What's Stopping Us From Eating Insects?

Lasrick writes "Scientific American has a really nice article explaining why insects should be considered a good food source, and how the encroachment of Western attitudes into societies that traditionally eat insects is affecting consumption of this important source of nutrients. Good stuff." Especially when they're so easy to grow.

Comments

Good Question

[MikeDataLink]

It's all in our heads. We choose to eat some animals (like cows) and not others (like cats) because of cultural reasons. Same with insects.

Re:Good Question

[iggymanz]

in many places in the world, they walk their dog. in some places in asia, they wok their dog.

Re:Good Question

[Anonymous Coward]

They served as a dual purpose... dogs actually were a result of wolves domesticating themselves. The socialable wolves were not killed by humans as they hung out eating their scraps. The new dogs served as companions and were used as "reserve" food supply. Humans used to eat wild horses regularly, and later used them as a beast of burden AND a "reserve" food supply.

Once you start having a relationship with something, you tend to want to avoid eating it, because you cannot undo it. So, you keep looking for another food source. Eventually, it becomes taboo.

Re:Good Question

[Holi]

I dunno, fish is healthy, and most fish we eat is not vegetarian.

Re:Good Question

[TheCarp]

I wouldn't cook any of my cats, but from the descriptions it seems like cat might be ok in a stew or soup. I have seen a few stories of cat consumption which tend to agree with this thought. In fact, most of the wikipedia headings on it seem to indicate stew is a common choice for those who eat cat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_meat

Overall though, I think this is part of why cats self-domesticated:

1. We don't eat the same things they do... vermin tend to not be worth our time. They are not terribly good meat themselves, and also not really worth our time.
2. They are not tasty nor worth our time in terms of meat:carcass ratio
3. They don't eat the same things we do... they can't taste sugar and their need for lysine makes them obligate carnivores,
4. They eat vermin who do eat the same things we do. Cats don't eat grain, but mice and rats do.
5. They can't harm us beyond a scratch or a bite, which can mean infection and even loss of limb or death, but that isn't really the same issue; a cat in such a fight with a human is most likely going to lose badly and quickly.

Throw in cuddly and warm, and its easy to see why cats and humans made natural, mutually beneficial, community, and why we let them move indoors with us.

Re:Good Question

[cusco]

When the Inca conquered a new people they left the religion and social structure more or less in place, but implemented a few new laws that superseded the existing laws.

1) The Sun is the god of all gods, superior to whatever deities you already have
2) The Inca is the king of all kings, superior to whatever ruler you already have
3) No more sodomy (they wanted to increase population as quickly as possible
4) Stop eating dogs

We have three 'calatos', the Peruvian hairless dog (my wife's family has had one or more of these dogs continuously for at least 40 years). Wonderful animals, clean, loyal, no shedding, no fleas, affectionate, intelligent, pretty much everything you want in a dog. And since there's no hair they're easy to prepare for the oven.

Re:Good Question

[smillie]

Some of us have been eating insects for as long as we have owned motorcycles.

Re: Good Question

[nebular]

Horse is a reserve food. Taste is secondary to usefulness. A horse can do a large amount of work, they are more useful on the yoke than on the table. Same with dog. Dogs are more useful as a work animal than a food animal. Cows, not so much. I can't think of too many situations where a cow would be best suited as a work animal. So we eat cows, same with most kinds of pig. Over time the cost benefit gets melded with some of the cultures and you get a social taboo.

Re:Good Question

[slaughts]

Except the laces keep getting stuck in my teeth...

LAND SHRIMP

[Anonymous Coward]

Insects taste like shrimp, crab, or lobster. It's just the cultural bias that keeps people from eating them.

Re:LAND SHRIMP

[bill_mcgonigle]

Insects taste like shrimp, crab, or lobster. It's just the cultural bias that keeps people from eating them.

No, it's mostly economics. I looked into this a few months ago. The best flavor from an insect comes from a an emperor scorpion, which tastes much like shrimp. They take about 18 months to grow to a harvestable size and require about 20 gallons of space to stay healthy. They need lights if kept in captivity and cannot get along in large groups.

