From the “in a word, no” department and the AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY comes this same tired old story we keep hearing from eco-activists tht believe bugs are more “sustainable” than beef. Because cattle make methane, and that will set the world on fire someday.
The buzz about edible bugs: Can they replace beef?
Edible bugs might sound unappetizing to many Westerners, but they’ve long been included in traditional diets in other regions of the world, which are now home to more than 2 billion people, according a report by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. The report also notes that about 1,900 insect species have been documented as a food source globally. That they’re a source of protein is well established, but if the world is to turn to bugs to replace meat, the critters will need to offer more than protein. Iron is a particularly important nutrient that is often missing in non-meat diets, causing iron-deficiency anemia, which can lead to lower cognition, immunity, poor pregnancy outcomes and other problems. In light of these concerns, Yemisi Latunde-Dada and colleagues wanted to find out whether commonly eaten insects could contribute to a well-rounded meal.
The researchers analyzed grasshoppers, crickets, mealworms and buffalo worms for their mineral contents and estimated how much of each nutrient would likely get absorbed if eaten, using a lab model of human digestion. The insects had varying levels of iron, calcium, copper, magnesium, manganese and zinc. Crickets, for example, had higher levels of iron than the other insects did. And minerals including calcium, copper and zinc from grasshoppers, crickets and mealworms are more readily available for absorption than the same minerals from beef. The results therefore support the idea that eating bugs could potentially help meet the nutritional needs of the world’s growing population, the researchers say.
###
The authors acknowledge funding from the King’s College London.
The abstract that accompanies this study is available here.
The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With nearly 157,000 members, ACS is the world’s largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.
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Bugs Bunny, only smaller?
No thanks
I’d rather die
I used to think uncooked fish and sea weed are inedible. I didn’t eat chili, cheese or tomatoes. Could not think about yoghurt without yucking. Vomited on olives.
Now I like nigiris, yoghurt and olives. There is nothing wrong in bugs in general. It is pretty much just a cultural issue. Funny limitation of origin / ethnicity. Like horse (yum!), reindeer (yumyum!) or pork (mm….)
There is nothing better than non-kosher, non-halal, non-enlightened horse-pork-cheese bratwurst with milk, surströmming, fried bugs and haggis. All those I eat now. But I leave chips and coke for you.
Well I like maggots, after they have been fed on oatmeal for a couple of days. That’s when they make the perfect bait to feed out on a fine line with a couple of floats, and exchange them for piper, or some other delectable fish.
But If the Japanese turn all of the Krill into faux filet mignon, what would the blue whales eat.
I’m not in favor of humans supplanting other species lower down the food chain.
I like being near the top.
G
I do too; beef, salmon, eggs, cheese and lots of fruit and vegs. I trust the people who suggest living on insects will lead the way and we’ll not see them eating fillet steak and other fine dining. You think?!
Well my computer’s Windows OS has been fed a steady diet of bugs for years and it dies on a regular basis. And changing numbers, 98-7-10, doesn’t seem to significantly change its diet. Oh well, one of these days I’ll be unable to resist the temptation to perform an ‘inertial adjustment’ and haul off and swat it just like a roach on the floor.
And the money quote:
“using a lab model of human digestion”
Now, models all the way down need to be verified against the real world.
Was this one?
Personally, not really my preferred nosh. Doubtless, at a swep-up restaurant, there will be takers.
And those who come back – if the Chef is on the button.
But bush-tucker trial?
Count me out for now . . . .
Auto, having enjoyed pasta & ham tonight.
Eat an Apple instead.
aw hell dont resist;-)
swat it NOW!
Linux is sooo much better
and the added fillip of NOT funding the Gates critter
I’ve had deep fried grasshoppers (crunchy & similar to potato chips) and chocolate covered fried ants (also not bad) and these can still be found at some specialty stores. I think it’s the thought (like eating horse meat/very tasty) that is the the actual problem as I do know some that would literally starve before they would eat such meals even in an emergency. What always amazed me was the example of people dying during a famine from locust crop destruction when an obvious substitute food supply was flying about them.
Not to mention dog meat. The best red meat in the world.
“Not to mention dog meat. The best red meat in the world.”
Except dogs are carnivorous, meaning they have to be fed meat instead of plant matter.
There is also the huge number of diseases. Hundreds of people die just in the Philippines from rabies alone.
