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Grow Your Daily Protein At Home With an Edible Insect Desktop Hive
HughPickens.com writes: Fast Coexist reports on the Edible Insect Desktop Hive, a kitchen gadget designed to raise mealworms (beetle larva), a food that has the protein content of beef without the environmental footprint. The hive can grow between 200 and 500 grams of mealworms a week, enough to replace traditional meat in four or five dishes. The hive comes with a starter kit of "microlivestock," and controls the climate inside so the bugs have the right amount of fresh air and the right temperature to thrive. If you push a button, the mealworms pop out in a harvest drawer that chills them. You're supposed to pop them in the freezer, then fry them up or mix them into soup, smoothies, or bug-filled burgers. "Insects give us the opportunity to grow on small spaces, with few resources," says designer Katharina Unger, founder of Livin Farms, the company making the new home farming gadget. "A pig cannot easily be raised on your balcony, insects can. With their benefits, insects are one part of the solution to make currently inefficient industrial-scale production of meat obsolete."
Of course, that assumes people will be willing to eat them. Unger thinks bugs just need a little rebranding to succeed, and points out that other foods have overcome bad reputations in the past. "Even the potato, that is now a staple food, was once considered ugly and was given to pigs," says Unger adding that sushi, raw fish, and tofu were once considered obscure products. "Food is about perception and cultural associations. Within only a short time and the right measures, it can be rebranded. . . . Growing insects in our hive at home is our first measure to make insects a healthy and sustainable food for everyone."
Of course, that assumes people will be willing to eat them. Unger thinks bugs just need a little rebranding to succeed, and points out that other foods have overcome bad reputations in the past. "Even the potato, that is now a staple food, was once considered ugly and was given to pigs," says Unger adding that sushi, raw fish, and tofu were once considered obscure products. "Food is about perception and cultural associations. Within only a short time and the right measures, it can be rebranded. . . . Growing insects in our hive at home is our first measure to make insects a healthy and sustainable food for everyone."
Get us commoners to eat insects while the ruling class gets steak.
capcha: liberals
Lobster and Shrimp...
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
REAL Klingons only eat live Gakh!
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I enjoy fried mealworms as replacements for salty snacks, like any other pop-and-crunch food covered in chili powder.
currently inefficient industrial-scale production of meat
Yes, it is *currently* inefficient, because *they are doing it wrong*!!!
1 - destroy millions of acres of ecosystem and drain rivers dry to monocrop grains
2 - force-feed feedlot cattle candy
3 - pump them full of antibiotics to attempt to combat their inevitable poor health
4 - bitch about inhumane livestock treatment and conditions
5 - go vegan/grow meal worms to think you've solved the problem
- or -
1 - graze cattle on the 70+ % of land *that is not suitable for monocrop agriculture practices anyways* but happens to be plenty fertile enough to grow stuff naturally that cows will happily, and healthily eat. Let the cows do the work of walking to their food, rather than spending fuel to grow candy and bring it to them.
2 - grow something more eco-friendly in the millions of acres currently being wasted on corn (say, the original natural fauna?)
3 - round up the cattle when it's time to slaughter--they will be healthy and have a much better nutrient profile for us as well
Notice anything missing from the list? antibiotics? feedlots? grains? clear cutting to make feedlot grounds? check check check check.
Read Joel Salatin's works for more info.
Call it gagh and serve it with prune juice. Trekkies'll eat it.
Actually, we all do. Not just the ones that end up in our food by accident that we don't notice (how much bug powder per gram of flour?), but also intentional inclusions like cochineal and various other additives.
Really we just need to get over our insect eating phobia: it's all arbitrary. Steak good, meal-worm bad. Moreton-Bay bugs good, other bugs bad. The distinction is nonsense (not to mention completely absent in many cultures) - get over it people.
They never go into detail in the book (I believe... pardon it's been an eternity since I've read it) but my assumption was always Soylent Yellow and Red were some artificially produced edible protein where it's entirely likely yellow came from insects and red maybe even came from real animals (rats?).
The way to get people to eat this stuff is to have it come out in NOT-INSECT-LOOKING form such as a cube of blended worm-meal.. maybe even with some artificial flavoring / coloring added. I mean... people eat Tofu don't they? (I don't... but some people do. ;)
you are right, the reason to eat them is because they taste good
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Great, another "Gosh, what's the difference from eating steak?" doofus. We need to get over pretensions of "the distinction is nonsense". The bug-eater proposal is not a suggestion that we eat wee little fillets of insect muscle. It's a suggestion that we eat whole bugs – shells, heads, eyes, guts, everything. How often do you eat ground cow? No, not ground beef; ground cow? Heads, hide, bones, hooves, guts, and all? You never have and never will? Exactly. I'm not saying we need to balk at eating animals whole when it comes to bugs; after all, many people *do* eat insects, as you say. But for those who'll need persuasion to get there, let's not pretend that bugs are like teeny chuck steaks or dot-sized lobster tails, and sigh "get over it" when people aren't fooled.
