4 ms·

Why wait until after a world apocalypse? Insects are plentiful and nutritious and we should be eating more of them now. There's plenty of evidence that insect

Why wait until after a world apocalypse? Insects are plentiful and nutritious and we should be eating more of them now. There's plenty of evidence that insects are high quality protein with low fat. In many traditional societies around the world, termites, grubs, grasshoppers, and other creepy crawly things play an important nutritional role. Years ago, my wife and I read a beautifully illustrated travelogue "Man Eating Bugs" written by a husband-and-wife team who traveled the world to see (and sample) insect cuisine in many cultures. Fascinating stuff. It's a generally well supported view among paleontologists that primitive humans ate lots of bugs. We were opportunistic foragers from way back. It's only in recent centuries, in "civilized" places, that we have regarded bugs as a repulsive thing to eat. I would imagine that in and after a nuclear winter, animal and vegetable life would dwindle to a tiny population that would take hundreds if not thousands of years to replenish. Probably we should be caching genetic material, sperm, and seeds of every species in some safe, underground arkology, so that two hundred years after the meltdown, whoever's left can restore some biodiversity.

pmoriarty 12y ago
I have sympathy for insects, and I do not want to harm more of them.
maxerickson 12y ago
There are many seed (and other types of genetic material) banks. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Global_Seed_Vault http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Global_Seed_Vault Is a famous one.
wyager 12y ago
If a major restaurant started using insect based meat products, the irrational public backlash would be tremendous.
IvyMike 12y ago
I supported a kickstarter to get these cricket protein energy bars manufactured. You can order a box now. https://www.exoprotein.com/ https://www.exoprotein.com/ To me, they pretty much taste like any other energy bar--in fact, it's kind of a letdown since you want something more exotic.
chris_va 12y ago
In fact, it is happening: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/08/15/340653853/startups-pitch-cricket-flour-as-the-best-protein-you-could-eat http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/08/15/340653853/startu...
logfromblammo 12y ago
I raise Tenebrio molitor in a 5-gal plastic bucket, as pet food. I haven't tried cooking them, but eating the live larvae or pupae isn't altogether horrible. With the adults, bits of the exoskeleton, especially the legs and wing covers, get stuck in your teeth, just like with popcorn. But they aren't very flavorful, either. I'm not sure what I was expecting, really. I think if I blended the suckers, the resulting bland protein paste could be added to practically any recipe, like tofu or ground chicken. But there is a big problem. The other people in the household have a contagious, irrational prejudice against not only eating beetles, but also knowing that I might be eating them, using the same dishes and utensils that they might be using later. Bugs will only ever be post-catastrophe food for them, because they literally will not even entertain the notion until they are actually facing starvation. That's why wait. The only likely path for getting more insect protein into the US food supply is by feeding them to premium organic poultry fowl or egg-layers. So there may be an opportunity there for industrial-scale insect breeders, but I expect any attempts to go a more direct route will generate a backlash bigger than "pink slime".
- HeyLaughingBoy 12y ago
  by feeding them to premium organic poultry fowl or egg-layers Which leads me to an anecdote I find interesting. I raise chickens. My older child can immediately tell the taste difference between an egg from one of our chickens that have a varied diet and one from the store. And that's without even seeing them. As soon as you break the eggs open, it's obvious which is which: ours have deep orange yolks vs the pale yellow store bought ones. tl;dr: eggs from chickens eating bugs and grass taste far different than from chickens raised on cheap feed.
  - IndianAstronaut 12y ago
    Is it even possible to get true free range eggs anywhere? I know plenty say cage free, but that could just be opening the cage for an hour or so in a day just to make the marketing claim.
    - logfromblammo 12y ago
ChuckMcM 12y ago
You need look no further than the folks pushing "Cricket Flour"[1] (which is a weird juxtaposition for me) to see folks eating bugs today, and there was restaurant selling grasshopper tacos in San Francisco but that was stopped when they were unable to get FDA 'food safe' approval for the grasshoppers they were importing. [1] http://chapul.com/ http://chapul.com/
alecco 12y ago
Soy and other vegetable proteins are the most resource efficient to make. You have to feed insects something, they don't make all aminoacids. Now bacteria and in particular cyanobacteria, that is the future. That is a 10x performance over current crops.
- jschwartzi 12y ago
  Remind me to kill myself when we're hard up enough as a species that we're eating bacterial slime to survive.
  - alecco 12y ago
    It can be fed to something else, like fungus, plant or animal. And if it's used directly, nowadays we already eat plenty of industrial food products with unknown origins. The future of that technology used for good (instead of plain sales and market share) could create efficient, tasty and nutritious foods.

