Let Them Eat Bugs
Scientists are jumping on an underutilized protein source that is abundant and environmentally friendly.
Sounds great — until you realize that what the scientists from National Autonomous University of Mexico are suggesting is dining on insects.
Entomophagy, or eating bugs, is already a common practice in over 13 countries, including Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia, according to this week's Economist.
And what better then bugs? Gram for gram, bugs provide more nutrients than beef or fish.
And while the Food and Agriculture Organization at the United Nations considers livestock “one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global,” bug farming is a low-impact process.
Khon Kaen University in Thailand has already developed an inexpensive cricket-rearing technique and taught it to 4,500 families. On just a 100 square feet of land, a family can raise enough crickets to make a tidy profit. Or they can even be “grown” inside homes. Because bugs are a crop that doesn’t require much food or water, grows and reproduces quickly, the yield can be incredible.
The Mexican university researchers themselves cite numerous reasons for insect eating: the 75 percent rise in some food prices, the additional 100 million people pushed into poverty, and global warming as reasons to shift to these more sustainable sources of protein.
Of course, there are perils to introducing new species of insects to areas. And there are those who just plain won’t eat bugs.
A more palatable option suggested by the Economist might be to replace supplements in processed food or animal feed with insect-derived protein, which would still help make carnivorous habits a little more sustainable.
Digg
Facebook
Google Buzz
LinkedIn
StumbleUpon
Twitter
Printer-friendly version
Comments
In pictures...
A Chinese woman eating in today's BBC demonstrates the delicacy of scorpions.
The Economist suggestion is
The Economist suggestion is an interesting one and would probably be more acceptable to people in the US rather than to begin snacking on insects. I wonder how much of an impact that adding insects to the feed would impact the environment. It is unfortunate that we (as a nation) are so preoccupied with eating meat that we don’t care or aren’t aware of the long-term impacts that it has on the environment.
With the current downturn in the world economy people certainly need new ideas and methods to keep their families afloat. Producing insect farms or crops would be a way for struggling families to earn some money. Although, realistically, how much demand is there for insect farms?
After reading about the
After reading about the hunger crisis in North Korea, it seems that the idea of bug, specifically the cricket-rearing mentioned, isn't such a bad idea. In addition to the smaller health issues that bugs pose unlike meat, it is a cheap and relatively easy process to become involved in. In desperate times like these, it seems that we should be able to look past the fact that we're eating bugs, and instead, embrace this new food, as it provides good proteins and perhaps even a new way to stay afloat in a drowning economy.
Well.
well now you wont have to tell your kids to stop eating those bugs out on the back lawn. haha
Post new comment