7 ms·

The Joys And Ethics Of Insect Eating

59 points by tellarin 13y ago

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
ams6110 13y ago
I've tried raising crickets to feed our bearded dragon. It's damn hard. As easy as it is to find them under leaves etc. in the garden I was never able to maintain a breeding colony. And they smell pretty bad too.
- jameshk 13y ago
  Those things are so annoying, they always find a way to hide in some nook or cranny.
- DanBC 13y ago
  Pig farms can smell pretty bad too! I imagine there will eventually be a market for units that click together to create insect farms. Heating, lighting, food and water, with different shelves for different bugs. I haven't seen anyone talking about the killing process. Do you just throw them into a deep fryer and hope for the best? Gas them? I have a strong aversion to the idea of eating insects. I don't know how serious my hunger would have to be to overcome this. And that's for already dead and cooked insects. Give me a cage of wriggling moving bugs and I would have a really hard time killing cooking and eating them. (I don't eat shrimps or prawns or lobster or similar for this same reason).
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - babuskov 13y ago
    There were guys on Shark Tank with this idea for crickets. They had it all figured out. I can't find the exact episode on YouTube now, but here's the story: http://sharktanksuccess.blogspot.com/2014/03/cricket-energy-bars.html http://sharktanksuccess.blogspot.com/2014/03/cricket-energy-...
    - T-hawk 13y ago
      The full episode is on ABC's site, probably up for another week or two. http://abc.go.com/shows/shark-tank/episode-guide/season-05/521-chapul-garage-door-lock-morninghead-packback http://abc.go.com/shows/shark-tank/episode-guide/season-05/5...
  - kudos200 13y ago
    They said: "when they're culled we lower the temperature so that there's no violent death or change in state (because insects are exothermic their metabolism slows until they go into a coma-like sleep without any pain)." Not sure how they determine the pain thing, but that's apparently how it works.
doesnt_know 13y ago
The strangest part of this story is that the author ate some cookies some random stranger sent her. I'm not sure if I'd be that brave.
guard-of-terra 13y ago
I try to avoid eating invertebrates as a general rule. The only exception is crustaceans perhaps.
- Double_Cast 13y ago
  Out of curiosity, may I ask why you avoid eating invertebrates?
  - guard-of-terra 13y ago
    They are disgusting, or arent't tasty, or a combination of both.
- mertd 13y ago
  So you don't eat invertebrates except for the ones you eat?
chimeracoder 13y ago
Interesting article. I've always found it amusing that insects are so taboo in most cuisines, yet we already eat all sorts of weird creatures[0]. However, I agree with the author at the end. This is a weird statement by the interviewee: > If you're a vegetarian, I can't imagine a reason why you wouldn't want to adopt insects into your diet I can think of a lot of reasons. Some people just don't want to eat living creatures capable of sentient thought and pain (even if the process used to raise and kill them is painless). I'm painting with an incredibly broad brush, but in my experience, vegans tend to be more focused on farming practices - I know several vegans who say that they would be comfortable eating eggs or dairy that they themselves farmed (so that they could be sure that the hens/cows are being treated properly). But vegetarians (and vegans) have a number of different reasons for their dietary preferences - some of them are also interested in the treatment of animals, but they may instead (or also) have a vegetarian diet for reasons related to health, religion, etc. Most of these reasons would apply equally to insects and to birds/fish/mammals. [0] obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1268/ https://xkcd.com/1268/
- jimmaswell 13y ago
  From what I understand, insects aren't complex enough to feel or understand what an animal like a mammal or reptile sees as "pain"
  - quasque 13y ago
    The most common argument against insects feeling pain used to be that they lacked the nociceptors (sensory neurons that respond to stimuli indicating damage) that provide pain perception in humans, and by analogy other vertebrates. However, it turns out that fruit fly larvae have thermal nociceptors that respond at the same threshold (~42°C) as those in vertebrates, rather damaging that line of argument. Alternatively, we could state that they don't have the mental capacity to experience pain as a conscious human might, but this is difficult (maybe impossible) to prove: how can we objectively measure what is essentially a private, subjective experience? This also suggests that the conceptual line drawn between vertebrate animals and other living things regarding which species can experience pain, is really quite arbitrary.
whiddershins 13y ago
I clicked through to one of the retailers and grasshoppers are >$36/lb ... I can order more nutritious steak for less. Seems like the pricing is way off thus far.
- SwellJoe 13y ago
  I've talked to one of the folks at Little Herds here in Austin (http://littleherds.org/ http://littleherds.org/), and he explained that he'd like to eat a lot more bugs than he does, because he enjoys them and they're nutritious, but the cost is still prohibitive even for him (who is involved in the farming of bugs for consumption). I'm not sure I understand why that is. The argument is that scale is the biggest limiting factor, but I would think achieving scale would be so much easier. A million crickets is a lot easier to house than even a few hundred steer. I really want to see evidence that insects are sustainable and affordable as a food source before I dive too far down into that particular rabbit hole. I'm a vegetarian for ethical and environmental reasons, but I'm not sure my ethical stance extends to include insects and arachnids (though I do take them outside rather than kill them). I already occasionally eat clams and scallops and oysters. I'd probably eat bugs, if they were sustainable to farm and if they were not for economic elites only; I also tend to opt out of luxury economies on ethical grounds.
  - aaronem 13y ago
