Can anyone get me in touch with entomophagy experts if they exist or anyone just wanna talk about their experiences.
Entomophagy is the practice of eating bugs. There are a number of practical reasons you'd want to eat bugs. They are nutrient dense, calorie dense, and taste pretty good. The feed conversion to body mass rate is also double that of chickens. If you're a city dweller, they can be raised on your balcony or in a closet. They can also only be raised organically (pesticide residues kill them). If you're sick of the way livestock are mistreated at feedlots, then insects might be the solution for your high quality animal protein without supporting abuse of animals. Insects require less feed and less water than other livestock to produce the same amount of meat. The only people who shouldn't try to eat bugs are those with a shellfish allergy.
Bugs you can raise
- crickets
- mealworms
- toe-biter waterbugs
- dubia roaches, despite the relation to the bad ones, these guys are very clean
Bugs to forage for
- cicada pupae or adults depending on where in the life cycle they are, look in rotting stumps
- Japanese beetle grubs, found in lawns
- ant larvae, salt them and use like caviar
- snails
- locusts
- grasshoppers
- scorpions
- tarantulas
- mantis insects
- termites
Notes on preparing insects
Insects should be killed by freezing, then boiled in salted water. Then remove legs and wings. Legs have barbs on them that can cause a sore throat. Wings have a cloying texture that is unpleasant. At this point you can freeze them to save them for later, or use them in a recipe. Texturally, insects are best fried until crispy. But they can also be stirfried with vegetables and coated in a spicy sweet sauce. Arachnids need their hairs burned off and fangs/ stingers removed. Only the tips of their legs have barbs so just cut them off with a sharp knife. I'm personally not a fan of spiders, the texture is like canned frosting, which I hate.
Recipes
Chirpy Burgers
Fry 1/4 lb of crickets, drain, grind in blender until a fine powder. Mix with 2 lbs of ground beef, 2 tablespoons of worchestershire sauce, and garlic to taste. Mix by hand until the meat has a sticky consistency, then form into 10 patties and grill or fry the burgers.
Mealworm Fajitas
Sautee peppers and onions in olive oil. Season with cumin and oregano. Fry the boiled mealworms, in olive oil and then stir them into the peppers and onions. Serve immediately with salsa and sour cream in corn tortillas.
Bouncy Buggers Beer Snack
Take prepared grasshoppers and deep fry them in canola
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I created a mastodon instance for entomophagy, entomophagy.world. (recreated) https://entomophagy.world/
Creating your account is welcomed.
If you don't know mastodon, please refer next article in Wikipedia.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(software)
Thank you !
In many parts of asia, insects are considered a specialty, but in western culture in particular, this is still (with exceptions) frowned upon...
Is this due to geographical reasons or rather cultural ones?
I would like to know how cheap/expensive could become lab producing meat in comparison with entomophagy.
Also which advantages are in farming insects as food versus trying to recreate common domestic animals foods.
We can measure or compare regarding kg of food/energy invested, or potential health issues, or regulations, or potential meals that could be recreated with each source, antibiotic use, ecological impact...
Thank you
I am currently writing a paper on the benefits of a diet based on insects.
What can governments do to alleviate the general taboo around eating insects?
Hey guys!
This is my first post ever, but I am trying to get a survey done for my marketing class. I would greatly appreciate your answers and thank you for your time!
Guys, I recently started the TED-ed Earth School and ep. 1 deals with the question of entomophagy (eating insects) . I'll post the link below, but to sum it up the video talks about the prospect of raising bugs as food for a number of reasons; they're rich in protein, easy to harvest, healthy, cost-effective solution for developing countries with food shortages etc.. While I do find it interesting, I began questioning it from the perspective of vegan philosophy; a quick search has shown that while bugs can feel acute pain ( nociception), I could not find any concrete evidence that they are sentient beings. So if entomophagy could potentially reduce the dependency on meat, would you say that it would morally be okay to raise bug farms? Or would it still be labeled as animal cruelty?
I would appreciate your input and if you could post any relevant studies/articles that would be great! Thank you!
You can watch the video HERE
Hi all,
I am a big fan of Entomophagy (and I think this is a future diet), meaning eating insects (high protein source, low fat...).
I was wondering where I could buy some mealworms.
I found a few stores on Lazada selling it for birds, fishes.... but nothing for human consumption(i know a lot of people don't consider it as human food, but if you've never tried, you should!).
Do you know if it's the same "quality"? Do you know other websites?
If you are curious about this topic:
Cheers,
Hi,
I am currently a final year product design student at university. For my final year design project, I am looking at entomophagy and why it has not been adopted as a common practice in the west like it has in other areas of the world. The aim of my project is to help boost the practice of entomophagy by looking at the causes for the social and cultural stigma associated with eating insects and to develop potential product opportunities to help overcome these boundaries.
I am looking for experts and knowledgeable individuals in entomophagy to interview to help me gain insights for my project. I am particularly interested in the post harvesting of edible insects and processes that can help improve the presentation, quality and safety of them. If anyone has any suggestions of people I could get in contact with or any helpful resources it would very much appreciated.
Thanks!
