134 sats \ 7 replies \ @petertodd 12 Jul \ parent \ on: Cricket bars for sale - You vill eet zee bugs! food_and_drinks
If eating bugs was a good idea it would be a lot more common to see insect eating in cultural food traditions. Instead it's quite rare, and confined to fairly poor cultures, and only certain insects.
We do eat bugs indirectly: we raise chickens and other animals that eat them for us. Chickens clearly have digestive systems optimized for insect eating.
hmmm...Good point! I actually never really thought about it from this perspective. The arguments I originally heard were about how all of these people groups all over the world eat bugs. ...but now that you mention it, I can't think of one off the top of my head that actually prepares them and makes it a part of their culture. You've really got me doubting my old opinion on this here.
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Think how common bugs are, and how desperately poor humans were in the past.
If, say, eating earthworms was a good idea surely there'd be some kind of "worm soup" or something in European culture? We've known how to collect and worms on large numbers for use as fishing bait since forever. Yet pretty much no-one eats worms. Instead we have a long tradition of raising chickens on top of compost piles and letting the chickens eat the worms for us, even though that gets you something like 1/10th the meat as eating the worms directly.
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Thanks! Rare to see someone admit new information and arguments changed their mind. Needs to happen more often.
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Stakes were low. I convinced someone in my community that worms taste terrible. Now on to Ukraine Russia and NATO
Plus if Jason ate a worm 🪱 or insect 🐞 he would realize his mistake.
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So to clarify, I've never been a worm fan and I've been eating crickets and grasshoppers (and chicken and beef and dandelions and fish) for years. They really don't taste bad. Termites are good too, but I don't trust the ones in my area like I do when I can go to the jungle. I doubt I'll stop eating these bugs. Most important, I've also always been against any big entity telling people what to eat.
What @petertodd has honestly debunked for me is the idea that insects are a viable protein alternative. Over the years, people have suggested lots of plant based protein alternatives only to find out after the fact that they lack a certain amino-acid. The whole combination was supposed to work on paper, but there were too many unknown-unknowns and the population ended up malnourished or with some other problem. This is where the traditional wisdom he mentions comes in handy. It's because of the combination of chicken being so boring by itself, and its nutritional value, that humans have figured out so many different ways to prepare it. So I'm still not convinced to avoid eating bugs out in the woods. I'm just probably not going to buy that power bar at this point. Thanks again @petertodd and @Signal312 for those insights.
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