Honestly I haven’t tried it but I wouldn’t mind certain things containing bug parts (on purpose) to make up for protein in them. And honestly that crunch sounds quite good.
It has one of the same inherent inefficiencies as animal meat: they need to eat something to grow. Therefore we need to use a lot of resources to produce a lot of food for them to eat, before we can eat them.
It always seems much more efficient to use those resources to grow food for us to eat directly. Also, getting Americans to eat a vegetable is slightly easier than getting them to eat a bug.
I think the “magic” of bugs is that they can eat things that would be inedible or unhealthy for other omnivores (like pigs). If we can convert some of our food and paper waste into protein and chitin, it might be worth the investment.
This only works for small farms but regular animals already fill that spot there too. Chicken and pigs are mainly fed kitchen scraps in these settings. The issue is once you go into large-scale commercial farming it becomes way too inefficient to use waste products and buying feed is more economical viable. Doesn’t matter if it’s insects or mammals or.
A lot of animal feed is already made up of a lot of “food waste”. Rice bran, maize and wheat offal, fish meal, and bone meal, all of that are byproducts of food for human consumption and commonly found in animal feed. You can even find some that have things like sawdust or other wood products inside. There are even studies into using waste paper for cattle. And while this might sound wrong, it doesn’t harm the animal. But the issue is, humans don’t want to eat something that ate something we don’t like. And I don’t see that changing with insects either.
For me the exciting part about bug farming isn’t really their use as food (for humans or animals) but more their potential to eat “real” waste (like things that birds and mammals shouldn’t eat) and then be turned into non-food items - like chondroitin or have other derivatives made out of their chitin.
Right now it’s not very efficient but with some selective breeding (or faster, GMO mealworm gut bacteria) they could start working on the landfill issue. Their poop would have to be incinerated since it would concentrate flame retardants and other toxins, but we might be able to get something useful out of them.
edit: i have a box of mealworms that I wanted to try feeding just styrofoam to to see how many generations it would take to have mealworms that thrive (not just survive and turn to cannibalism) on the stuff, but i felt bad, now they eat kitchen waste and shredded paper.
1 is they’re a lot more efficient at producing calories vs calories eaten compared to larger animals, and insanely more water efficient. And 2, which varies by insect, is what they eat and the results of it. Many insects eating habits have positive impacts on environmental health and are sought after for that purpose. Earthworms are a famous example, but there are all kinds of insects that play a composting role in nature, eating decaying organic matter and converting it into nutritionally rich soil for plants. Pollinators are another example.
- in 2013, UN tried to encourage people to eat more bugs
- bugs are still part of the cuisines of a lot of the world
- bugs for food can be raised in tiny spaces with minimal resources
- the main issue is Western countries where bugs are seen as icky (but then we’ve also lost track of where our food comes from and are grossed out by simple organ meats) – we still do shrimp and crayfish and lobster but only because we refuse to see them as bugs
- one sideline that came out of the paleo community – our bodies have a “genetic library” of digestive enzymes, but it is also common for our body to “forget” enzymes (ex. lactase) through lack of use, but apparently our body never forgets chitinase (the claim being that chitin was such an integral part of our diet for so much of our evolutionary history) – side effect of this is yes, you can quite easily consume those shrimp tails rather than pushing them off to the side of your plate
I’ve eaten a few things made with powdered crickets. They were ok. I think treating it as a protein powder and adding it to baked goods makes the idea of eating “bugs” more palatable for most people.
This! I don’t know how I would feel about the texture experience of eating whole insects, but using them in stuff as a powder seems very doable.
Cricket flour isn’t bad at all. It adds a burnt toast flavor that works best in heavier spiced baked goods. I’ve made this recipe a few times for halloween and challenged people to “eat bugs” and everyone who tried it has liked it. I do make sure they don’t have a shellfish allergy first.
I bought some of the little flavored crickets you can get, I got cheese flavor and bbq flavors. They’re not bad, they remove the legs so it’s just a little morsel, they taste a lot like sunflower seeds. I don’t think I’d be opposed working them into my diet if I needed to.
I think whenever news articles talk about bugs they always show a gruesome picture of someone taking a bite, as though eating beef would be a person carving right into the animal. Yes, some cultures do eat bugs, but this is unlikely to be the form factor in which most people would eat them.
Cochineal is a food safe dye made from insects, used in cosmetics and beverages. There are probably other examples, but overall I would expect that insect derived foods would be ground and eaten like powders or patties in the west.
I’ve eaten quite a few things with bugs. Mostly powdered and in something else – cricket bread is quite good and very high protein. Grasshopper too. Even black fly casings can be ground up and added into things (though I wasn’t as big a fan).
I think insects are a good option for low cost protein. They can be cultivated vertically, and don’t require as many resources as some other proteins. I think they add some nice nutrient diversity to diets trying to limit meat consumption. Plant proteins are great, but you can only eat so many forms of soy before it starts messing with your body.
I hope it catches on more. I think once people see and try products where the bug body isn’t as noticeable, they’ll get over some of their ‘ick’ factor.
