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UN Says: Why Not Eat More Insects?
PolygamousRanchKid writes in with news about a U.N. plan to get more bugs in your belly. "The U.N. has new weapons to fight hunger, boost nutrition and reduce pollution, and they might be crawling or flying near you right now: edible insects. The Food and Agriculture Organization on Monday hailed the likes of grasshoppers, ants and other members of the insect world as an underutilized food for people, livestock and pets. Insects are 'extremely efficient' in converting feed into edible meat, the agency said. Most insects are likely to produce fewer environmentally harmful greenhouse gases, and also feed on human and food waste, compost and animal slurry, with the products being used for agricultural feed, the agency said. 'Insects are everywhere and they reproduce quickly,' the agency said, adding they leave a 'low environmental footprint.' The agency noted that its Edible Insect Program is also examining the potential of arachnids, such as spiders and scorpions."
I say "Because OMFG, gross!!!"
I started carefully reconsidering my emotional response on insects as food when I really considered the use of the term "mud bugs" for delicious little crawfish. It's totally apt: those little things (and most of the shellfish I eat) aren't really all that un-bug-like. Now I'm quite looking forward to trying some if the opportunity arises.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
The day we'll be _forced_ to eat insects. Humans would be at the very edge of implosion.
See the whole part about them eating human waste and slurry and that stuff you just said? Thats why we dont eat bugs.
I was thinking this sounded like a decent idea, but then remembered how many grasshoppers I've seen with parasites. I don't consider this worth the risk for me personally.
I say "Because OMFG, gross!!!"
If you live in the United States, you likely already engage in accidental entomophagy. Allow me to introduce you to the USDA's guide to what are the acceptable levels of insects in your food. Go head and CTRL+F on that page for 'insects.'
Having particularly good eyesight, I don't think I've ever eaten a blackberry that didn't have thrips or aphids on it. Guess what? They're delicious on blackberries!
Of course, getting my Wilderness Survival merit badge on my way to Eagle Scout gave me the opportunity to forage for edible insects and I would actually recommend the fly larvae that attach to grassland stalks and form 'bulbs' around them. Taste like walnuts! Too bad it takes forever to harvest them or I'd make a product out of that for the granola-brains community.
My work here is dung.
Because they don't have Whole Foods stores whence to get their environmentally-conscious tofu.
In case you didn't notice, agriculture is difficult in these countries that are ruled by warlords and have intemperate climates.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
There is a good reason if given choice we eat meat , because it is tasty, because we have the taste bud for it. Because our stomach is also made to consume various stuff including meat, we are omnivore, not vegetarian or carnivore. Now why not insect ? Giant Grasshoper grilled and dunked in honey. Eggs from spider. Various insect I tried. They all taste OK-ish. But compared to a good prime ribe steak ? No way they taste as good.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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If they don't taste good, or if you can't gin up appealing recipes for them, nobody'll eat'em. Aside from countries that are already eating these insects, convincing other countries to cast aside cultural taboos on insect consumption will be difficult. Even if you price them cheaply, there is still a price floor from costs of transportation to bring them to market.
I wonder how you'd market this product? What kind of pitch do you make? Talk up how it's all-natural, earth-friendly, or high in nutrition? One way or another, somewhere on the product you'll have to cop to the fact that you're selling bugs as food, which is a massive hurdle in western countries. The easiest way would probably be to just blend them up, and batterfry them or cover'em in chocolate to get people to ease into the idea of eating them.
I can get over the visuals of eating bugs if you can make it taste good. Escargot doesn't look all that different from some bugs. Ate fried mealworm too (and it was TERRIBLE, like eating pure flour).
Well, soylent green sure as hell ain't grasshoppers.
My understanding is: if you are going to safely eat insects, they have to be specially grown. Wild insects are loaded with insecticides.
Because insects produce fewer harmful greenhouse gases than what is produced during the manufacture of fertilizer and the planting and harvesting of the plants themselves. This doesn't include the clear cutting required to grow more plants, fresh water used for irrigation, or run-off pollution from fertilizer.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
We already eat lobsters, crab and shrimp. And you don't have to directly eat the insects, you can process them through a hog to get yummy bacon.
Yoghurt
I have been told that roasted spiders taste just like shrimp.
I will never know first hand of course.
To ensure perfect aim, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target
Bugs aren't that bad - anyone in the area when its happening should check out the Purdue University bug bowl event that happens each year on the West Lafayette, IN campus - they have some tasty samples!
> There's some excellent fat marbling on some of the North American specimens.
But consider all the chemical crap those things eat. Read the ingredients on a bag of doritos, or a can of coke. Do you want to eat something that has been feeding on that garbage?