    You take arachnids outside? But they keep insects down! I'm perfectly happy to cohabit with them, so long as there's a clear and evident understanding that where I go, spiders don't, and vice versa -- I mind me of my childhood home, which we shared with a sizable black widow who made good use of the space behind the toilet tank; as long as you didn't go carelessly sticking your fingers in dark crevices, you had nothing to worry about, and that's a good rule in any circumstance. (And black widows really are lovely creatures, once you know how to treat them with proper respect -- not at all like the false widows now cropping up here in Maryland, which are so godawful ugly as to make you imagine they spring full-grown from the forehead of David Cronenberg.) But don't take my word for it; try it for yourself -- next time you find that a spider's spun her web in a corner, leave her be, and you'll likely find yourself less frequently called upon to escort importunate insects out the door; she'll be happy to take care of the problem, to the benefit of both of you.
gmisra 13y ago
I have tried these, and they are surprisingly delicious: http://www.exo.co/ http://www.exo.co/ They are labelled as "Made with cricket flour", but other than that you wouldn't know it was any different from the dozens of similar protein/nutritional bars out there. They are a bit expensive, but I highly recommend getting the sampler pack at least once if you're at all curious about the taste, texture, etc: http://www.exo.co/products/pre-order-multi-pack http://www.exo.co/products/pre-order-multi-pack This is the other "major" brand of cricket-based protein bars: http://chapul.com/ http://chapul.com/
- cgh 13y ago
  I'd love to try some of these. One thing though: the bars from both brands are relatively low in protein (10g for Exo and only 5g in the Chapul bars). I wonder why that is? If they want to appeal to the high-protein/power athletics crowd, they need to bump up the protein a lot. As of now, there's not much to distinguish these from a much cheaper Clif bar. Higher protein bars, like the BioX bars, use a lot of soy protein, which is sub-optimal. It would be great to get a ~20-30g protein bar with cricket protein.
erikstarck 13y ago
There's a few startups in this area, like http://www.chirpfarms.com/ http://www.chirpfarms.com/ There's lots of opportunities around food. Supermarkets and grocery stores are a $522 billion business in the US alone. We are planning a hackathon around food in the South of Sweden after the summer. Check out http://hackformaten.se http://hackformaten.se if you're interested.
- henrikschroder 13y ago
  > Hack för maten Haha! I see what you did there! :-D
JasonCEC 13y ago
My company[1] did a bit of flavor profiling research for a few Ento farmers and startups. Once you get over your aversion to the idea of eating crickets or mealworms, their actually quite good! The crickets always reminded me of french fries (and I don't even eat fries....). We have a vegetarian on our team who felt fine eating them. No pain, no harm. Lobsters on the other hand... jury is out on weather they feel pain. [1] www.Gastrograph.com
- failrate 13y ago
  When we were in Shanghai for ChinaJoy, we stopped at a Yunan beer bar called Southern Barbarian. Our appetizer was a plate of deep fried crickets, meal worms, and bees. They all had a nice potato chip feel and taste. The bees made my lips numb, so I stopped eating them.
  - JasonCEC 13y ago
    Gotta love China; I had Wasp Larvae when I was living in Yunnan, and loved it! The numbing was probably from Sichuan Pepper Corn [1] not the bees themselves! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sichuan_pepper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sichuan_pepper
droithomme 13y ago
Before clicking: "Insects, huh? Shark Tank had a cricket meal business funded a couple weeks ago and they said they could help them with a PR campaign advocating cricket eating. What do I bet that this article I am about to click on will not be about the more common sorts of insects eaten such as grasshoppers and worms, but will prominently feature crickets and cricket meal, proving the author, whoever that is, is a stooge for Big Media?" < Click. > "Bingo. The Shark Tank guys are good. Really know how to play the game."
- mason240 13y ago
  It's something that I have heard NPR talking about a few times over the last year. Science Friday even talked about it.
- tomgruner 13y ago
  It could also be just part of our zeitgeist and the link you are making is coincidental and not influenced or paid for by shark tank's investors. I think to prove that there is a shark tank connection, you need to research the author's bio a bit more, article history, and prove that this author repeatedly writes pseudo articles that are marketing pieces... and you have not done any of that research.
- ChuckMcM 13y ago
  I'm not sure I'd go all 'stooge' on them. Its an interesting story and it resonates with a lot of current issues (Warming, farming, PETA, Etc) Of course if the story comes from some young hippie looking guy, as a reporter, you're less likely to report on it than if it comes from some 'known successful' person. Its a characteristic of our society that things the 'cool people' are doing is worth talking about. Is that stoogeism? Or is that someone vetting the idea for some reporter who doesn't want to waste time on otherwise suspect idea?
  - GuiA 13y ago
    http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
Many cuisines involve insects, but they are all traditional. It's just not more widespread because, unfortunately, cattle replaced all other protein sources in most places, specially in the west, where we apparently created a beef addiction. Here in Brazil there's a dish that involves flour and fried ants. It's delicious, tastes like shrimp, but I only tasted once since it's rare. Ant-eating is an influence from native americans. In Cambodia there's also deep fried tarantula. I never ate it, but apparently it's also delicious, tastes like crab. Basically, most insects once deep fried will taste like shrimp or crab, so not bad. There should be more available, since they are apparently way more efficient (and clean) to produce than cattle. Cutting down the forest to raise beef on grass, or cramming a bunch of mammals in a warehouse then wasting money on antibiotics doesn't make any sense.