Maybe the liberals will start eating tape-worms – after all, parasites like parasites. I will gladly sell them to them at a bargain price.
So what are your dietary feelings about lobsters and crabs? Let’s be honest; they’re large water-breathing bugs. Not that I’d eat cockroaches either by choice, but I did one have a marketing plan for them. Once. About 50 years ago.
When I was in college I lived in a cockroach infested flat in SF CA. I couldn’t stand using insecticides in the kitchen so each night I’d put out a crock pot set on a timer to turn on at 2 am. I put bacon strips in the pot. Every morning I had this pot full of deep fried cockroaches. In bacon no less.
I started thinking I might be able to sell them. I’d call them “Pop-Roaches” and put different seasonings on them. Cajun style, New York Cheddar. That sort of thing.
Never did it though. Probably would have made a mint.
BTW, everything goes better with bacon. It’s a universal truth.
“Madame, the peasants are starving”.
“Let them eat bugs!”
Oh they ate snails and frogs.
Frogs taste just like chicken, or rabbits.
g
Frog legs are best fresh smoked over an open fire, and like lobster not as good frozen.
There’s not a lot that does taste better frozen. I quite like Frog and Alligator, Snake’s okay-ish, farmed Ostrich tastes of nothing really, Wild Boar is incredibly tasty, but Kangaroo is by far the best tasting meat that I’ve tried. Bugs – I might try them to see, but not to live on.
They eat bugs here in Thailand. I’ve never been tempted.
Save The Crickets!
Pass!
#BugLivesMatter 🙂
Somebody please think of the termites!
‘Each termite produces, on average, about half a microgram of methane per day, a seemingly insignificant amount. However, when this is multiplied up by the world population of termites, global methane emission from this source is estimated to be about 20 million tonnes each year.’
http://www.ghgonline.org/methanetermite.htm
Not to forget the large number of big herbivores in Africa …
Have noticed that the econuts don’t understand that there are a great number of different proteins. Some of them are allergens.
B I N G O !
Liberals don’t like cows
On one hand, they want us to get rid of cows.
On the other hand, they want to repopulate the priaries with Bison.
OK, I waited but somebody has to do it.
Now that’s funny, Tom.
“but if the world is to turn to bugs to replace meat, the critters will need to offer more than protein.”
Well doh! How about flavor.
Try to replace the flavor of a good steak.
green shell mussels, will do it.
g
Take a pill to destroy your taste buds, so you will eat anything. Perfect for far-left zealots.
Then there is the whole, how to raise insects in bulk problem. They go through many developmental stages and might only reproduce under certain circumstances and require specific foods. I do not know of any extensive insect farming going on. In SE Asia many of the bugs are from the wild and some are even rare and getting rarer.
Silk worms.
And they are delicious.
This explains some of your online threads.
ouch.
Rather reminds me of the line in one of the P G Wodehouse books.
“Had his brains been constructed of silk, he would have been hard put to it to find sufficient material to make a canary a pair of cami-knickers.”
James Bull
“This explains some of your online threads”
Worst.. pun.. evah!
Cooked how? I have had escargot and it’s too off flavor for me. However I suspect that like the more expensive fish eggs that it may be more about privilege which provides a required hallucination of adapted/good taste because of the expense/culture.
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/152379707591/a-lesson-in-cognitive-dissonance
Man has plenty of experience in that with many different species of bugs. Just visit a bait shop to the see results. When I was a kid I met an old guy that made a fortune raising worms and catering to both commercial and sport fishermen on the Tennessee River at Savannah, TN. I was told that he was the owner of Cherry Mansion there. So those that claim that people should eat bugs or claim they desire to do so have no excuse if they live anywhere close to a bait shop for fresh water fishing.
Don’t know about raising bugs for food, but I can guarantee it is difficult to raise massive amounts of insects. You might not think it so, but when raised in large quantities, they require a very vitamin rich diet and antibiotics, because they are prone to disease in close quarters, the amount and type will depend on the specific insect being grown. And at least in the insects we produced, they are not cheap. I’d sooner good beef because, quite frankly, if the food doesn’t taste good, it pretty well wipes out my desire to eat.
I think that you have overlooked roaches…..
