Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Would you eat insects to save the planet? Apparently the answer is yes – you just need to be persuaded the right way.
Would you eat insects to save the planet from global warming?
Jessica Brown
Mon 15 Oct 2018 19.10 AEDTMore people would give up meat for edible bugs if they believed they were tasty and trendy
The thought of rising sea levels and more intense heatwaves are enough to keep you up at night. But while we all know the situation is getting more serious, most of us are preoccupied with work, doctor’s appointments and paying bills – and these immediate, visceral worries win every time.
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Edible insects have been hailed as a solution to both global food shortages and reducing emissions from animal agriculture, but despite the industry’s best efforts, our response when faced with a cockroach is disgust. Even in London edible insects are seen as nothing more than a gimmick, and there are only a handful of restaurants serving them up.
But new research from Switzerland and Germany may have found out how to persuade people to eat insects – and it could have a huge impact on lowering human-led carbon emissions.
Up until now, retailers and restaurants have marketed edible insects as a more sustainable option and a healthy source of protein. But the researchers explain the problem with getting people to switch to environmentally friendly behaviour is that it often requires foregoing immediate pleasure for distant benefits, and edible insects have been wrongly framed in this way.
Before the 180 participants in the study were offered a chocolate truffle filled with mealworms, half of the group were given a flyer saying that eating insects was good for them and the environment, while the other half were told the insects were either delicious or trendy to eat.
About 62% of those given health or environmental incentives chose to eat the truffle, compared with 76% who ate the truffle after being told it would taste good or make them trendy. And the latter group rated the truffle as tastier.
The researchers concluded that we need to switch the message about saving the planet from altruism to pleasure. They back up their argument with previous studies showing that attitudes based on emotions are more malleable than those grounded in rational claims.
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You see they’re not only going to try to persuade you, they’re going to persuade your kids and grandkids, bombard them with messages about [insert empty headed pop star] eating healthy insect snacks to stay thin and get lots of attention from the Paparazzi.
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Trouble is that many insects etc. feed off meat.
I had a patch in my life when I got involved in maggot production, mainly for the fishing industry. Quite an experience. These maggots consumed large quantities of meat and fish under very sterile conditions as they exuded ammonia, albeit with pong. At the time I wondered whether the public could be persuaded to eat them; but quickly dumped the idea; nonetheless, if you feed these critters on prime salmon you would get prime maggots tasting of salmon. However; why not just eat the salmon?
Some flies are very particular on the quality of the meat they assign to their potential offspring. There is an hierarchy on consumption in the insect world.
Perhaps vegans should confine themselves to consuming young insects fed only on vegetation? Anyone for fruit fly soup, laced with cabbage butterfly caterpillars?
Maggots have often been consumed in the past under the name of “Gentles” I believe. Would like to know the history of this. Believe it was a Lancashire dish.
The whole subject being, of course, ripe for the scams market, with the Guardian no doubt in the lead! – Rich pickings for media attention but otherwise a load of proverbials
When restaurants begin serving up insects like Al Gore I’ll get interested in eating bugs.
If this catches on, I’m going back into raising “hissers”!!
“Even in London” (there aren’t enough bug bistros)!
How depressingly embarrassing for a once-proud city.
London has a long way down to go yet to equal San Francisco.
yeah, I hear that they don’t even have homeless pooper-scoopers in London. Barbarians!
If we all eat insects, what happens to bulls and cows and sheep and chickens…etc. Do they all go back to the wild?
YEAR ONE
1. The United Nations issues a directive that alludes to the need to develop ‘new sources of protein’.
2. The UN commissions scientific studies on insect protein and methods of harvest.
3. The scientists team with activist groups to gather volunteers for nutrition studies.
4. The activist groups find a dozen people.
5. Among them, one or two Hollywood celebrities who eat bugs for a documentary.
YEAR TWO
5. The Hollywood celebrities order veggies and meat
4. The dozen volunteers go back to veggies and meat.
3. The scientists have been eating veggies and meat all along.
2. The UN Commission has been eating veggies and meat all along.
1. The UN has been eating veggies and meat, and occasionally ambassadors from undeveloped nations.
YEAR THREE
1. The UN commissions a study to explore specifically, cannibalism, as a protein source.
2. […]
Oh, come now, it’s the UN – “YEAR ONE would take at least 1 – 2 decades, what with all the conferences they’d have to hold all around the world. Likewise for “YEAR TWO”.
Well, one of Obama’s people wrote a book where he quoted him as saying (I think it was after Trump won), “Maybe we should have waited another 10 years before opening a Bugger King.”
(Yes, I took a liberty or two with the “quote”.)
Argumentum ad absurdum. I think that’s the Latin.