59 points by tellarin 13y ago

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

I've tried raising crickets to feed our bearded dragon. It's damn hard. As easy as it is to find them under leaves etc. in the garden I was never able to maintain a breeding colony. And they smell pretty bad too.

jameshk 13y ago
Those things are so annoying, they always find a way to hide in some nook or cranny.
DanBC 13y ago
Pig farms can smell pretty bad too! I imagine there will eventually be a market for units that click together to create insect farms. Heating, lighting, food and water, with different shelves for different bugs. I haven't seen anyone talking about the killing process. Do you just throw them into a deep fryer and hope for the best? Gas them? I have a strong aversion to the idea of eating insects. I don't know how serious my hunger would have to be to overcome this. And that's for already dead and cooked insects. Give me a cage of wriggling moving bugs and I would have a really hard time killing cooking and eating them. (I don't eat shrimps or prawns or lobster or similar for this same reason).
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- babuskov 13y ago
  There were guys on Shark Tank with this idea for crickets. They had it all figured out. I can't find the exact episode on YouTube now, but here's the story: http://sharktanksuccess.blogspot.com/2014/03/cricket-energy-bars.html http://sharktanksuccess.blogspot.com/2014/03/cricket-energy-...
  - T-hawk 13y ago
    The full episode is on ABC's site, probably up for another week or two. http://abc.go.com/shows/shark-tank/episode-guide/season-05/521-chapul-garage-door-lock-morninghead-packback http://abc.go.com/shows/shark-tank/episode-guide/season-05/5...
- kudos200 13y ago
  They said: "when they're culled we lower the temperature so that there's no violent death or change in state (because insects are exothermic their metabolism slows until they go into a coma-like sleep without any pain)." Not sure how they determine the pain thing, but that's apparently how it works.

doesnt_know 13y ago

The strangest part of this story is that the author ate some cookies some random stranger sent her. I'm not sure if I'd be that brave.

guard-of-terra 13y ago

I try to avoid eating invertebrates as a general rule. The only exception is crustaceans perhaps.