pmoriarty 12y ago

I have sympathy for insects, and I do not want to harm more of them.

maxerickson 12y ago

There are many seed (and other types of genetic material) banks. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Global_Seed_Vault http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Global_Seed_Vault Is a famous one.

wyager 12y ago

If a major restaurant started using insect based meat products, the irrational public backlash would be tremendous.

IvyMike 12y ago

I supported a kickstarter to get these cricket protein energy bars manufactured. You can order a box now. https://www.exoprotein.com/ https://www.exoprotein.com/ To me, they pretty much taste like any other energy bar--in fact, it's kind of a letdown since you want something more exotic.

chris_va 12y ago

In fact, it is happening: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/08/15/340653853/startups-pitch-cricket-flour-as-the-best-protein-you-could-eat http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/08/15/340653853/startu...

logfromblammo 12y ago

I raise Tenebrio molitor in a 5-gal plastic bucket, as pet food. I haven't tried cooking them, but eating the live larvae or pupae isn't altogether horrible. With the adults, bits of the exoskeleton, especially the legs and wing covers, get stuck in your teeth, just like with popcorn. But they aren't very flavorful, either. I'm not sure what I was expecting, really. I think if I blended the suckers, the resulting bland protein paste could be added to practically any recipe, like tofu or ground chicken. But there is a big problem. The other people in the household have a contagious, irrational prejudice against not only eating beetles, but also knowing that I might be eating them, using the same dishes and utensils that they might be using later. Bugs will only ever be post-catastrophe food for them, because they literally will not even entertain the notion until they are actually facing starvation. That's why wait. The only likely path for getting more insect protein into the US food supply is by feeding them to premium organic poultry fowl or egg-layers. So there may be an opportunity there for industrial-scale insect breeders, but I expect any attempts to go a more direct route will generate a backlash bigger than "pink slime".

HeyLaughingBoy 12y ago
by feeding them to premium organic poultry fowl or egg-layers Which leads me to an anecdote I find interesting. I raise chickens. My older child can immediately tell the taste difference between an egg from one of our chickens that have a varied diet and one from the store. And that's without even seeing them. As soon as you break the eggs open, it's obvious which is which: ours have deep orange yolks vs the pale yellow store bought ones. tl;dr: eggs from chickens eating bugs and grass taste far different than from chickens raised on cheap feed.
- IndianAstronaut 12y ago
  Is it even possible to get true free range eggs anywhere? I know plenty say cage free, but that could just be opening the cage for an hour or so in a day just to make the marketing claim.
  - logfromblammo 12y ago

ChuckMcM 12y ago

You need look no further than the folks pushing "Cricket Flour"[1] (which is a weird juxtaposition for me) to see folks eating bugs today, and there was restaurant selling grasshopper tacos in San Francisco but that was stopped when they were unable to get FDA 'food safe' approval for the grasshoppers they were importing. [1] http://chapul.com/ http://chapul.com/

alecco 12y ago

Soy and other vegetable proteins are the most resource efficient to make. You have to feed insects something, they don't make all aminoacids. Now bacteria and in particular cyanobacteria, that is the future. That is a 10x performance over current crops.

jschwartzi 12y ago
Remind me to kill myself when we're hard up enough as a species that we're eating bacterial slime to survive.
- alecco 12y ago
  It can be fed to something else, like fungus, plant or animal. And if it's used directly, nowadays we already eat plenty of industrial food products with unknown origins. The future of that technology used for good (instead of plain sales and market share) could create efficient, tasty and nutritious foods.