Apparently you don't know the meaning of the word "based". Heck, some vegatable-based foods (such as gluten, often used in Chinese cooking) are nearly pure protein. Most meat substitutes are based around things like TVP, which is overwhelmingly protein. Seitan is 80% protein.
Even common things like tofu have far more calories from protein than carbs (your standard). But really, that's the wrong standard: it's calories from protein vs. calories from "everything else". The majority common vegan ingredients are in the 20-50% protein range - your green leafies (lettuce? 36%; broccoli? 33%; spinach? 50%; collards? 38%; etc), legumes (peas? 33%; lentils? 31%; beans? ~25%; etc), some grains, etc, plus tons of secondary products) are in the 20-50% protein-calories range. While lean fish and skinless chicken cooked in non-fattening manners around 80%-ish percent of their calories from protein, most meats are much lower. A hamburger patty, 80% lean, 20% fat, broiled? 38% from protein. Batter-dipped fried chicken? also 38% protein. Bacon, fried? 27%. Etc. These are just the first "common" things that come to mind, do your own searches. Common meat dishes have the same sort of percent of their calories from protein as common vegetarian dishes.
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What do you mean, it's arbitrary?
It's not arbitrary if you're a cow. Cows have hopes and dreams, feelings; the right to exist. And they get to exist in large numbers as long as we like to eat them. I know what you're thinking; the cow doesn't like that part where man kills him and eats him.
Not true. All cows have always died of being eaten by something else. This was the case long before cows ever saw a human. If you tried, and were somehow able, to explain dying peacefully surrounded by your loved ones; they wouldn't understand it. Dying good is being killed quickly and then eaten; a horrible death is being eaten alive while conscious. That's the end of a cow's life in almost every case, since the beginning of the time that there were cows.
Now, possibly, we eat the cows while they are too young. If we as a society, decided to give them more of their lives in exchange for this bargain; a raise, as it were... well, the price of beef would go up. I'd hate that, but I could be convinced. I could see: All cows are allowed to socialize and become old enough to have sex at least once, and females get to have at least one baby, before Bam!, we eat you. Heh, cow rights. I'm ahead of my time.
Now, however weird that sounded, substitute bugs for cows, and see how weird it sounds.
Our diets weren't as diverse as vegetarians like to think. If you look at the diets of most major human populations, there are some common themes: A mix of gathered plant matter, including roots, leaves, fruit, and nuts. And hunted meat including insects, birds, and large game. Even Inuit ate lots of plant food, contrary to the widely-circulated myth that they just ate meat (an important part of the Inuit diet is the half-digested plant matter found in the stomachs of wild game). But meat seems to be a constant. You can not find a major human population that didn't eat meat. They all did. They HAD to, because paleolithic plants were not nearly as nutritious or calorie-rich as modern agricultural inventions like potatoes and corn. None of these modern agricultural marvels existed for our ancestors. But they had buffalo.
The average caloric mix seems to be about 70% plants and 30% meat.
A fool and his hard drive are soon parted.
We don't eat bugs because historically and culturally, bugs have been a sign of spoilage and infestation. Some cultures do eat mealworms, but this almost exclusively happens in places where agriculture is difficult and high quality protein sources are rare.
Another reason why we are averse to eating bugs is that they are eaten whole. There are few animals that we consume in their entirety.
Ways to get around both of these issues ultimately come down to processing. Chemical processing has the potential to extract the proteins while rendering the result into a form that is unrecognizable as being derived from an insect. But, for my own personal tastes, I am not any more or less inclined to want to eat a mealworm than I am inclined to want to eat the intestine of a cow. It's just that, on a cow, it's a lot easier to separate the muscle tissue from the organs.
On the other hand, fried battered chicken is only 38% protein on a caloric basis. Same as broiled hamburger patties, and far better than bacon.
Yes, it's possible to select meats and prepare them in a manner that gets very high protein figures. But the same applies to vegans, who can choose, for example, gluten, saitan, textured vegetable protein and products made from it, etc. No, your average meat dish doesn't have those kind of protein figures - just like your average vegan dish doesn't. And nor does the human body need such extreme protein levels. Your average meat dish will probably have in the ballpark of 30-35% protein. So will your average greens dish or your average legumes dish.
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How often do you eat ground cow? No, not ground beef; ground cow? Heads, hide, bones, hooves, guts, and all? You never have and never will? Exactly.
You almost certainly eat mechanically separated meat, which includes all kinds of crap and is cleaned with ammonia.
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