Say…… BFL…. Bugs For Lunch! 😉
oh theres some big efforts underway in Eu I gather, the food industry news keeps touting some new benefit pretty regularly
once the food remnants from processing went to the farms direct
now they extract amazing amounts of further nutrient for the pharmas and supplements/skincare etc
and whats left pretty poor might then go to animals
now
“studies show” (facepalm) that golly gosh!!! insects can be fed the twice thrice etc processed residues
maximising profit and then some..
pity the producers dont see it.
and the animals that did efficiently process and enjoy the fruit veg waste in their diets go without.
they also got the minerals and returned them to the soils
dont reckon cricket shit is going to be a volume supply for gardens etc
Im waiting for the day that Weevils in stupormarket goods get touted as added bonus protein, and charged More rather than apologies n refunds:-)
I’m all for it. Should reduce the demand for beef and my prime rib will be more affordable.
2 billion people already eat kvetch that I can’t even look at, so this fits right in. Go get them bugs folks…
“Should reduce the demand for beef and my prime rib will be more affordable.”
Seems kinda selfish, Bob . . I prefer to not drive up the cost of bugs ; )
I promise I won’t.
I’ll take T-bone/Porterhouse grilled over charcoal with fruit wood added for smoke anytime (medium rare or less).
and a side of flies. hahahah
How many Billion Humans are on Life Boat Earth? Just how many Crickets per serving and how many servings per day? I wonder if herding Crickets would be easier than herding cats?
I say my fellow, that comment was just not cricket. Now please pitch in like the rest of us, and stop making those wicket comments.
All these puns have me stumped….
And then we have to make sure that the crickets are raised humanely. How do you raise “free-range” crickets and not have them fly away? Clip their wings? 🙂
And what about the spiders, lizards, and frogs who would be thrown into sudden competition with an unstoppable wave of hungry humans? 😉
Oh, right. They aren’t fluffy, cute or cuddly, so they can be safely ignored.
I can handle the humane raising. It’s trying to deal with the humane slaughter that has me stumped.
g
Raise those crickets indoors, just think of the outdoor like harmony when sleeping. To kill use inert gas like nitrogen:
https://nitrogenexecution.wordpress.com/
we used to breed n sell them for frog n lizard n bird snacks
i CAN say truthfully that herding crickets that escaped is far worse than herding cats!
and they CHIRP…somewhere in the house..all night
Let’s see, the digestive processes of most insects produce lots of either carbon dioxide or methane. Now imagine the mass of insects required to replace a herd of beef for the dinner tables of the world. I think the CO2/methane balance is either a wash or slightly worse when we consider industrial farming of insects. That is without taking into consideration the life cycle and breeding problems mentioned above. These people are daft.
Also, (just my prejudice) eating insects can’t compete with the experience of consuming a well-prepared beef steak.
And that’s what really bugs me about this whole thing.
It is possible to rear insects in a closed system where you can tap off the methane. You can’t do that with a cow so easily.
Just make sure that there are no sources of combustion nearby.
Beyond that, how high does the methane concentration have to get before your little buggers start dying from it?
PS: Regarding doing it with cows, it’s called a barn. Perhaps you have “herd” of them.
seaice1 October 27, 2016 at 9:10 am
“It is possible to rear insects in a closed system where you can tap off the methane. You can’t do that with a cow so easily.”
Roaches seem to do well in an enclosed environment.
Don’t think I want them on my menu, though.
It is actually difficult to extract the methane gas from barn air. There are however methods.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2606956/Now-THATS-wind-power-Cows-wear-BACKPACKS-capture-emissions-miniature-power-stations.html
“You can’t do that with a cow so easily”
??! No?
You take a tube, tie up the cow, then shove the tube up the cow’s…
Not hard. The cow doesn’t like it.
“Let’s see, the digestive processes of most insects produce lots of either carbon dioxide or methane”
No sh*t! That’s one of those small details future commercial insect growers would rather not expose to the general public.
Weren’t lasers involved in all of this? Was that a different article?
Hmm. My cats have had it right all along…..
Termites produce an immense amout of methane when they digest cellulose just like cows do. Same reason. You can’t fix stupid.
Now I copied this a long time back, but from where I don’t recall,
That first point is bad logical syntax and the original authors should be ashamed. Since “termites” are a subset of the set of living things and since there are other non-intersecting subsets of the set of living things that also produce CO2, the statement is false. They need one little tiny word to make it true and that is the word “other”. The correct statement is:
Termites produce more Carbon Dioxide (CO2) each year the all other living things combined.