Double_Cast 13y ago
Out of curiosity, may I ask why you avoid eating invertebrates?
- guard-of-terra 13y ago
  They are disgusting, or arent't tasty, or a combination of both.
mertd 13y ago
So you don't eat invertebrates except for the ones you eat?

chimeracoder 13y ago

Interesting article. I've always found it amusing that insects are so taboo in most cuisines, yet we already eat all sorts of weird creatures[0]. However, I agree with the author at the end. This is a weird statement by the interviewee: > If you're a vegetarian, I can't imagine a reason why you wouldn't want to adopt insects into your diet I can think of a lot of reasons. Some people just don't want to eat living creatures capable of sentient thought and pain (even if the process used to raise and kill them is painless). I'm painting with an incredibly broad brush, but in my experience, vegans tend to be more focused on farming practices - I know several vegans who say that they would be comfortable eating eggs or dairy that they themselves farmed (so that they could be sure that the hens/cows are being treated properly). But vegetarians (and vegans) have a number of different reasons for their dietary preferences - some of them are also interested in the treatment of animals, but they may instead (or also) have a vegetarian diet for reasons related to health, religion, etc. Most of these reasons would apply equally to insects and to birds/fish/mammals. [0] obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1268/ https://xkcd.com/1268/

jimmaswell 13y ago
From what I understand, insects aren't complex enough to feel or understand what an animal like a mammal or reptile sees as "pain"
- quasque 13y ago
  The most common argument against insects feeling pain used to be that they lacked the nociceptors (sensory neurons that respond to stimuli indicating damage) that provide pain perception in humans, and by analogy other vertebrates. However, it turns out that fruit fly larvae have thermal nociceptors that respond at the same threshold (~42°C) as those in vertebrates, rather damaging that line of argument. Alternatively, we could state that they don't have the mental capacity to experience pain as a conscious human might, but this is difficult (maybe impossible) to prove: how can we objectively measure what is essentially a private, subjective experience? This also suggests that the conceptual line drawn between vertebrate animals and other living things regarding which species can experience pain, is really quite arbitrary.

whiddershins 13y ago

I clicked through to one of the retailers and grasshoppers are >$36/lb ... I can order more nutritious steak for less. Seems like the pricing is way off thus far.

SwellJoe 13y ago
I've talked to one of the folks at Little Herds here in Austin (http://littleherds.org/ http://littleherds.org/), and he explained that he'd like to eat a lot more bugs than he does, because he enjoys them and they're nutritious, but the cost is still prohibitive even for him (who is involved in the farming of bugs for consumption). I'm not sure I understand why that is. The argument is that scale is the biggest limiting factor, but I would think achieving scale would be so much easier. A million crickets is a lot easier to house than even a few hundred steer. I really want to see evidence that insects are sustainable and affordable as a food source before I dive too far down into that particular rabbit hole. I'm a vegetarian for ethical and environmental reasons, but I'm not sure my ethical stance extends to include insects and arachnids (though I do take them outside rather than kill them). I already occasionally eat clams and scallops and oysters. I'd probably eat bugs, if they were sustainable to farm and if they were not for economic elites only; I also tend to opt out of luxury economies on ethical grounds.
- aaronem 13y ago
  You take arachnids outside? But they keep insects down! I'm perfectly happy to cohabit with them, so long as there's a clear and evident understanding that where I go, spiders don't, and vice versa -- I mind me of my childhood home, which we shared with a sizable black widow who made good use of the space behind the toilet tank; as long as you didn't go carelessly sticking your fingers in dark crevices, you had nothing to worry about, and that's a good rule in any circumstance. (And black widows really are lovely creatures, once you know how to treat them with proper respect -- not at all like the false widows now cropping up here in Maryland, which are so godawful ugly as to make you imagine they spring full-grown from the forehead of David Cronenberg.) But don't take my word for it; try it for yourself -- next time you find that a spider's spun her web in a corner, leave her be, and you'll likely find yourself less frequently called upon to escort importunate insects out the door; she'll be happy to take care of the problem, to the benefit of both of you.