Cremation uses fossil fuel and burial uses too much land. We can start eating our dead to “save the planet”. With or without truffles. And a nice Chianti
Just like with renewable energy, greens never bother to scale up to reality. To raise, process and transport enough bugs to feed billions of city dwellers would require a massive “bugriculture” industry. Anyone want to do the math? If mass producing and eating bugs made sense, agriculture would have already created a large, healthy bug industry. And how would they dispose of all those millions of tons of inedible exoskeletons?
Yeah it’s a thought I also had, that given millennia of experience, if bugriculture were practical, it would probably already exist.
However, what is technically feasible and cost-effective is not necessarily commercially successful. There’s the “ick” factor to overcome. Personal tastes and preferences need not be rational.
Locusts are a common appetizer in Mexico. I tried them. Quite tasty! These are not the 17-year locusts of the US, but a much smaller creature.
A friend of mine was a Royal Marine. He said that during desert training they ate locusts with honey as described in The Bible and they were delicious.
I don’t have anything against the concept of eating insects per se. After all, there are plenty of weird things that are already favorites such as lobster or snails (escargots). Clams, scallops, and mussels are also not so different from insects. In fact, personally I’d prefer to eat a fried cicada than to eat cow’s brains or stomach. Tons of food goes into landfills where insects consume it (though I suppose bacteria get the lion’s share). If there would be an efficient way to avoid some of that waste and feed people something healthy, that is not the wackiest idea, I guess.
As long as it tastes good and is reasonably priced I’m fine with it. But to cut methane emissions that don’t need to be cut? Absolutely not.
Go to an old-time hog butcherin’ some time in Appalachia. They use everything but the ‘squeal’.
Two words: head cheese.
It’s hard to believe I know but there was a shortage of CO2 in Britain (land of the Beatles) this summer; commercial CO2 for the canned drinks industry is a by-product of steam reforming plants. The plants, producing synthesis gas, were down for maintenance but not ‘synchronised’. It was reported by the BBC et al as a major commercial blunder/fiasco but not a word was uttered about global warming and climate stuff. I found this extraordinary that apparently we can’t get enough of it (CO2 that is) except when a new IPCC report comes out advocating everything from geo-engineering to scrub CO2 from the atmosphere to stopping cows from farting and for the Germans and Swiss to eat pickled insect sandwiches. Stroll on!
I love that circlejerk…..they get credit for scrubbing CO2….then bottle it and sell it….to be released back into the atmosphere
“But while we all know the situation is getting more serious,…”
Do we now? By what metric is it getting ‘more serious’? The state of the biosphere? Poverty? Starvation? Reduced crop yields? Severe weather? Rising sea levels? Desertification? All measurements show things are getting better, or at the very least, unchanged from the way they were in the past! The state of humanity has never been so good!
“Edible insects have been hailed as a solution to both global food shortages and reducing emissions…”
It has already been proven, beyond any doubt, that the solution to global food shortages was increasing emission! If we insist on reducing CO2 emissions, there is no doubt that global food shortages will return.
Insects farmed for human consumption as a protein source are a more expensive source of protein in the USA than chicken or soy beans, in part due to the extensive agricultural productivity. Commercial insect production relies on maximization of stock, which requires matching reproducible feed to get edible bugs with a marketable nutritional profile (ex: specific fatty acid, specific amino acids & minerals).
There has been some attempts to use waste products as bug food & although the waste is considered “free” the processing expenses of getting it into the bug’s food chain is a trade off. Since original post mentioned mealworms I’ll add that a few years ago an Iranian study concluded that mealworm production for human consumption was not cost effective.
Different bugs, & then too those at various stages, have different amino acid profiles. When used as ingredients in animal/fish feed blending in some of the too low amino acids is required; this is probably the case as well for humans, but no generational trials on us have been done.
Aside from virtue signalling & traditional preferences the aspect favoring insects as food is their relatively low water requirement. The illusion of abundance ignores temperature range for different bugs being something that limits suitability (ex: crickets do good in Thailand open pens, but in most of the country it can get too hot out for mealworms).
Well, there goes my appetite.
If you really want to “save the planet”, live in a cardboard box, and get your food from dumpsters. Shower and shave once a week at your local Y, or whatever. Get yourself sterilized so you can’t procreate. Better yet, reduce your “carbon footprint” to zero by killing yourself. After all, it’s “for the planet”.
From the Guardian story:
“… attitudes based on emotions are more malleable than those grounded in rational claims.”
Which explains the “science” of CAGW / CCC.
“Edible insects have been hailed as a solution to both global food shortages and reducing emissions from animal agriculture……”
What global food shortage?
