Posted on 08/02/2010 3:07:19 PM PDT by Willie Green
The raising of livestock consumes two-thirds of the planet's farmland, and is a major source of greenhouse gases. Meanwhile, tons of edible, sustainable protein swarms all around us, free for the taking. In a new policy paper being considered by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Belgian entomologist Arnold van Huis makes the sensible recommendation that the western world eat more insects.
Farming edible insects like mealworms and crickets would produce far less greenhouse gas -- 10 times less methane and 100 times less nitrous oxide -- than the large mammals we currently farm. Insects are metabolically much more efficient, which makes them far cheaper to feed and raise; and, since they're so biologically different from humans, they are less subject to contagious disease scares like mad cow. They are high in protein and calcium, and, with over 1,000 edible species, offer plenty of delicious variety.
In April, the FAO started a pilot locust-farming project in Laos, where entomophagy is not unheard of, but where it's been in decline under the cultural influence of the West. According to the Guardian, 15,000 household farmers already raise locusts in Thailand, and that expertise can be transferred elsewhere.
Introducing a bug-rich diet to the western world might be more of a challenge, although it's certainly not unheard of. A British author named Vincent Holt published an essay advocating it in 1885, along with a nice selection of menus -- moths on toast, anyone? -- in a pamphlet called Why Not Eat Insects?
(Excerpt) Read more at popsci.com ...
Screw the UN and the socialist horse that they rode in on.
When every single UN person and NGO affiliate person only eats bugs and nothing else for the rest of their lives, then I’ll consider it.
Can Soylent Green be far behind?
There. Fixed it.
Even then, I’ll eat a big juicy hamburger in front of them, just to pizz them off...
Let “them” eat bugs!!!
Hey,when they start doing it in Georgetown,Cambridge,the Upper West Side and Malibu *I’ll* start doing it.And not a minute before.
Were they absent the day they taught about the food chain in school?
These people won’t be happy until we are on the same level as frogs.
Congress is inhabited by slugs; do they count?
I think Kim Jong Mentally Il suggested the same thing.
They can go first.
I’m surprised the UN is proposing this. If it were in fact a feasible means of survival (and it may well be) then its widespread implementation could cause people to become more, not less, independant.
You bet we do! :)
FMCDH(BITS)
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