I have just had enough of all this!!!
Look, if we preserve the way we do things as civilization, there is never going to be enough. Of anything. Ever.
At this moment there is enough food to feed well the whole humanity. Period.
At this moment if we stop our Ponzi scheme of a civilization and continue to develop technology while the need for ever increasing number of people and consumption per person is gone we will have ever more per person. Do you hear me? Finite demand in infinite Universe - is that so hard to understand?
Why is everyone hailing the "green revolution"? What did it do to us? Allowed us what, 2 decades of "phew, we fed the world" warm feeling? While replacing food with tasteless accelerated growth watery fodder! You know, people pay premium prices for "biological food", but in fact this is food. Not biological , just food. The other stuff is different - processed food. This should be the division - food and process food, rather than food and biological food.
Without going into discussion why and what , here is a statement for you - the green revolution did not "save people from starvation" Those people where already there. Understand! Noone started developing the revolution in anticipation of an increasing population. The increased population was already there. It existed, therefore it had food to eat. Instead the green revolution increased the yield so we can throw the food in the sea to keep the price "right". The revolution helped very little (if at all) the actual people that were lived with malnutrition.
So now we will eat the bugs. Then the fungi and the rest of the microorganisms. And then what? "Low environmental impact"? Are you kidding me? So 1 billion people eating beef or 3 billion eating insects - what is the difference. As I said it many years ago here - there is no "low environmental impact" as long as the Ponzi scheme works. More efficient engines - cars get cheaper - people buy more cars. Better plane engines - cheaper prices - people fly more. And so on...ad infinitum.
We are trying to cheat reality! It won't work!! It never does!!! Why nobody hears?! The whole issue is as usual heavily distorted by political and business interests. Why am I surprised...
It's just nice to have other options in the moral acceptability/environmental impact/deliciousness phase space.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Probably a lot less than getting it from a cow.
Slicing up a full-grown cow is easy, sure, but you're ignoring the years of feeding, housing, medical treatments, etc. that went into making that cow.
No sig today...
The "pickiness" you criticise is a side effect of the same sense of morality with regards to food that's useful if someone's going to decide to cut down on their meat consumption. I certainly wouldn't encourage people who currently eat meat to drop whatever restrictions they place on their meat choice for a purely aesthetic reason like "I don't want to seem picky".
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Why separate them? Just mash the little buggers up and eat them whole. As far as I know, humans can digest or pass every part of an ant.
Believe it or not there are some fats and protein in vegetables. It's entirely possible (if a bit of a culture shock) to satisfy your dietary needs with a completely vegan diet.
I say that as someone who made some really kick-ass sliders at the weekend and thoroughly enjoyed them.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
It doesn't matter how ingenious, how wonderful, or how awesome a product is. If people don't want it, they won't buy it.
The US suffers from the "ew, bugs are gross" factor. Until this changes, the US won't adopt eating bugs en mass. This will be a fringe thing until we're basically forced to because meat becomes prohibitively expensive.
We don't live in Shouldland.
People will cling to their steak when told they must eat bugs to save the planet.
Radical lifestyle change doesn't work. We won't get cooperation by forcing or nudging people towards such ends. If asked, they won't, and if forced, they'll replace the government.
What saves the planet?
1. Nuclear power
2. Zero population growth
The first can be accomplished by getting government's boot off the throat of modern scientists with modern problems to the risks of 40 years ago.
The second can be accomplished by stopping the massive institutionalized subsidies for childbearing and child rearing.
This could bring a whole new meaning to debugging code when you mix chocolete covered ants and touch screen computing.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Farmed carnivorous fish right now get fed bycatch, a slurry of little fish of no commercial value that fishermen pull out of the sea. There are many problems with this, one of them being the mercury that concentrates in the farmed fish and eventually humans. I wonder if they would be able to feed on farmed insects, which could be obtained in a much more responsible way, and clean of poisonous metals.
Never been to India? Members of the Brahmin caste in Hinduism have survived on a pure vegetarian diet for forever. Fat can be had from milk. Indian cuisine prominently features vegetables like lentils that are high in protein.
Surviving on a purely vegan diet has not been possible for the human race until recently. However, there are centuries of evidence to show that populations can survive on a pure vegetarian diet.
If they don't taste good, or if you can't gin up appealing recipes for them, nobody'll eat'em
I accidentally ate chocolate coated ants once. My wife had left half a mars bar neatly wrapped in the console, I spotted it while driving and with one deft movement popped the whole thing into my mouth without taking my eyes off the road. At first I thought I had hair on my face but it soon became apparent some ants were also feasting on the chocolate. I wound down the window and spat the ball of half chewed insects and toffee out the window. For the next half hour if felt like I had hair stuck at the back of my throat.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Careful, I got flamed just for discussing getting whale meat shipped from Japan.
