The United Nations Says We Should All Be Eating Insects

Forbes ^ | 5/14/2013 | Tim Worstall

[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.

[ZirconEncrustedTweezers]

I’ve got an orange tabby who loves spiders, and a torbie who likes to catch roaches (although she seldom eats them).

[Slings and Arrows]

G-d bless the little bug-eaters, every one.

[TheOldLady]

[smiles] Amen.

[TexasRepublic]

It would be very informative to visit the UN cafeteria to see if they practice what they preach. I’m betting they don’t.