Get ready to eat bugs if you want to live beyond 2050 | Hacker News Reader

Get ready to eat bugs if you want to live beyond 2050

engadget.com

8 pointsafshinmeh9 comments

The title of this is incendiary, to make the reader emotional about being force fed insects.

Everyone eats trace amounts of bugs all the time without giving it a second thought. Bugs get in our food before we buy it, and after we buy it. For every critter we accidentally discover, there are others that go right through our digestive system.

I have no issues buying a slab of steak or bacon - part of the product is the abstraction from animal to dinner. I'm probably a vegetarian in denial because the process of turning an animal into dinner stresses me out but I am happy to have a bacon cheeseburger.

So it seems fair to me that if we can mask the process of trillions of crickets turning into protein powder for making 2050 meatloaf, that someone like me will have no issue eating that either.

I have a feeling my opinion on this will be controversial because talking about food is controversial. I'm not trying to antagonize anyone reading this.

Clickbait title. The article is about alternative protein sources such as crickets or seaweed. The conclusion is a fairer description of the content:

"So whether it comes from a cricket or a lab or off the coast of Indonesia, tomorrow's protein alternatives will be a win for both consumers and the environment, though likely neither are as excited about those prospects as the cows."

> though likely neither are as excited about those prospects as the cows

This is somewhat ironic, since cows will most likely undergo a population collapse if they are no longer being raised domestically for the meat. The remainder would probably be kept mainly for milking. Do you suppose dairy cows have a better overall quality-of-life than other cows?

Or, y'know, I'll stick to beans, lentils, and veggies.

> Or, y'know, I'll stick to beans, lentils, and veggies.

I'd do that too, on top of making use of those insect proteins to feed my chickens and eat eggs, roosters and the hen when it gets too old to lay eggs.

There are a lot of efforts to shift aqua-culture feed to mainly insect larvae based pellets in several countries. Which makes total sense, but I have limited experience with that; but I do know chickens will devour a bowl full of maggots in seconds, which have an amazing fat/protein ratio as way healthier than the typical corn based feed they are often given.

I'm very skeptical when it comes to these headlines, the World produces more than enough food (be it fruit/meat/veg) to feed all of the World's population, its the logistics of a broken food supply chain--obfuscated by subsidies--that make it impossible for it to reach every person at a profit.

Its amazing that it works at all when you think that less than 2% of the World's population works in Ag and this broken system feeds the other 98%, but its also alarming when you think of the vulnerabilities and untenable practices baked into the system.

Please stop scaring me. In 1975, at 4 billions we were not going to be able to feed 8 billions. Now we do. I want to respect the food chain. Let the birds eat the bugs. Let us eat the birds.

Can I just buy long term soybean commodity contracts which follow the price of beef/pork, then sell some each year? I’d prefer that to eating crickets.

Pompous title. I'll happily do it, but not because you made me. Rather, it sounds quite tasty and nutritious! The 'capacity' concept is a lie. Don't forget to look at the drastically slowing worldwide population growth. I'll continue to kill and eat venison and grow my garden.

Bugs are delicious.

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