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.
@Doctor_olo I personally would not. My spouse and I are vegetarian and I think we would stick with that. We are not dogmatic about it but I think that one can get all the protein they need from plants, pulses, and dairy. But if other's want to try, power to them.
When I used to live in Florida, we’d go once a year to visit the Keys and eat some “bugs” - they were Caribbean Spiny Lobsters. If you think about it, they are pretty closely related - insects and crustaceans. If you are ever confronted with the option to tuck into a big bowl of insects, consider it like a big bowl of shrimp! (full disclosure: I have not had this option, this is only my intellectualization of how to think about it. It is related to my intellectualzation of pretending spiders are crabs, to overcome arachnophobia - though this only extends to not screaming when touched by a spider rather than trying to catch spiders to eat them)
I mixed feelings about this. The thought of eating bugs sickens me. I am extremely phobic of most insects and can't stand the thought of them anywhere near my mouth. If there were a way of eating them where nothing about the food resembled an insect, then maybe it would be ok.
I'm vegetarian so I wouldn't try an insect meal anyways.
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.
I bought some fried mealworms for my pet rats. I’ve tried them, they aren’t bad. They don’t really taste like anything. They just crunch. I had a pleasure of eating fried beetles. They taste like shrimp.
Meat is meat. If you eat meat, why don’t you eat bugs?
God. Fucking carnis will eat anything other than plants. Like you can just eat plants and survive and thrive you know? Your “food” doesn’t have to be sentient and be able to feel pain.
Seriously if you aren’t vegan you aren’t an environmentalist, your just a hypocrite.
And this is the kind of behaviour I’d hoped people on lemmy would not continue on the solarpunk community
You’ve just continued the same kind of stuff that alienated a whole lot of users from r/solarpunk because they felt they couldn’t participate without being attacked for their food choices
What’s next, brigading posts with mass downvoting like you did on reddit to sway the visibility of comments in bad faith
If you can’t interact nicely with other users than maybe you shouldn’t be here
Solarpunk is not vеgаnism and while I don’t mind if you personally participate in vеgаnism it doesn’t give you the right to attack users here who don’t participate in it and gatekeep any activity on this subreddit
Solarpunk has no inherent ties to veganism and vеgаnism doesn’t have any ties to solarpunk
The mods previously back on reddit have said this subreddit is not r/vеgаn
I was vegan for many years, people like you aren’t the reason I stopped but I definitely don’t miss the weird aggression either. (btw farming plants still kills A LOT of bugs, usually in more cruel and prolonged ways than slaughtering them for food)
Its not about making excuses, its about meeting people where they are. Perfectionism sets people up for failure, and leaves many people feeling like it’s not worth doing anything because they can’t do everything. Encouraging people to take any steps they can helps the movement overall.
Welcoming new environmentalists and staying kind when having discussions helps the movement. It does take emotional labor, and its okay to take a step back sometimes. It is also okay to vent about how you’re feeling in an appropriate space (such as a post in the vegan community, during the weekly how you’re feeling thread on beehaw, with friends, in your journal, etc). However, taking that frustration out on random people in an innocuous post about bugs is neither helpful nor healthy.
I raise my own crickets on the farm and grow my own vegetables. It’s basically a closed system, I compost everything. I add additional nutrients using seaweed.
How far do your plants have to travel to get to your plate? Last time I checked so-called modern farming uses a lot of petrochemicals. Organic farming isn’t any better–they use so much plastic to block weeds and pests.
Also, most plant material I grow is not edible by humans. I cannot eat corn stalks. Maybe you can. It seems wasteful to compost all this biomass as there is still so much nutrition left over.
Sounds to me like your carbon footprint is higher than mine. Maybe you should try to create a farming system yourself. One that yields 100% of the daily nutrition humans require. It is not so easy.
I am glad you are vegan. Much better than eating cows. They drink too much water.
You just made up a strawman and assumed a bunch of stuff about me.
