Slashdot Mirror
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
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.
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.
Never actually been on a ranch I can see....
There is a reason we have those feed lots as inefficient and stinky as they turn out to be. Mainly they are FAST and a cheaper way to generate the meat the consumer wants.
Most folks don't like grass fed beef. They want their beef with lots of fat, as young as possible, and as quickly as we can produce it. That says "Feed Lot" where we do the best we can to get the cattle to eat as much as they can convert to fat/meat as we can arrange. If you preferred grass fed beef, that's what you'd be getting. Trust me, it's easier and a lot less messy to kick them out to pasture to snap up as much grass as you can put in front of them. Rancher's would love it, they'd be keeping their own steers, feeding them all the grass/hay they could find until they reached slaughter weight and just sell them to processors direct. As it stands, they sell their yearling steers to feed lots, who take them to slaughter weight as quickly as possible.
Personally, I've had grass raised beef. It's not bad but it's an acquired taste I'm afraid. You end up making more hamburger because it's way too lean and tough in places, but over all it works if it is cooked right. However, I prefer grain finished beef. That extra bit of fat and marbling is much nicer and makes for better tasting steaks. I've raised my own beef both ways, and obviously the feed lot model produces better results.
The antibiotic issue is not really a problem for feed lots, who generally don't go around just shooting up all the steers with antibiotics as a matter of course. Of course they DO use them in dairy operations quite a bit and you are more likely to find them in milk than meat. Dairy operations also use a lot of growth hormones to boost production which is worrisome if you ask me. Feed lots get in on this as well, but not to as much and they are really just adding on as a supplement a hormone that's already present naturally. I find this hormone augmentation more of a worry than antibiotics which cannot be given within a set timeframe of slaughter.
So... Until folks acquire a taste for grass fed beef, feed lots are where the bulk of your beef will come from. That's just based on what the American pallet will accept and the cheapest way to produce what we want to eat. There is not much else that's going to happen so get used to the idea.
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.