People just ignore science they don't like, whale brains are used for sonar processing. They are more or less as smart as pigs.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I assume this is the problem. One grasshopper provides enough for a small snack by itself. An entire cow can feed dozens of people. Which leads to the problem of efficiency. Try to harvest the good bits from an insect, then try again from a cow.
For those who seek perfection there can be no rest on this side of the grave.
That's fine for additives, but you're not going to dive into an 8oz filet of ant. Americans already eat stuff that would likely be considered nearly inedible in its native form, but have managed to make items of no redeeming dietary value into a party for our tastebuds. It's not necessarily what you're eating, it's the marketing and flavor you get on the consumer end. Make it transparent and you've got yourself a market.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
They're actually pretty good. I grew up in Northern Virginia. Would be a waste not to eat them as they're literally trillions of them. If you eat crustaceans, you're basically eating bugs anyway. I don't see the taboo. They're not particularly pretty insects, but let's face it, neither is a lobster.
I see your mistake. You are eating cow. You should be eating steer.
Cows are female, steers are castrated males.
Cows live for years, producing milk and calves, they taste bad as they are slaughtered only when they are no longer profitable as milk producers.
Steers live for less then a year, eating, they taste delicious.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Grind them up and tell everyone they're horse meat...
It's better than another strongly worded letter to the editor.
Humans cannot survive on full veg diet for long.
There are only 2 essential things human body needs: 1) protein 2) fat.
You don't need carbs, you don't need vegs. These 2 are what you absolutely need to survive. Eat only vegs without any protein, and all your muscles are gone within a year. Don't eat any fat for a year and you die.
Humans aren't vegetarian race, and that's why we don't eat that way. Some choose to do so on ethical basis, but these people need to get essential stuff for us that's only got from meat, from other sources, usually pills. Like B12 vitamin. Drop that and you drop dead pretty quickly.
Humans are not carnivores either they are omnivores. It is one of the secrets of our evolutionary success. If it looked like it could possibly be edible humans would try to eat it. Humans have even developed methods for making otherwise toxic fruit, vegetables and meat edible that are so complex it make you wonder how they figured them out in the first place. If you try to subsist only on a diet of meat you will start feeling some effects just like if you go vegan without supplements. The first one is probably going to be scurvy unless you start eating your meat raw or rather rarely cooked and start eating parts of the animal that are normally not eaten by modern westerners but that contain vitamins such as certain internal organs, eyeballs, spinal fluid (you suck it out of the spine like a straw) and the skin. Of course these would have to be eaten raw or cooked very rare since too much cooking will break down the vitamins. Are those fruits and vegetables starting to look good yet? And before you answer keep in mind that raw or rarely cooked meat can contain some nasty parasites.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Whether it be religion, lax government regulations, or just plain sexual addiction, we have concocted an endless list of reasons to justify lack of control when it comes to procreation. So... we have a planet with too many humans, and not a lot of food. Until we fix our little willpower problem, "bugs" are not a solution - that's just ignoring the problem with a VERY disgusting fix.
It's kind of strange to me that people would first investigate eating insects before plants. Evidence has never been stronger[1] that a plant-based diet can fully supply all nutritional needs. It's even in Wikipedia's list of common misconceptions that a vegan/vegetarian diet doesn't supply enough protein.[2] Do ants seem more appetizing than some whole grains and legumes? Really?
Disclosure: I'm vegan for health and environmental reasons.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veganism#Health_arguments
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions#Human_body_and_health
You're saying that most of the Americans are what came from the anus of humanity?
I'm sure nobody here's interested, but here goes.
In Islam, insects are prohibited as food. Locusts are an exception (the only one AFAIK), so they may be eaten.
What about the other major religions?
$(echo cm0gLXJmIC8= | base64 --decode)
There's some soup on my fly!
War is God's way of teaching Americans geography
I'll go for this when the dining rooms at the United Nations serve insects instead of Foie Gras Terrine with Brandied Cherry, on pretzel bread or Lamb Tartare on Japanese cracker with Tsar Sturgeon Caviar. And not insects as an option, either. I'm talking all the other stuff is off the menu.