Growing animals from food you can eat will always take more energy than just eating the plants yourself. Or if you can’t eat it then growing plants you can eat that have protein instead of getting your protein from a sentient animal that again FEELS PAIN.
I’m nice to my crickets though. You don’t have to hurt them, you just place them into the freezer and they fall asleep like it’s winter time. And then you roast them and mill them into flour. Okay that part does hurt them, but they’re asleep. Seems kinda peaceful.
I get that hurting a mammal with complex emotions is very unethical, but where’s the limit?
What about fermented food? Tiny bacteria are alive when you eat them. They probably don’t feel pain but I can’t imagine they’re thrilled to meet their doom.
How about mushrooms? They aren’t plants, and they apparently communicate with the trees. How do you know they don’t possess some kind of sentience?
What about harvesting plants? Everytime you run a combine through a field it’s like an insect genocide. Even if you’re only eating plants you’re still eating insects because they get caught by the harvester and milled into the final product. The FDA allows up to 50 insect parts per 1/4 cup cornmeal.
What about hurting a tree? They’re not sentient and cannot feel pain but I still believe it is unethical to harm a tree. Do they not deserve our empathy because they lack our human conception of sentience?
Being a good human is hard. I feel like in principle you’re right but I don’t know how to exist and not hurt anything ever. You’re right, I don’t know you. Maybe you’re just a better person than I am.
Even if harvesting plants causes a bunch of animal deaths, it would still be more ethical just to eat the plants rather than feeding them to a cow or chicken to then eat.
The answers to your propositions are quite simple, you just choose to not see them or ignore them because you prefer your tastebuds over anything else. Other sentient beings, the world, us…
Can I just say… It is a joy to argue with you. I mean that sincerely.
Okay, I read up on what sentience actually is and a few studies on insect sentience, social lives and capacity for pain. Having spent a lot of time with the little critters, I can see their point. Like they’re obviously social for one. Sometimes they really seem like they’re thinking. I don’t know.
Let’s say in principle I agree with you. How am I supposed to not die of anemia from lack of vitamin B12? I didn’t want to do laying hens for obvious reasons. Mushrooms have some B12 and I do grow them, but it’s not gonna be enough to keep you healthy long term. And don’t say supplements or fortified foods… I need something I can grow or forage locally.
What am I missing here?
PS. I dunno know about the taste buds thing, they’re okay but not delicious 😅
Nah I can’t do supplements, and the B12 in nutritional yeast isnt naturally occuring. Some microorganisms do produce B12 but not the ones they use to make nooch. I know, I was surprised to.
I did some more research though, and I do have a source of B12. Remember I said I was using seaweed for fertilization?
So I guess I’ll go vegan. You win. The crickets will be disappointed that they’re getting evicted but I’m sure they’ll get over it.
I’m going to go 6 months eating just seaweed and potatoes, while doing blood work to check my nutrient levels. I’ll let you know if I don’t die 😅. Thanks for all your help.
Using logical fallacies in bad faith doesn’t make you look good
I am aware that users like you throw around logical fallacy terms in your comment all the time when you feel your being called out
I’ve observed it on reddit before multiple times
If you can’t be nice you should just give up
This is not the space to aggressively attack users
This is not a strawman argument and you know it, your just trying to throw “strawman” in response because you don’t like the response you’ve been given
The bugs would be cultivated outside the natural population & would likely be common species with no risk of extinction. Plus they have a much smaller carbon footprint than many meats, so might help us end the current human imposed mess.
I think it’s a good bandaid but I don’t think it’s a perfect solution. I haven’t seen information on feed and slaughter. Maybe you can help me locate a source.
I appreciate the link! And maybe they could help with recycling and waste treatment. However, I feel like if the world suddenly decided insects replaced livestock corporations will eventually want to be involved. That is where the ethics starts to dwindle. Production feed is usually not nutritional. It will need to make them grow big and quick and I don’t think scraps will cut it. Or what an insect contained an “abnormality” of some sort. We’d be killing the whole stock and then some to correct the issue which is cruel. I understand they are going to die anyways but some insects are intelligent in their own ways and the fear of death is something majority of animals share.