I know it is a bit pedantic, but that logical error bothers me every time I see it.
You are correct, termites are living things also. I shudda caught that omission of “other”.
OK, I think I know the origin of that statement.
It was an Editor’s choice of “wording” for a “headline” on a published article.
Apropos logical error, it should be ‘each hour’ or ‘each day’ or even ‘each decade’ instead of ‘each year’.
Those headline writers will get you every time. They are related to our marketing people who can mess up any humble event with over-hype. I hate when people leave an event or lecture disappointed because the marketing write-up oversold the event.
Mmmmmmmm. Rice bugs. It’s what’s for dinner
http://importfood.com/thai_insect_maengda.html
But how do you separate the rice grain from the bug larvae ??
g
Water usually works.
No need to, just cook together adds extra protein.
You wash the rice in a bowl of water. The bugs float, the rice don’t. Believe me, I’ve done it – a long time ago when I couldn’t afford to throw away 10 lb of buggy rice.
The way to turn insects into food is initially via feed for animals. Particularly fish farms because fish are one of the few carnivores we eat. Fish are currently fed on fish meal, which is causing harm to fisheries through over fishing. Insects can provide a good fishmeal substitute. The key to their sustainability is that insects are nature’s waste processors. Insects can be fed on waste from a variety of sources, and the species can be selected to deal with different types of waste. Win-win, and we can eat salmon instead of insect burgers.
Exactly the same way that I like to eat kale – after a cow has processed it into red meat for me!
Exactly, vegetables are what food eats.
As the author Piers Anthony wrote “My ancestors didn’t spend the last 2 million years climbing the food chain so that I could eat rabbit food.”
They tried to feed me kale in hospital once, it looked like the cow had already processed it.
You first.
” but they’ve long been included in traditional diets in other regions of the world, which are now home to more than 2 billion people, according a report by the U.N.”….
Sorry, they don’t eat bugs because they like them or because they are nutritious…They eat them because they are starving !!
Hi Marcus, – It is correct that in some situations insect consumption is in response to hunger. However, in many instances this is not actually the driving force behind their consumption in several cultures. There are even some edible bugs that command what are locally high prices. I am typing on a tablet so for my convenience skip citing specific examples at this point.
Bugs are my favorite snack hmmm crunchy
Hey, I know! Instead of burying or cremating folks when they die, we could convert them into little green wafers (to disguise what they’re made of). Win-win!
Hmmm, Soylent Green?
As usual the study is based on a computer model, this time of the human digestive system. How about some empirical data? It would be quite easy to put a couple of the study authors on a bug diet and record the results.
Ray in SC —
Laughing my assets off. Practice what you preach? Unheard of in left wingers — and this is left wing science.
Eugene WR Gallun
Sort of like “Dances with Wolves”. How many ways can you fix mouse?
if its like the model stomach they used to “prove” GM Soy was safe?
its a chemical bath supposedly hydrochloric acid same levels as our gut
the GM soy trials cooked the soy approx 4x longer than any normal home would..
then whacked it into a savagely strong acid bath to “prove” it digested just fine and the dna gene fiddlins were all broken down.
I dont know where to find the film but a Japanese scientist redid their testing and was pretty UNimpressed.
Everything is in the name. I have one for a startup company that should have investors jumping.
JIMINY CRICKETS
YOWSER! YOWSER! YOWSER!
I am sure something can be worked out with Disney.
Eugene WR Gallun
The hard core vegans like PETA would object as much to crickets as cows.
Hard core vegans. They are next on the menu.
Big Smile! Thanks
I wish I was making this stuff up.
There is already in Europe a piglet feed contaning insect derived oil: A Dutch feed company is the world’s first to put a feed product on the market with insect oil. The weaner feed with the insect ingredient has a lot of potential to reduce bacteria, prevent diarrhoea and improve feed intake; the key components to have a smooth transition from piglet to grower. (Source: http://www.allaboutfeed.net/New-Proteins/Articles/2016/9/Worlds-first-commercial-piglet-feed-with-insect-oil-2883165W/). A consortium supporting insect feed as a protein source for animal feed has recently published a white paper on the topic: http://www.proteinsect.eu/fileadmin/user_upload/press/proteinsect-whitepaper-2016.pdf
No problems with prions and mad pig disease?