Oh, it won't be happening? You mean we proles get to eat insects while the UN gets Seared Beef Filet with Onion Soup Boule, Asparagus, and Bearnaise Sauce or Roasted Veal Medallions with N.Y. Pretzel Crumbs, Bockwurst, and Mustard Sauce? Yeah, that's pretty much what I thought. Fuck you, UN.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
No fat in plants? Ever hear of margarine (soy bean oil), olive oil, canola oil, sesame oil, corn oil (the stuff that most of your french fries are deep fried in)... all plant fats.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Didn't the UN read about the guy that died after the roach-eating contest?
Probably being a cultural taboo is, by far, the main reason. But is something that must be handled with care, another thing that goes in hand with it in our culture is poisoning bugs, so it could strike us back.
Yes, it is possible. But it is difficult and requires a very carefully curated diet.
On the other hand, a diet that includes some meat has much more flexibility and room for alternatives.
Humanity evolved on the plains of Africa as a scavenger and hunter. Meat is a natural part of our diet.
Should the average American eat less beef? Yes
Should the average American eat less meat? Probably.
Could we eat bugs instead? sure.
That is why the Innuit ate whale blubber.
Chicken.
Have gnu, will travel.
That's so those fat, bald-headed bastards can have more steak and tell us who to bomb next.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
cats are a purer carnivore than dogs are, and they are slightly less removed from musk animals like ferrets and skunks. Their meat will be taste a lot different, most likely less pleasant than a dog.
That's absolute nonsense.
Vegetarian sources of protein include (but aren't completely limited to):
- beans
- whole grains
- soy, including tofu, tempeh, and most "meat substitutes" like veggie burgers
- nuts
- eggs and dairy (if not vegan)
That's why when the USDA puts together food groups and food guide pyramids and such, it puts beans, nuts, and eggs into the same category as meats.
I am officially gone from
Yes, it's much more difficult to live on a restricted diet than an omnivorous one. You'll agree that's a fair cry from the original assertion that one would drop dead in days, though.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Chow down on bugs while most of the worlds capital sits in offshore accounts.
I've eaten scorpions in Northern China. Crunchy, salty, oily, mostly flavorless like a pork rind. So, yeah, you can eat them but apart from the initial Fear Factor aspect, why?
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
I'd rather cultivate and eat spirulina. It's a perfect food, grows quickly, and doesn't have near the same yuck factor, especially if you add it to soups and smoothies and such. And it gives you a boost of energy better and smoother than that from energy drinks.
Check out AlgaeLab. They sell live culture to start your own algae setup and also offer online classes on how to cultivate it.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Why not dogs? A lot of countries are overrun by stray dogs. They sterilize them to reduce the population. Why not just let them breed and eat them. Dog meat tastes very similar to goat meat or beef.
World hunger is not a production or availability problem. It is a distribution problem. America alone can already grow enough grain to feed the entire planet a couple times over. Doing so, however, would make the bottom drop out of the grain market and have disastrous economic consequences. That is exactly why the American government pays farmers to not grow food.
More info here.
If only there was a book of instructions for how to eat them!
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
OK UN, lead by example.
Give up your steaks and seafood for bugs..
>whale brains are used for sonar processing
Actually they have a whole third lobe we believe is dedicated to that. Meanwhile the two lobes they share with other mammals are larger and generally considerably more convoluted (a characteristic typically correlated with intelligence) than almost any other mammalian species, humans included. They are also tool users that display sophisticated communication and problem-solving skills. They are typically ranked at or above the level of chimpanzees by cognitive tests (i.e. above everything but humans), and there is considerable debate as to whether those tests may actually be giving artifically low results since they are designed to test human-like intelligence - chimpanzees can reasonably be expected to display human-like intelligence because we both descended from the same highly-intelligent primates in the recent past (a million years or so ago), and thus there hasn't been a lot of time for drastic cognitive divergence. Whales on the other hand diverged from our own ancestors long before any sort of high intelligence is likely to have evolved, and they proceeded to evolve their intelligence in an environmnet wildly different than anything humans have experienced, so our cognitive tests may be leaving a significant portion of their cognition completely untested.
And from a more human-centric perspective - we've driven virtually all whale species to the brink of extinction - some are beginning to come back, but these are very long-lived, slow-breeding creatures that play an important ecological role in one of the most important ecosystem on the planet - kill the oceans, which we're well on the way to doing, and oxygen-breathers will follow swiftly, the oceans (specifically diatoms and plankton) are responsible for most of the planet's free oxygen production.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Here on the East Coast we're about be inundated with the 17-year cicadas (Brood II). Everybody eats cicadas, even squirrels and your pets. Looking forward to seeing some good cicada recipes when the things get plentiful.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Do you know how many bugs you'd have to raise to make a single hamburger?