Thanks in part to increased atmospheric CO2 and modern technology, most crops are on the increase.
And of course, were a warming world simply accepted as a normal global event, then perhaps billions of acres in Canada and Russia could be relieved of perma frost and released to agriculture.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witchetty_grub
In the mid 1960s, I ate some fried termites in northern Nigeria. I was invited to a party of expats and this was offered with the threat that if one refused, he (‘he’ embraces ‘she’ as they used to say!) would not be offered a beverage. Well, I asked if I could hold a beer in my right hand while I popped the spoonful of termites in my mouth with my left hand. They agreed but said I had to chew twice. I found I had to chew them several times to wash them down anyway. I don’t remember how they tasted but it wasn’t horrible and they were well salted.
At the end of the dry season, termites with their briefly sported wings flew right out of the ground in the evening by the gazillions. You never turned a light on at night indoors without ensuring all windiws were closed! Locals hung lanterns in trees over a large low vessel of water and termites flew to the light and wound up in the water – quite a harvest from one lantern.
Without wings, they were like inch-long sausages and they represented a good feed of protein for 5he locals for about a week. Although not totally grossed out, I never had them again and probably wouldnt without a cold sparkling beer in my right hand.
Since the warmo movement probably contains almost all the vegans and other vegetarians and the omnibus identifier products they consume, I would suggest they would take a pass on dragonfly and soya sprout salad. They are, after all, exempt already from concern about their carbon footprint.
BTW, what is the modern usage for the formerly ‘man’ embraces ‘woman’ thing in the language. The word ‘woman’ still embraces ‘man’.
“BTW, what is the modern usage for the formerly ‘man’ embraces ‘woman’ thing in the language. The word ‘woman’ still embraces ‘man’.”
wereman was the early name for males, wifman for females – both were encompassed by the non-gender ed ‘man’.
As I like to tell folk, wifman begat the term ‘wife’ while wereman is recognizable in the hybrid mythological creature the ‘werewolf’ meaning man-wolf. They are always men, for if they were women-wolves they’d be called a wifwolf and no one would take anything named such seriously.
For the folk grumpy at the gender nouns we have today we can always return to calling women wifmen and men weremen. Either can optionally drop the gender part and remain recognizable as man, ie – human.
Thank you Karlos! Who would have thought the man part was genderless. That makes the joke on ignorant “progressives” whose lives are exercised by this problem.
I think we are very close, if not at the point, of this fiasco jumping the shark.
Aren’t mealworms used to deflesh carcasses. I see an opportunity to combine a funeral home with a fast food franchise. Soylent green burgers anyone?
No, the larval mealworms (“yellow” mealworm Tenebrio molitor) touted as human food are not suitable for that.
In 50 years (maybe) there will be industrial grown protein of edible quality.
There is such today, mostly following research of how to repair, say heart muscle, or grow replacement organs. This research is leading to edible material.
Today the cost is way too high and the results are “not quite” there yet.
We eat a lot of processed foods, so this will be acceptable — at some point.
Bugs — not so much.
If they keep on trying with no useable product in the foreseeable future, it may go the way of fusion power generation. It has been 30 years in the future dating back to the 60’s.
“There is such today . . .”
. . . but at about $18 per pound production cost and not quite ready for prime space in the food market, you won’t have any to try for awhile. Ten or 20 years, expect to see it. It is a proven concept.
Heck, all food is mainly hydrogen, oxygen and carbon with trace elements. Maybe fossil fuels can be transformed into food and we can let the planet go wild. All that methane on Triton and other pkaces can feed space travelers!
On the bright side the next time you went on a picnic, just pretend to put out a spread, and when the ants show up – LUNCH!
with sea level rise (if it is real) and 70% of the earth covered by water right now I would think it is going to be great for shellfish farming and aquaculture, both of which will be more desirable than eating insects.
I realize this has been observed many time but I’m struck again by the nature of climate alarmism: humanity is born in sin ( our mere presence is bad for the planet) and all we can do for redemption is to live lives of self imposed asceticism and denial as directed by those with special knowledge (the UN, IPCC) which the vast majority of followers accept without question and which we must teach our children. How is this not a religion?
I’ve eaten a few bugs in my time. It didn’t kill me.
Then I learned to keep my mouth shut when riding my motorcycle.
Oh now you got me giggling.. wasps.
How can we get a greenie to try eating wasps? Surely it shouldn’t be hard, they seem to have no clues about anything and probably wouldn’t know the difference between a wasp and a mealworm.. Can we video it? My mind is racing with this – I could imagine some Milly journo setting out to do a puff piece on a swanky new food establishment ending up in the ER to later write a review saying eating insects wasn’t all they’d hoped. This is going to bug me now..