Considerable empirical evidence supports the assertion that insects feel pain and are conscious of their sensations. In so far as their pain matters to them, they have an interest in not being pained and their lives are worsened by pain. Furthermore, as conscious beings, insects have future (even if immediate) plans with regard to their own lives, and the death of insects frustrates these plans. In that sentience appears to be an ethically sound, scientifically viable basis for granting moral status and in consideration of previous arguments which establish a reasonable expectation of consciousness and pain in insects, I propose the following, minimum ethic: We ought to refrain from actions which may be reasonably expected to kill or cause nontrivial pain in insects when avoiding these actions has no, or only trivial, costs to our own welfare." — Jeffery A. Lockwood http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1712&context=bts http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...
• bluena 8y ago
  In Cambodia there's a high standing restaurant with insects instead of proteins. When cooked by a good chef, insects can be delicious and visually pleasing!
  • freeflight 8y ago
    I could buy the delicious part, but I don't think there's anything that could be done to insects to make them "visually pleasing" to me, at least as long as they are still recognizable as insects.
• perpetualcrayon 8y ago
  Not knowledgeable in this area, but very curious. I know it would be extremely expensive to be concerned with extracting "waste" systems of every insect we consume as we do with other species. What does insect "waste" system consist of that could help me be more inclined to test this food trend, the risks of removing the waste systems obviously don't exist as they do with other species?
• carapace 8y ago
  I've been hearing recently about roach farming in China. https://qz.com/1257583/a-chinese-farm-is-breeding-6-billion-cockroaches-a-year-to-make-medicine/ https://qz.com/1257583/a-chinese-farm-is-breeding-6-billion-...
• louprado 8y ago
  "the muddy pens where as many as 1,200 pigs once wallowed into a climate-controlled cricket farm. It’s on pace to yield 1,500 kilograms (3,300 pounds) of the edible protein this year" Pigs reach slaughter weight at around 6 months of age at which point it yields around 180lbs of hanging weight meat. The article further claims a 18/63 ratio of land required per gram of protein in favor of crickets. Assuming they previously slaughtered 1000 pigs a year -> 180,000 lbs * 63/18 = 630,000lbs is their expected cricket protein capacity which is ~200X more than their current output. Any ideas on why the numbers are so different ? Edit: I just realized that a pig steak is mostly water and the cricket protein is likely dehydrated. So it more like 50X not 200X.
• aaron695 8y ago
  A SIDE OF GRASSHOPPERS Chapulines have become a snack favorite among baseball fans in Seattle. http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/22946221/at-seattle-mariners-games-grasshoppers-favorite-snack http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/22946221/at-seat...
• bayesian_horse 8y ago
  My research into the area has shown me that even though insects are supposed to use fewer resources, and are grown as animal feed, they are rather more expensive than most meat sources. Mainly because of labor costs. Also, counter to intuition, many insects take a longer time to raise to "market size" than many conventional livestock.
• KnightOfWords 8y ago
  I had some cricket-coated chicken at a bug farm in Pembrokeshire the other day, it was tasty. As the crickets were ground into a powder it was very inoffensive. I don't generally like food that can stare back, such as whole fish, so cricket flour is good for me.
• tedwasright 8y ago
  I will never eat bugs or things made from bugs. Billionaires in silicon valley want to entice you to eat bugs and promote it as environmentally friendly and sustainable while they keep real food supplies for themselves. I will eat them before I eat bugs.
• tedwasright 8y ago
  This immediately came to mind. The Morphology and Evolution is near complete. https://hackernoon.com/on-the-infestation-of-small-souled-bugmen-6561ae922e07?gi=3c13b64e962e https://hackernoon.com/on-the-infestation-of-small-souled-bu...
• twfarland 8y ago
  Yeah nah this isn't gonna catch on. Synthetic or simulated meats will mature commercially first.
• lookACamel 8y ago
  If I had to bet between insects and plant-based meat substitutes like the Impossible Burger, I'd bet on the latter. Insects are cool, but they just doesn't make sense as a major food staple. They don't really taste like much. Texture wise, adult insects have too much chitin. They're not as easy to farm as you think (high death rates). But the real problem is that they're basically snacks. Finger-food. Toppings. A person who accepts entomology is not going to automatically stop eating beef, pork, chicken and fish.
• chrisbrandow 8y ago
  We all need some protein and even if we only displace some of that with insects, it would reduce GW emissions. So I applaud the effort, though honestly, it grossed me out.