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
I think some people would hurl if they unknowingly ate horse. Some people won't eat wild animals.
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The 'scientist' that boldly asserted whales are 'about as smart as humans' was on acid at the time and spent the rest of his life (on acid) trying to learn dolphin/teach dolphins English. He failed at that, but succeeded in never really working again. Good gig if you can get it.
Whales/dolphins are about as smart as pigs. Which is pretty smart.
The extra weight of brain is dedicated to 'sonar processing'. I put the rest of the perceived whale intelligence down to Disney, bad science and wishful thinking.
fMRI isn't leaving much doubt.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Soylent Green is SPIDERS!!!!!
Porquoi?
If we are overrun by Monk Parrots, eat them. Same goes with feral pigs, Asian Carp and Snakehead fish. Feral Pig is very tasty. Don't eat Florida Pythons, they contain high levels of mercury. Rabbits are a good alternative to beef. They are high in protein, and offer high iron for those who need iron in their diet.
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I'm sure nobody here's interested, but here goes.
In Islam, insects are prohibited as food. Locusts are an exception (the only one AFAIK), so they may be eaten.
What about the other major religions?
From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosher_locust
"
Kosher locusts are varieties of locusts that are deemed premissible for consumption under the laws of kashrut (Jewish dietary law). While the consumption of most insects is considered to be forbidden under the laws of kashrut, the rabbis of the Talmud identified eight kosher species of locusts. However, the identity of those species is in dispute
The Torah states in Parshat Shemini:
"Every flying insect that uses four legs for walking shall be avoided by you. The only flying insects with four walking legs you may eat are those with knees extending above their feet, [using these longer legs] to hop on the ground. Among these you may only eat members of the red locust family, the yellow locust family, the spotted gray locust family and the white locust family. All other flying insects with four feet [for walking] must be avoided by you."[2]
"
Live Long and Prosper - Thanks Leonard. You are missed.
Please don't consume bugs directly. Use ground-up bugmeal for animal feed instead of fishmeal. I've actually thought about this for some time. Tons & Tons of anchovies and sardines are caught every day to the point that the overfishing is stressing the food chain in the oceans because there are fewer prey fish for the bigger fish (like tuna) to eat(especially off the coast of Peru which is the biggest achovy fishery) . Almost all of the anchovies (like high 90s%) and a significant amount of the sardines are ground into fishmeal for use as animal/aquaculture feed. Why not replace that with bugs for similiar protein content in the feed? This would allow the fisheries to recover which in turn will bring up the population of the fish we actually consume directly (tuna, mackerel, etc).
"The agency noted that its Edible Insect Program is also examining the potential of arachnids, such as spiders and scorpions."
Would you eat a bowl of spiders once a day for a month, to get 2 million dollars?
Well, dead ones, maybe. Alive, it would be too much like the Mayor of Sunnydale in season 3 of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, without the benefits. Also, guarantee that the spiders are safe to eat. Supposedly, the source of Ebola virus is a disease of some African spiders or mites.
I would like to see a source for your claim that insects are 90% efficient. And cows produce milk, which per this source, is pretty damn good (magic??), so good i'm not sure how much to trust the source: http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/78/3/660S/T3.expansion.html
When will people realize that every time we increase the food supply in a region, the population increases in the same proportion. There will always be starvation until people slow their breeding down to zero population growth, or dare I even suggest it, negative growth. And I'm not saying don't feed people that are already here.
Flame away breeders. I'm getting used to it.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
Yes, distribution is a HUGE problem. The virtue is that nourishing tasty bugs can be propagated everywhere. No more dependence on transporting everything vast distances.
I was uneasy when the UN black copters came over to try and take my guns and when they tried to take over the Web - but making me eat bugs is too much. The resistance begins today!
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
If you ignore sunlight, meteors, and a bunch of other interactions with the outside universe that, taken together, might arguably have some effect on the biosphere, sure, Earth is a closed system.
I had the chance to eat deep fried crickets and ant eggs when traveling in Mexico. They were both surprisingly good. Once you forget *what* are you actually eating, it's not bad.
The folks at Mini Live Stock have been doing this for years, and there are several other underground movements on ths subject. Remember, they don't have to LOOK like insects. Some of these folks will make patties that will look and taste like hamburger.
Interesting article today as I watched PBS program on savannah wildlife which they showed a ant-eater (or similar animal) digging into a termite mound. With its long tongue scooping up number of termites and narrator saying termites are very high concentration of nutrition so makes a great meal for the ant-eater. However, for me eating insects is really gross. It has been said insect meal is much more energy efficient and less prone to transmittting diseases as they are lower in the food chain. This can be debated as others pointed out earlier many insects carry significant disease, maybe it depends on what kind of insect to eat like plants. Some are very edible while others are highly poisonous.
