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.
…
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.
…
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.
Guardian readers could certainly be fooled by that marketing effort- everyone else? I don’t think so
In the tropics termites are a ‘gatherer’ favorite, eaten right out of the hive, especially by pregnant or lactating females who have high protein needs, more than their ‘hunter’ men tend to provide.
The mealworms are probably going to eat soy, corn or wheat byproducts. That means feeding them the same quantity of feedstocks that are now used for beef, chicken, etc. It will take the same ever increasing amount of agrochemicals used today to produce mealworm food. The mealworms will produce digestive waste products. They will give off methane, carbon dioxide and other unusable waste products. The huge amounts of waste products will still have the potential to pollute air and water supplies. This will be nothing more than mealworm-slight-of-hand or meal worm-pie in the sky. New nutritional ill health conditions will appear. Big pharma will step in with a solution. The nutritional quality of food continues to erode for the poorest people. That is who will be force eat mealworms. Look up the history of feeding the masses. Food calorie content as gone up and food nutritional quality has gone down over time. Add petrochemical texturing and flavoring chemicals and sprits, sprinkle or dowse with catsup, soy sauce, sugar and salt and taste the quality.
Yep, it’s blindingly obvious that as soon as you farm insects on an industrial scale you have exactly the same issues (if they are indeed real problems) that any other farming has.
Sure enough a (2012) PlosOne free full text on-line report “Environmental Impact of the production of mealworms as a protein source for humans …” has the obligatory chart (Fig. 2) of the “global warming potential” of mealworms compares to other protein sources. In the best case scenario chicken has only slightly more of this “potential” than mealworms.
Table 2 breaks down land use/ mt2 of factors (ex: carrot feed) ivolved in producing 1 kg of mealworms. But it should be borne in mind this is for fresh weight larvae & these are not 100% protein. To get an example of how their rearing is not cost free Fig. 3 gives an idea of how much energy is used by a commercial operation in a non-mediterranean European climate.
And at Christmas time, buggy pudding. Yum!
The BBC has been on this thread for over a year… meat is bad .. vegan is good… insects for the plebs so the elite can eat the real meat… stop having children… save the world…
The next food source is obvious there will be plenty of nice pure vegans to eat 🙂
Eating insects is a valid “lost in the wild” survival technique.
I’m not lost, never have been that lost.
In the end, threads like this really bug me.
Silly people. C’mon, get with the program. Climate change isn’t about climate, it’s about control.
Meal worm muffins, fly maggot brownies, and Grubs-in-Rice dinners are for us — the unwashed masses. The proles. The lower class. As the Libs dumb-down the education of our children, it will come to pass.
The Elites understand everyone has to consume essential amino-acids from animal proteins to survive. And by animal, that does include insects.
Our Betters, you know the elites like Tom Steyer and Barack Obama, all intend to remain consumers of filet Mignon, and roast pheasant, and wild-caught salmon. And send their kids to private school. Where they get real meat and fish in their meals.
They will do all this by using government mandates and taxes to make it too expensive for >95% of the population to eat anything but grubs and worms for their protein.
It’s so glorious watching the Left go completely and utterly insane..
Last week it’s Leftists predicting $122 TRILLION ended to save the planet, and this week it’s bugs for dinner, or we’re all gonna die….
Hmmm. How about not wasting one more dime on CAGW, and eating 1” thick charcoal broiled Ribeye steaks; sanity eventually wins…
But where do all the bugs come from – what do they eat to get to any sort of size or quantity.
In a way, it has merit IF, the bugs are fed to chickens.
Chickens love bugs and and and, when they do have a ‘proper’ free range and eat all the bugs they can find, they produce eggs with a proper balance of Omega 3 vs Omega 6 fatty acid.
Eggs from bug eating and/or free range chickens are really really good for you.
Contrast eggs from corn or wheat fed chooks which have much higher Omega 6 and lower Omega 3 – they are so awful as to be bad for you.
And anyway, protein is not especially our problem.
Our current problem is lack of saturated fat in our diet. We have chosen to eat sugar instead as our calorie source and just see what monsters the mind altering effects of doing so have spawned. Not least the IPCC.
The craziness goes back to the barley discussion.
So 17% of barley that is grown becomes beer, but *most* of the rest is fed to livestock. Especially cows as they can ferment the starch and get sugar out of it. (UK farming, is corn or wheat used in the US?)
But just like us, eating sugar makes the cows fat (and sets off diabetes = the ‘marbling’ you see in your steak)
The sugar-induced lunacy then reaches its true zenith in the abattoir, butchers and the home kitchen.
Almost *all* the fat that the barley was used to produce, is thrown away. Binned or burned.
The same stuff as our own mother’s milk was made of. And we have come to despise it.
Along with the unwanted fat goes all the time, effort and resources that went to produce it.
I know that, I was The Farmer.
And now they tell us to eat bugs. It could not get crazier.
We really do seem to have a suicidal death wish going on right now.
Business hint: Buy as large a house as you can and in 10 years time turn it into an old-folks nursing home.
You Will Be Minted.
The Grauniad’s recent barrage of inanity looks like a desperate flail in the knowledge of impending death of their beloved cause. It calls to mind the death throes of the T1000 terminator after falling into the liquid metal trough at the end of Terminator 2 – all its memes and disguises desperately revisited in its dying moments:
https://youtu.be/0mpgHKlixRY
Go for it NYT, LAT, CNN, NPR, and huff puff. Please jump on board before the midterms not after.
When the next Royal, UN, EU banquet has insects as main course I may be convinced. By the way which is the most suitable wine? Red or white ?
This is The Guardian cafeteria where staff tuck into tasty snacks of crispy fried cockroach with mashed maggot sauce — yum:
http://cdn.overbury.com/case-studies/guardian/_1500x830_crop_center-center_60/overbury-guardian-london-image-17.jpg
maybe a mango caterpillar sno-cone? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRwKXVjatf4
When i evolve a beak, then i will eat bird food.
I’ll take the chocolate truffles. Hold the Mealworm.
The more I read about this topic, the more convinced I am that it it has less to do with “saving the planet” and more to do with getting people to eat bugs. It’s the modern version of the old laws that prohibited the lower classes from eating foods reserved for the nobility.
Grasshopper pie is good though.
It should be compulsory for Guardian staff. They should put their bugs where their mouth is.
Hmmm….eat bugs instead of meat?
What happens when the best tasting bugs become endangered?
Eat rats?
Go figure… when people were told something is delicious they’re more inclined to do it. I think they need to do more studies.
Environmentalists picked winners and losers in ecosystems all the time. Destroy all flat desert and erect solar panels. Chop down all small trees for fire control, save only big trees. Don’t eat meat, eat bugs. Install wind towers to chop up raptors and bats. The consequences of these choices are never discussed. Presumably they have no concept what they are doing.
Greens can just go to their gardens and eat…..
https://pieceoplastic.com/2003/10/31/finally-the-complete-worm-song/
No thanks…. you can keep your bug protein. Or you first…. When I see people pushing the agenda eating that crap on daily basis, as if that would ever happen, then I might consider they are serious.