Like most people, the idea of eating insects disgusts me.
Of course we probably eat small bugs or bug parts all the time without knowing it. I read a theory somewhere that vegetarian Indians used to get enough protein in part from the insects they accidentally ate on the plants.
Before you say don’t knock it before you try it, I’ve eaten a “well cooked bug” before. It was grub made in the so-called old regional style in Ecuador—something they make for tourists. It tasted like bacon but too fatty for me (don’t get me wrong, I like to eat fat, but mixed with food that is not in chunky format). I’ll stick to vertebrates.
But more importantly, why are some people out there so dead set on reprogramming me to like eating bugs?
After all, one front seems to be coming from Europe. Recently the EU has approved worms in food, and they don’t even have to have clear labeling about worms. (Worms are the larval stage of certain beetles.)
Rumor has it that Europe has regressed in its technology and its ability to prevent pest attacks in grain storage. Instead of trying to solve the problem, they just throw up their hands and say ok we’ll just work on the bugs too.
The kind of anti-progress that is scary especially since some people may disagree with that. And we don’t have enough research to know if eating chitin (a substance found in the skin of insects including worms such as mealworms) is just a passing thread, or if it causes problems in humans, or if it may actually have health benefits. Chitin is a biopolymer—funny that there’s almost an interesting Venn diagram of people who fear synthetic polymers—plastics—in our bodies but are fine with natural polymers from bugs.
Even without infrastructure degradation and/or loss of skills, there are problems with pest control. It is said that Europe has banned some of the most powerful pesticides which means that, of course, many insects live on their plants and trees. Another issue, and I don’t know if Europe has this problem but it’s being watched closely in Australia, is that the insects are growing too fast to be immune to pesticides. And when a pest population gains resistance, you want to keep it local and not let it spread across the continent (or the world).
So yes it’s not easy but it seems crazy to me that a core part of human world civilization that was solved 100 years ago is now solved and some people don’t want to solve the causes. Some people think that non-progress is somehow the same as progress: “Yah, we’re going to eat bugs now, we’re so forward!”
But we always had bugs in our food, what’s the problem? You will not die! There are worse things in food right now than a few worms! Uh, yes I think progress should be in knowing more about our food around the country, not less. And of course you won’t die (probably) but we don’t even have a lot of research on eating bugs and even if we did, we’d give people a chance not to eat bugs.
Another reason they push our food bugs, apparently, straight into nature. Unless you believe that the super rich and powerful are planning to make us “eat bugs” for some reason as part of a new world order or something. It’s definitely a scary idea if it goes too far – it could bring down the nation if we have protein bugs. Seriously, it can cause a breakdown. Early Americans, even the poorest, had access to plenty of meat including beef and wild game. Obviously the abundance of meat played no small part in early American development. It has too much power in the flesh to become a world superpower.
There is one thing that annoys me the most about people who want us to eat crickets.
And it’s not just that they don’t have a sense of humor. The big problem is why are insects the One and Only True Remedy to save us? More like in the dark we bound. Yes, a cow pasture produces more methane than a cricket farm. Yes, cows use a lot of water. Now? Also note that incorporating a certain type of seaweed into the cow’s feed removes most of the spray. However, people need resources. The last point of reducing resources is to eliminate people. The opposite of humanity. Many “solutions” end up in politics, people push them and after they fail or are small they still push: “we need to double down on this.” And boy are there so many examples of those here in California where I live.
In the solution space, for example, what about lab-grown meat? Lab-grown meat may be worse for the environment than conventional meat. I’m hoping it will eventually come but I know the market probably won’t. But you’d think Taco Bell could just switch to lab meat and no one would know and that would be a huge demand right there.
Regardless of the specific concepts of the solution—and I would never want lab-grown meat to eat 100% conventional meat—we have a lot of room for a big-world solution. Agriculture and climate and all large things on our planet are dynamic systems with many variables. Other subsystems may be complex and/or chaotic. Negative consequences have occurred and will occur in the future due to human actions. Oh we Americans should stop eating hamburgers because the third world keeps burning its rain forest to make pastures for cows. Well, we (as consumers of hamburgers) didn’t ask them to do that. We can raise cattle here in America. But some countries will lose money, people need jobs. Anyway.
There is no clean one-shot solution.
If you want to reduce greenhouse gases from underdeveloped nations, that’s a big problem—but it’s worth it not they require food security for people in first or third world countries. That is not the solution. It’s really crazy to want to go back. We should never do anything that will slow down the progress of civilization. And that takes energy, a lot of energy. And as we see in some countries in the last few decades that try to catch up, they produce a lot of waste too (which they should manage better). And it requires access to nutritious food like meat!
But they will tell you that we don’t have time! The world will end soon because of global warming! We actually know how to cool things down if we want to, we did it by mistake in the last century. However, there are many things we can’t do and trying to tell cultures to just stop and change automatically and in an anti-human, anti-progressive way is crazy.
Anyway, cricket pushers are basically Luddites with a high level of sophistication who probably couldn’t find their way out of a paper bag, and I have no patience for their military violence.