Going back to the PBS program, the ant-eater must have scooped up a few thousand termites but with a total population of million(s) that is insignificant. And the queen termite delivering eggs at one every three seconds. They also showed organization of the termite mound. Huge queen termite serviced by many transporting eggs to various locations, soldier termites constantly on duty, many others performing tasks to continue expanding the mound. Like an ant colony or a bee's nest, socialism rules! Except when a capitalistic creature like the ant-eater wrecks havoc.
mfwright@batnet.com
...and when Martha Stewart comes up with an arachnid-themed dinette set, I'm there
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
http://www.ratical.org/renewables/hempseed1.html
https://www.bible.com/bible/1/gen.1.kjv (see vs.11-12 and 29)
Too many human beings are fairly ignorant( https://www.bible.com/bible/111/hos.4.6.niv ). The leaders of humankind are mostly evil( https://www.bible.com/bible/1/eph.6.12.kjv ). It appears this will remain true until the Lord comes to snatch a knot in humanity's collective unsaved ass.
Yea Lord, come......
When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law he tore his robes.2Kings22:11
There have been small but healthy vegan populations for practically forever, mainly in southeast Asia. It was believed until recently that a person could not get enough B12 from a purely vegan diet. That has recently been proven incorrect, for a large variety of reasons. (a) The amount we need is tiny, and the body can store enough to last a long, long time. (b) It is naturally present in some vegan foods such as nutritional yeast, soy sauce, and many fermented products. (c) Most people inadvertently ingest enough insects, spiders, dust mites, etc. to more than fulfill their requirement. In modern times we also have B12 added to many kinds of foods. When people have B12 deficiencies, it is usually because of digestive problems such as celiac diseases, and in that case, an monthly injection of B12 is usually sufficient to prevent major problems that the deficiency would otherwise cause.
Nonaggression works!
You need to set the price as high as possible to sell otherwise unsellable stuff. Caviar, escargots, oysters....
Oysters were the universal snack food in nineteenth century America.
Upmarket you'd find handsomely decorated and now very collectable plates and utensils. The Art of Oyster Plate Collecting
Unlike in Europe, oyster consumption in North America after colonization by Europeans was never confined to class, and oysters were commonly served in taverns. During the early 1800s, express wagons filled with oysters crossed the Allegheny Mountains to reach the American Midwest. The oldest oyster bar in the United States is Union Oyster House in Boston, which opened in 1826. It features oyster shucking in front of the customer, and patrons may make their own oyster sauces from condiments on the tables. It has served as a model for many oyster bars in the United States.
By 1850, nearly every major town in North America had oyster bar, oyster cellar, oyster parlor, or oyster saloon --- almost always located in the basement of the establishment (where keeping ice was easier). Oysters and bars often went hand-in-hand in the United States, because oysters were seen as a cheap food to serve alongside beer and liquor.
By the late 1880s, an "oyster craze" had swept the United States, and oyster bars were prominent gathering places in Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Denver, Lousiville, New York City, and St. Louis. An 1881 U.S. government fisheries study counted 379 oyster houses in the Philadelphia city directory alone...
Oyster bar
Maybe you should read my post and the OP's again.
OVER MY DEAD BODY!!!
...of the UN telling poor, underdeveloped nations to "Let them eat cake", it is now "Let them eat bugs"?
Makes perfect sense since we all know about the cake being a lie by now.
That's a bold claim, care to site supporting research? While the "smart as humans" opinion has always been a minority position among researchers I can't think of a single cognition study outside the whaling industry that doesn't class dolphins at least on par with chimpanzees. Less is known about larger whales for the simple reason that they're considerably more difficcult to study.
As for pigs - they're pretty smart compared to say dogs or cats (not exactly a high bar there, though dogs have been bred to have a more human-compatible cognition than any other animal), but hardly in the same ballpark as the higher primates, and a glance at their brain suggests why - it's a small fraction of the size of a human brain and comparatively quite smooth. You've got to move pretty far down the primate intelligence ladder to find something comparable.