gmisra 13y ago

I have tried these, and they are surprisingly delicious: http://www.exo.co/ http://www.exo.co/ They are labelled as "Made with cricket flour", but other than that you wouldn't know it was any different from the dozens of similar protein/nutritional bars out there. They are a bit expensive, but I highly recommend getting the sampler pack at least once if you're at all curious about the taste, texture, etc: http://www.exo.co/products/pre-order-multi-pack http://www.exo.co/products/pre-order-multi-pack This is the other "major" brand of cricket-based protein bars: http://chapul.com/ http://chapul.com/

cgh 13y ago
I'd love to try some of these. One thing though: the bars from both brands are relatively low in protein (10g for Exo and only 5g in the Chapul bars). I wonder why that is? If they want to appeal to the high-protein/power athletics crowd, they need to bump up the protein a lot. As of now, there's not much to distinguish these from a much cheaper Clif bar. Higher protein bars, like the BioX bars, use a lot of soy protein, which is sub-optimal. It would be great to get a ~20-30g protein bar with cricket protein.

erikstarck 13y ago

There's a few startups in this area, like http://www.chirpfarms.com/ http://www.chirpfarms.com/ There's lots of opportunities around food. Supermarkets and grocery stores are a $522 billion business in the US alone. We are planning a hackathon around food in the South of Sweden after the summer. Check out http://hackformaten.se http://hackformaten.se if you're interested.

henrikschroder 13y ago
> Hack för maten Haha! I see what you did there! :-D

JasonCEC 13y ago

My company[1] did a bit of flavor profiling research for a few Ento farmers and startups. Once you get over your aversion to the idea of eating crickets or mealworms, their actually quite good! The crickets always reminded me of french fries (and I don't even eat fries....). We have a vegetarian on our team who felt fine eating them. No pain, no harm. Lobsters on the other hand... jury is out on weather they feel pain. [1] www.Gastrograph.com

failrate 13y ago
When we were in Shanghai for ChinaJoy, we stopped at a Yunan beer bar called Southern Barbarian. Our appetizer was a plate of deep fried crickets, meal worms, and bees. They all had a nice potato chip feel and taste. The bees made my lips numb, so I stopped eating them.
- JasonCEC 13y ago
  Gotta love China; I had Wasp Larvae when I was living in Yunnan, and loved it! The numbing was probably from Sichuan Pepper Corn [1] not the bees themselves! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sichuan_pepper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sichuan_pepper

droithomme 13y ago

Before clicking: "Insects, huh? Shark Tank had a cricket meal business funded a couple weeks ago and they said they could help them with a PR campaign advocating cricket eating. What do I bet that this article I am about to click on will not be about the more common sorts of insects eaten such as grasshoppers and worms, but will prominently feature crickets and cricket meal, proving the author, whoever that is, is a stooge for Big Media?" < Click. > "Bingo. The Shark Tank guys are good. Really know how to play the game."

mason240 13y ago
It's something that I have heard NPR talking about a few times over the last year. Science Friday even talked about it.
tomgruner 13y ago
It could also be just part of our zeitgeist and the link you are making is coincidental and not influenced or paid for by shark tank's investors. I think to prove that there is a shark tank connection, you need to research the author's bio a bit more, article history, and prove that this author repeatedly writes pseudo articles that are marketing pieces... and you have not done any of that research.
ChuckMcM 13y ago
I'm not sure I'd go all 'stooge' on them. Its an interesting story and it resonates with a lot of current issues (Warming, farming, PETA, Etc) Of course if the story comes from some young hippie looking guy, as a reporter, you're less likely to report on it than if it comes from some 'known successful' person. Its a characteristic of our society that things the 'cool people' are doing is worth talking about. Is that stoogeism? Or is that someone vetting the idea for some reporter who doesn't want to waste time on otherwise suspect idea?
- GuiA 13y ago
  http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

hcarvalhoalves 13y ago

Many cuisines involve insects, but they are all traditional. It's just not more widespread because, unfortunately, cattle replaced all other protein sources in most places, specially in the west, where we apparently created a beef addiction. Here in Brazil there's a dish that involves flour and fried ants. It's delicious, tastes like shrimp, but I only tasted once since it's rare. Ant-eating is an influence from native americans. In Cambodia there's also deep fried tarantula. I never ate it, but apparently it's also delicious, tastes like crab. Basically, most insects once deep fried will taste like shrimp or crab, so not bad. There should be more available, since they are apparently way more efficient (and clean) to produce than cattle. Cutting down the forest to raise beef on grass, or cramming a bunch of mammals in a warehouse then wasting money on antibiotics doesn't make any sense.