Maybe crickets aren't the food of the future | Hacker News Reader

Maybe crickets aren't the food of the future

fusion.net

9 pointslxm10 comments

Every time I see these posts where people claim that they will feed the world with crickets and bugs, my mind screams that's just complete nonsense. The problem in the developed world (that is where they are marketing this kind of things anyway) is that people are eating too much meat already, not that we need to product more meat, that is just the opposite.

The current meat is indeed really expensive to produce in terms of resources compare to other kind of food but that's not a problem at all, it's just people are eating too much of it because it's too cheap already, that is the problem. And it's not going to be solved by replacing burgers by cricket burgers. That would just make things even worse, you could get even cheaper meat so the consumption of meat would even raise a bit.

- there are people than those here in the western/first world

- insects could/should substitute animal meat to save ressources and the decrease negative effects of our livestyle (soil erosion, to many nutritions in water bodies..

- This new trend is mainly targeted to developed countries currently.

- If we divide the consumption of meat by at least five, we suddenly have much less problems. It's just a solution to the wrong problem. The problem is how people consume food, we are just not supposed to eat meat in such ridiculous quantities. Replacing meat with cricket meat is not going to solve that.

I probably spend $400/month just on meat; I love it. You people who are trying to get people not to eat meat should stop trying to guilt people into forgoing things they enjoy and focus on reducing poverty or eradicating slavery. Those are much more worthy causes.

I'm an not advocating on forcing people to switch to a vegetarian diet, I'm not a vegetarian myself. I just present the facts. People would be healthier by eating less meat than what they do currently, they don't need to remove it from their diet. It's great that you love it, most people love meat, I also love meat, that's why we are eating so much of it. I agree that there is a lot of loud vegetarian extremists out there but I'm not one of them, I would just like people to eat more balanced meals instead of the fast-food nonsense we have today.

The alternative to grain (grocery store waste) doesn't seem like its going to work either. Its a feedback problem - we don't waste as much as we eat; we can't produce the food we eat from its waste. Like the movie Soylent Green - can't use people to feed people.

Crickets are not so bad, cockroaches are even more efficient at protein conversion :-(

I always found the "crunchiness" off putting :) (that was a joke, I draw my line at two pairs of legs.

They eat them in Mexico. They aren't bad if you can overcome your squeamishness. (Saying that, if I hadn't seen a prawn until now, I think the appearance would put me off).

Pro survival tip: eat insects with less than 6 legs in the wild to prevent being poisoned. Cook them first to prevent bacterial diseases.

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