Link to the survey: https://forms.gle/bxrkCSbcBz95kf5y6
Honestly if it wasnโt for how expensive the products are I would be on an insect based diet right now. Regardless of your opinions on the ethics of meat consumption, itโs a cold hard fact that the mass production of meat and animal products is just not sustainable. In terms of sustenance to meat output, I believe cows are something like 6:1, while most insects are at 1:1. While itโs been shown that feeding insects nothing but human food waste isnโt viable, itโs still a pretty dramatic difference.
I think entomophagy addresses the moral concerns vegans have too. The insects farmed for consumption are typically crickets and mealworms. They do not form complex social bonds like cows, they are not capable of complex emotion like pigs, and while we arenโt totally sure how bugs feel pain, we should be humane in our treatment of them regardless.
I would also like to clarify that Iโm not talking about eating just a straight up cricket. I would prefer to eat insects in a processed form myself. Thereโs already commercially available cricket protein powder, but itโs $40 a tub. Thoughts?
Edit, thank you for your comments! Whether you meant to or not itโs all really got me thinking. I donโt think Iโm ready or able to suddenly switch to veganism, but it turns out I was wrong about some of the stuff holding me back! Iโm still very interested in entomophagy as a growing industry but thereโs so many other meat alternatives I had completely forgotten about!
Hello everyone!
I am creating an Instagram account in order to promote entomophagy in general on Instagram, as there seem to be no accounts that are simply posting content about it, without ties to specific companies. If this seems like something you'd want to support, I'd appreciate a Follow!
Good (non-reposted) content to come!
@ insects_as_food
Seems like no one really cares about bugs, but theyโre animals too.
Anyway, there are tons of pros to eating bugs for the environment and getting high quality nutrients. Should vegans be against it?
Posting on my phone, so please excuse any typos.
I see it's pretty common on this thread to talk about veganism and how that helps the planet. Which in many ways it does. However, something that doesn't seem to be brought up much is Locality. For those who praise veganism not for moral implications but rather environmental efforts what about local sources? If someone were to buy meet from a local butcher or fish from a local fishermen would it be ok in your eyes? Or what if they raise/hunt their own animals?
I don't know the exact data on this, but it seems like more vegan foods are tropical in origin. A part of the world most people, especially in the US don't live in. So in this circumstance wouldn't it be more beneficial to the planet to eat local meat sources than to ship vegan alternatives from across the world?
Also what of Entomophagy? Many cultures around the world substitute other animal proteins with insects and a plant based diet which would be the most ecological in the long run. Insects don't need a lot of space, they duplicate fast and need less food and water to make the same amount of protein as traditional livestock.
We also have to take into account the effort and cost of veganism. While veganism is highly available today because modern technology it isn't accessible to everyone. If all nutrients are provided by the plants you eat(which is hard if you only eat local plant sources) then you still need to substitute for vitamin b12.
Veganism is great, but I wouldn't call it anti consumerist. Anti-consumerist, in my opinion is getting your food from local sources, meat, plant, or otherwise. It is more realistic to try and encourage local food purchases from farmers, or butchers or for people to grow their own food.
This is not an attack on veganism. I just wanted to bring up something that seems to not be talked about much. As an anti-consumerist community we should address consumerism in all its forms and not just choose the lesser evil. However, I could be wrong. I want to know your thoughts.
I know entomophagy is somewhat common in parts of Mexico, but it's easy to find info because it's still practiced there (speaking of which, are all of the insects eaten there today also species that were eaten in pre-Columbian times or are any of them novel developments?). What about the rest of North America? Did entomophagy used to be common in areas where it is now unknown?
My fiancรฉe and I recently picked up a 13-acre farm that's been fallow for about ~40 years in SW Pennsylvania. We both work full-time. Winter is closing in too fast to get much planting/land clearing done, and we're not going to look into building a chicken coop/etc until spring. But - we do have a pretty large pony barn in nice shape, and we're looking for some fall/winter projects to keep us busy.
So - we're thinking about raising bugs. Bear with me. There's a foodie scene developing in Pittsburgh, and we think there might be a market for food-grade, non-traditional critters - especially in the more ethnic markets. We're thinking along the lines of crickets, meal worms, apple snails, etc. If that's not an option, we can either eat them ourselves (don't knock it till you've tried it), sell them to pet stores or sell/use them as fishbait at one of the numerous lakes nearby. Does anyone have much experience with this? I've been combing Google - just wanted to know if anyone had any first-hand experience.
While in my "bathroom office," I ran across this interesting article published earlier this year.
In a nutshell, eating cricket powder was associated with an increase in the beneficial probiotic bacteria Bifidobacterium and also a decrease of proinflammatory TNF. "Eating crickets may improve gut health and decrease systemic inflammation." Crickets are also sustainable, proteinaceous, and nutritious! Yum?
Some google investigation didn't turn up much. It seems as though eating insects wasn't unheard of in the Roman world. I'd find it hard to believe that people before the modern era would overlook any protein source. So why is there such a dearth of insect-based cuisine in the west today? A few possibilities come to mind:
- Eating insects was at one point common, but later fell out of fashion and eventually became considered "gross." If this is the case I'm curious if we know when or why this started to happen.
- Eating insects was never common in the west.
- Some environmental factor I'm unaware of makes insects a less practical food source in Europe than in Asia or Africa.
- As an American, I'm just ignorant of extensive insect use in European cuisines (I know there are exceptions).
I am having trouble determining which of these, if any, is true.
https://forms.gle/rJDuEcLsyQPpVfGD9