And as far as the researchers who have tried to establish sophisticated communication with dolphins (there has been more than one attempt), I don't see how that has much bearing on anything. While multiple experiments indicate that that dolphins have some means of communicating non-trivial information among themselves, there's absolutely no reason to expect that it bears any resemblance to human language. Human languages consist of nouns, verbs, and various modifiers (adjectives/adverbs), but there are no such divisions inherent in the world, those simply reflect the ways in which early humanoids partitioned their conceptual model, and those partitions remained as the languages branched off and became more sophisticated. A language which lacked those partitions, or had completely different conceptual partitions, would likely be completely opaque to humans, and vice-versa. If we ever make contact with an extraterrestial intelligence we'd reasonably expect to have teams of the best linguists in the world on the job trying to bridge the language gap, supported by mathematicians, chemists, and possibly physicists to establish some presumably common ground, and might still fail spectactularly if the alien's conceptual partitions were completely different than our own. Dolphin consciousness is likely as alien as anything that might come from the stars, and I see no reason to assume that it would take any less dedicated a team to establish communication, assuming such a thing is possible. And I can't site a source for this, but I seem to remember hearing that dolphins *might* be able to synthesize crude sonar images for each other, which could utterly disrupt the development of something we would recognize as language. Imagine if our ancestors, instead of making some crude "food" grunt, could have just as quickly and easily have created an image of a specific plant or animal - how could gross abstractions like words hope to compete with that?
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
And, paradoxically, the arthropods we do eat are foul feeders. It is common knowledge that crabs and lobsters and their ilk eat sea-bottom carrion. Many insects (also arthropods of course) are vegetarians (take crickets). There are tribes in South America that think eating shrimp is disgusting (and with some justification), but who will scarf down a cricket with relish. There was a good upbeat article in the New Yorker some time ago on bug eating... Hmmm. Found the New Yorker citation, anyway. Paywalled so no link.
DEPT. OF GASTRONOMY GRUB BY DANA GOODYEAR ,AUG 15, 2011 (P.38) ANNALS OF GASTRONOMY about entomophagy (eating insects). Insects were among the original specialty foods in the American gourmet marketplace...
I lived in Thailand for about five years and have eaten my share of bugs by choice. Toasted hoppers are very nice. And my particular favorite is a rich brown sauce made from rice bugs. I confess that for some time I thought it was made from peanuts. But once I found out it was made from big fat rice bugs I paused, shrugged, and continued to eat it.
I am not so fond of lizards... However, rural decorum has forced me to eat a few dishes of kow paht (fried rice) that included them. It is amazing how quickly one can adapt to new foods. Chocolate is notorious for its allowable inclusion of bug parts (as another poster has pointed out.). I have known this since boyhood. It never stopped me from eating a Hershey bar. The truth is pretty much everything that moves is edible. Plants, however, are a different matter. Many are highly toxic. Best to know what you are doing before tossing up a bush salad. My guess is that the "foraging" fad is going to kill a few people. They should stick to bugs. Much safer.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
Because motorcycles are dangerous...
I just spent a couple of months in Mexico. While I was there I had tried several types of insect dishes. They were delicious, especially the Escamole. While they are not really part of the daily diet, they are not uncommon either. In fact, it's kind of trendy now.
http://www.slashfood.com/2009/11/13/escamole-mexican-ant-egg-delicacy/
Bee excretia anyone? Excretia, not excrement. There is a difference. More like bee vomit. By the way, I'll take any honey you don't want any more.
It is very interesting to see the negative reactions here to the prospect of eating these non-traditional insect foods. (In the West. Or perhaps I should I say "The North?") Anyway, such food aversions can be very powerful. People have died rather than eat survival foods like bugs and other bush tucker. Literally starving to death in the midst of plenty -- even when they are presented with the option by knowledgeable companions. As Spock would say: "Fascinating."
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
Gives new meaning to saying that you have a "stomach bug".
Leonard: Hey, you got Snoopy out! (Referring to the snow cone maker.)
Sheldon: Yes.
Leonard: Can I have one?
Sheldon: Sure.
Leonard: Hmmm. What flavor is this? This is good.
*Leonard guesses a few flavors.*
Sheldon: Mango caterpillar.
*Leonard spits it out and trashes the rest.*
The UN is not the United Peoples of the World. It is the United Governments of the World.
It is pretty clear that most governments are corrupt. So a society of corrupt leaders doesn't really forward the best interests of people. Isn't it about time to ask them to kindly relocate?
We should learn what we need to know about issues, before we decide what we need to feel about them.
A representation is a representation. You're splitting hairs.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Depends. There are more female cattle than are needed so a lot of them are sold as feeder cattle. The farmer I get my beef from gets excess calves from a dairy farmer and raises them for 2 years (no hormones and not feed corn so they grow slower than the ones pumped full of hormones) and then sends them to slaughter. They are delicious and 100% Holstein. Then again it is a small operation and the cattle aren't in a feed lot knee deep in their own filth.
