Monday, October 13, 2014

Newsweek - Why Environmentalists Want Us to All Eat Bugs


AUSTIN, Texas—Why aren’t you eating bugs? They’re tiny terrors to some, but to a large percentage of the world, including many countries in Africa and Asia, they’re nutritious delicacies and environmentally-friendly to raise. This is according to a gathering of people who are passionate about entomophagy, or insect eating, who advertised their cause this week at the SXSW Eco meeting in Austin. Insects are a common source of food throughout the world, including much of Latin America, Africa and Asia. One could say that those of us in the Western world, where bug binging isn’t common, are the odd ones out, said Robert Allen, founder of the nonprofit Little Herds, which encourages insect ingestion. Consider the common house cricket, Acheta domesticus. Their bodies contain every essential amino acid, several times more calcium than beef or pork and nine times more iron than chicken, Allen said. Crickets can be fed on waste products like brewer’s yeast (a byproduct of beer making), and cricket farming produces 2,800 times less greenhouse gas emissions than cattle raising, he added. Insects also require very little land to raise and do well in small cages...more

Roach Roast?  Cricket Cookies?  PETA will soon be mounting a bugs brigade or insect infantry to protect the crunchy critters.  And schoolkids, you better hope Michelle O doesn't hear about this.


No comments: