Posted on 05/14/2013 7:10:50 PM PDT by DogByte6RER
The United Nations Says We Should All Be Eating Insects
The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), a part of the United Nations, has released a report saying that we should all get ready to start eating insects. There’s a certain amount of truth in the report but not all that much:
“ World population is slated to top nine billion by 2050, and seeing as how arable land is being rapidly swallowed by towns and cities, oceans are increasingly overfished, and climate change is disrupting traditional farming, a new United Nations study proposes a twist on Marie Antoinette’s dietary advice: let them eat bugs.
“Common prejudice against eating insects is not justified from a nutritional point of view,” write the authors of a 191-page report (PDF) released by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) entitled “Edible insects: Future prospects for food and feed security”.
The true parts of the report are that yes, insects are indeed highly nutritious. They’re also a very efficient method of turning various forms of vegetable matter into proteins and other materials that humans can actually digest: we do better eating a locust that has eaten the grass than we would eating the grass directly. It’s also true that there’s plenty of insects to eat, even that with some decent saucing they can be very tasty (well, OK, some of them).
Finally, almost all of us have eaten insect derived products, if not an entire bug itself directly. Cochineal is a widely used food dye and it’s derived from a bug that feeds on cacti.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
OK, you first
If you are what you eat then that’ll make em all needled..uh bugf..uh you know what I mean.
I learned from a Navy Seal that insects are much more palatable if you remove the legs, wings, and antennae.
:-)
Important culinary tip, that.
You never know when it could come in handy!
Right up there with “Don’t cross the streams.”
BTW - Dogs love cicadas. It’s like ice cream raining from the heavens. No harm until they eat 10 pounds of them. I have pictures of dog puke with bug parts and some bugs still with moving legs.
*******
Ha! You’re right. ....Had a little mutt terrier about 15 lbs. in size. Had a tall and spreading mesquite tree in backyard. Cicadas came out in mid-1970s here. After work and changing clothes, I’d grab my BB-gun and that dog was trying to open the patio glass door!
With a cold brew at hand, I’d shoot the little beasties out of the upper branches of the tree and the mutt would be watching intently. When I hit one he would often catch it before it hit the ground. ...It was one of his favorite times (and mine).
Let them lead by example. (For a few hundred years).
My tomcat LOVES eating moths. Pretty much anything else, too, but definitely moths.
We could grow far more nutritious vegetables via aquaponics using tilapia as part of the process. Fish and fresh vegetables in a symbiotic relationship. With cheap energy (aka nuclear in a friendly regulatory environment) you can grow hydroponic crops indoors that are much higher yield than large-scale farming methods. Massive farms that would produce huge amounts of quality calories are possible. We waste gigantic amounts of water now on crops when non-traditional methods such as drip tape or other micro irrigation methods, deeper garden beds that retain water, hugelkultur, and other ideas not currently in widespread use drastically cut water usage.
Look up backyard gardening and you will be stunned at what people grow in small places. Anyone willing to do a little bit of work should not starve. Farming technology, clean water, and nutrition has greatly improved in the developing world as well and eventually, assuming the rule of law, those nations will be able to mass produce food with modern equipment just as we do even becoming exporters themselves.
I won’t eat bugs, but my chickens will gorge themselves on them and as long as I can feed them bugs (and grass) and provide them with water they give me great eggs (and new chicks). I can even feed the excess eggs back to the chickens with the shells. They eat my leftovers and they love dandelions that are easy to grow. I can easily grow insects and sprout grains to feed them with minimal effort.
Want another great source of protein? Grow meat rabbits. I believe they are even more efficient than chickens. You can feed them just about any vegetation and they grow fast.
Replace your ornamental trees in the lawn with fruit trees. Provide them minimal care and break out grandma’s water bath and can jelly and preserves. We got almost 5 gallons of honey from one beehive last year. Plant berries instead of shrubs and put in a small garden to offset your grocery store purchases. It’s not that difficult.
I won’t bore you to death, but you get the point. There are plenty of old ways and new ideas to feed yourself and when there is enough of a financial incentive or a need more people will do it. People don’t now because it’s easier to buy what they need and it’s no longer common knowledge - but anyone who assumes people will sit around and starve is an idiot.
The models from the population bomb crowd take today’s technologies and ideas and transpose them against the future never assuming or understanding that people will adapt and overcome and technologies will change the world in ways we cannot even begin to imagine. In fact, I would argue that positive changes in agriculture are far more likely than the population bomb they predict. The idea that we are using too much land now for agriculture is a farce. Can you imagine what we could grow in the easily accessible highway median spaces and shoulders in this country if we needed to do so? I bet that is not even 1/10000th of our available land.
We have not even begun to tap the potential of this planet for growing food and any person who suggests otherwise does not know what they are talking about or they have another hidden agenda. These idiots need to get out of the city and visit some small hobby farms.
Blah, blah, blah GLOBAL DISASTER, blah, blah, YOU’RE ALL GONNA DIHHHH, blah, blah, BOILING OCEANS, blah, blah, FOR
THE CHILDREN, blah, blah, STARVING MASSES, blah, blah, GIVE UP YOUR SILLY CONSTITUTION AND SEND MONEY!
— Your friendly, neighborhood UN.
We never heard another cricket in the house after we adopted our second cat, Muffin. They were gone without a trace. [smiles]
He loved him some bugs.
Good.
Why don’t they set the example themselves.....
I’d prefer to feed the insects to fish, then eat the fish. The fishheads, guts and bones can fertilize the vegetable garden. Win-win.
Local Food!!!!
We have no insects here in quantity. Last year we had mass quantities of 17 year locusts, but even the birds don’t eat those foul smelling bugs
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