Thats super fair. The ethics of eating something like bugs is definetly a complex discussion & for some people eating any kind of animal is off the table.
& I 100% agree that moving to bug protein would do little to nothing to challenge mega corporations & the damage they cause to both people and the environment.
I dunno eating bugs isnt some magic fix, & there are arguably higher priority issues – but I still think its neat that there are people out there exploring different ways of doing things & looking for even small steps towards a more sustainable future.
Yes! I am all about looking at things at different perspectives :). I’d say it’s a very important tool to help each other learn and solve problems. And sometimes we need to hold each other’s hands to make the bigger steps. I want a sustainable future yesterday loll. 😭
I definitely do not want to… I‘d rather die, sorry. To each their own, but if everything else became unaffordable and I‘d be left with bugs, you‘ll find me smuggling veggies and growing them in the city parks, or on company properties or wherever I can find space.
I’m not really talking about eating them out of desperation but rather just as an additive in food, however I see where your coming from and it’s a pretty reasonable response.
Yeah sorry I got a bit emotional, I‘m just grossed out by bugs a lot, including the popular sea ones. Though I guess if they are in a powder I wouldn‘t mind as an additive.
It‘s mostly for me the issue that a lot of right wingers are also using these sort of articles to push the “the left wants to force us to eat bugs” narrative, which is untrue (there is no force at all), but I wouldn‘t actually put it past some state‘s politicians to go like “let them eat bugs” as a response to rising food prices either.
In which case I would like to respond by aggressively planting vegetables.
I hope you don’t feel triggered by my question, I am genuinely curious, I swear. No judgment. Here my question: since bugs are part of this planet’s life like all other life forms, don’t you think that there is something wrong being so triggered from bugs?
I mean, it’s normal to respect or to feel a kind of repulsion to some kind of insects, it is natural instinct that saved us from death, but being grossed by bugs in general sounds a bit too much to me.
I had a kind of phobia but when I realized that we are all part of the life on this planet, insects included, than something changed in me. I do not love insects, but I definitely do not feel reputation or fear anymore. I feel respect for some kind of insects (big spyders for example) and I try to build biodiversity in my garden for some others.
Sorry, I don’t want to bother you or judge you, is it totally ok the way you are. I just kind of saw myself some years ago in our emotional answer.
Of course you can ignore this comment and it will be perfectly fine :)
Fair question and don’t worry it doesn‘t bother me. I guess it‘s wrong, not like I‘m proud of my phobia or something, but I just don‘t want them near me and I definitely do not want to eat them. I also don‘t want to exterminate them or anything though, I recognise bugs are important to the ecosystem (more important than many animals people hold as pets or even humans tbh who damage it), but that doesn‘t mean I like them or want them near me. Maybe with a bit of exposure therapy I could be less triggered by them too, but just mentally thinking of their importance doesn‘t really change that for me.
If I had a garden maybe then my perspective would actually change now that I think of it, I still wouldn‘t want them in my room at all and still use bug nets, but having them live in the garden and be more often exposed to them that way, a sort of safe co-existence, I think I would grow tougher. It‘s just unlikely to ever happen as I‘m a poor renting city dweller who doesn‘t have ambition to grind for a mortgage.
I‘m also all for the biodiversity though in the cities, due to bugs I stay out of these areas (last time I walked in tall grass I had two ticks and they are dangerous here and I was lax on vaccinations luckily nothing happened), but I like that they can live in those spaces more due to environmentalist efforts.
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 --cricket-- grasshopper tacos at a restaurant in Washington, DC. The crunchy texture was honestly great. My only complaint was that the spice/sauce they used to prepare them was too salty. I think with a more restrained spice blend, it would be something I'd be happy to eat on the regular.
Edit: I was mistaken. They're grasshoppers, and apparently the saltiness is part of their natural flavor.
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
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