From there, the amount of meat per volume goes way down, unless you're eating meal worms and crickets, which can be toasted as snacks or ground up to make various pastes (McBuggets?) but not enjoyed as a piece of meat.

If I were to raise emperor scorpions on my farm, they would cost more than lobster (which may still be viable in some restaurants for an exotic option). In our current scheme all of the time, food, and habitat for the lobsters are 'free' and not included in the cost of the meal.

Uh...

[korbulon]

Would you like flies with that?

*crickets*

What's Stopping Us From Eating Insects?

[capebretonsux]

What's Stopping Us From Eating Insects?

Windshields.

Re:"Eww it's like a pus explosion in my mouth!"

[GameboyRMH]

Another paraphrased quote:

"When I eat bugs, it always tastes like they get a last bit of revenge on me by taking a dump in my mouth."

and a) mammals aren't poisonous b) cats are useful

[raymorris]

Part of it is in our heads. Also, we eat mammals, not creepy-crawlies, because mammals aren't poisonous. Meat (mammals, birds) is also highly concentrated food.
Insect shells, legs, etc. aren't as good for food, and they are far more likely to be poisonous. Some bugs are poisonous themselves. Others, like flies, hang out in rotting meat which is full of bacteria and toxins. So we evolved to not eat bugs because bugs are likely to make us sick.

Of course, fungus is similar. Mushrooms are an acquired taste, not something that most people enjoy immediately, but with modern practices we can separate the edible fungus from the poisonous. We eat some edible fungus and smoke one of the poisonous ones. :)

Cats and dogs aren't "all in our heads", we have them for a reason, and that reason isn't food. Evolutionarily speaking, it's better to let your cat keep the rats away than to eat the cat. "Don't eat your friends" is a good idea, not just a cultural convention.

Re:Shrimp, Lobsters, and Crabs are Insects

[agapeton]

Arthropod != Insect

Re:Shrimp, Lobsters, and Crabs are Insects

[serviscope_minor]

Shrimp, Lobsters, and Crabs are Insects

No, they're not. Insects and crabs share the same phylum: arthropods.

For reference we're on the phlum chordata. This includes things such as mammals, all fish (bony, otherwise and even jawless), hagfish (weird craniates which aren't really quite vertebrates), lancelets (kind of small brainless proto-proto-proto-fish) and sea squirts which are sessile bag shaped filter feeding blobs.

Now crustacians is still quite broad but doesn't contain insects. It does however contain woodlice and that really, really gross parasite which eats the fishes tounge and then spends the rest of its life acting as the fishes tounge.

*shudder*

Re:I'm in.

[FatLittleMonkey]

Give me some tasty recipes.

1. Feed insects to chickens.
2. Cook and eat chickens.

Carnivore meat is not inherently toxic.

[Valdrax]

Parent may have been clueless to the tongue-in-cheek nature of my post but whoever modded this down was nonetheless a fucking moron; it's well understood that the flesh of nearly-completely-carnivorous creatures (such as felines) is highly toxic and can kill you if you eat it.

Not really. Salmon, tuna, and swordfish are completely carnivorous and are eaten worldwide. Alligators and snakes are eaten in various parts of the US and are carnivorous. Indigenous Arctic peoples ate diets drawn primarily from seals (all carnivorous) and whales (many of which are carnivorous). Squids and octopi are carnivores.

Now, that said, carnivore meat does carry some risks, all in the form of bioaccumulation of toxic materials. (e.g. Mercury and other heavy metals, PCBs, etc.) But "highly toxic" is a bit over-dramatic. You can eat a serving of carnivorous fish once a week and be fine. You can also eat far more than that and survive, but you may run into health risks or, more importantly, pass on unsafe levels that will affect your child's development if you get pregnant. Adults only risk death if those kinds of fish are your primary protein source and/or you get them from an actively polluted area. (See, e.g. Minama disease.)

But the meat *itself* is fine, in absence of human-cause problems.