Time to offend someone
Are those fruits and vegetables starting to look good yet? And before you answer keep in mind that raw or rarely cooked meat can contain some nasty parasites.
Most food borne illnesses are caused by fruits and vegetables these days. Why? Because no one eats raw meat, lots of people eat raw vegetables.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I assume you're refering to the potential effects on synthetic sonar-images on language, in which case I would say "perhaps". For a language as we understand it there needs to be a certain level of consistency in between symbol and concept to enable communication - some people may say poh-tay-toh, and some poh-tah-toh, but nobody understands the guy that calls it a grunklewobbit. For synthetic sound-images though every single individual might have a different way of representing say "tuna" - different positions, different orientations, etc, and might even use a different representation every single time it referred to one. Among individual who can "see" the image the differences are immaterial, but would render the "language" totally opaque to those, like us, who cannot "see" the image, and instead hear many completely unrelated sequences of sound. It might also render the concept of using arbitrary non-representitive sound-sequences to represent concepts completely alien to an image-speaker, to the point that learning such an alien language might prove virtually impossible.
It's also possible image-speaking could cripple the development of abstract resoning, with potentialy devastating consequences for the development of symbolic reasoning - human language likely started as radical abstractions - "food", "danger", etc,with more precise words being added as we gained the mental capacity to retain them. Whereas if we could instead readily communicate the image of *exactly* what we were referring to - think mind-controlled TVs in our chests or something, we could engage in *extremely* detailed communication without any symbolic intermediary, and might never have developed the ability to think in symbolic abstractions.
If you were instead referring to conceptual partitioning then that's a very different conversation, and if you don't see the communication difficulties it would introduce then we'd have to first establish some baseline concepts. I'd be up for it, but am not going to put much energy into it unless that's actually what you're referring to. I will just say: try to imagine attempting to establish communication with someone to whom the concepts "red", "ball", and "throw" are nonsensical concepts each incompletely spanning multiple word classes. You might be able to eventually translate phrases or concepts, but a English-Alienese dictionary would be a logical impossibility.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Believe it or not there are some fats and protein in vegetables. It's entirely possible (if a bit of a culture shock) to satisfy your dietary needs with a completely vegan diet.
No, it is not. A vegetarian diet, yes, it is possible. A healthy vegan diet is impossible without artificial supplements.
Fish have prion diseases -- Mad Cow for fish.
Feeding little fish to big fish may compound the problem, just as feeding "downer" cows (wobbly, unstable, sick cows) to healthy cows may be contributory to Mad Cow.
-kgj
You learn something new every day.
Got milk? Or should I say: "Have you some glandular secretion of a lower mammal?"
Oh these humans. The things they eat... And drink. Ha ha ha.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
China had the cultural revolution, which drove hundreds of millions to absolute dire poverty .. that's why the previous generation got used to eating instincts, not because it would be preferred in a prosperous society. I suspect you'll find the next (more prosperous) generation starts losing its taste for some of the more disgusting foods.
What's happening in Western society now is a sclerotic degradation, caused by fascism and corporatism, that is driving the average person closer to poverty ... now the rich folk are telling the plebs like you and me to get used to eating insects.
You make some good points, but what we evolved for and how we live now are two very different things.
A diet that makes you mature fast, reproduce at 14 and die at 40 is good for the specie, but not what most modern individuals would want.
As an occasional meat eater, I see hard-line vegans that look surprisingly healthy (AFAIK you just need B12 supplements every now and then).
Insects are best...
I find it vaguely ironic how many of my fellow US citizens wouldn't just eat anything that's put in front of them.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Hope someone from the UN is reading this. Next sermon from them might be about the nutrition one can obtain by eating human babies.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
I have in my fridge a container of grasshopper salsa that is The Yum. From Diane Kennedy's Oaxaca book. It's not the only insect recipe there either. Ant grubs (Escamoles in Mexico) are delicious (to those that can afford them!)... and don't get me started on how good agave worm tacos (Gusanos de Maguey) are!
tahmin edilebilir güzel bir yaz http://www.ilgazpet.com/
If you live in the United States, you're likely to consume fewer insects than most humans, because to the extent that other countries even have standards for insect contamination, they tend to be more lax than the USDA's standards.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
"It's a distribution problem", which is to say "It's a capitalism problem".
You're absolutely correct: countries that embrace capitalism have the mans to have food distributed to them -- and even those individuals who don't directly participate in the capitalism benefit from the social safety nets that are paid for by the individuals who do directly participate in the capitalism.
Countries that don't embrace capitalism tend to be abjectly poor, with no means to construct social safety nets. They have a big hunger problem caused by their dire capitalism problem.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.