Before eating insects, I would make another try at becoming a vegetarian.
The insect population is experiencing a serious decline, so you had better enjoy them while you can. Ed Wilson once observed "If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed 10,000 years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.” For an interesting read on the subject, see https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/11/01/where-have-all-the-insects-gone-e-o-wilson-silent-earth
If insect protein were to replace existing farm animal protein in the human diet, it would not be pollinators gathered from nature but mass-produced meal worm or black fly larvae or crickets, most likely. And the food quantity to produce every hundred pounds of insect protein would likely be orders of magnitude greater to produce an equal weight of cow; less and less for pig, then chicken. Insects are much lower on the food web.
Insectopocalypse is real and perhaps one of the most chilling and already-present signs we have fouled our nest--perhaps beyond the point of no return to avoid biosphere-level damage, including vast numbers of extinctions among insect-pollinated plant species and insect-eating animals--especially birds.
I once watched some good friends eat roasted cicadas on a pizza. And crickets: they just gotta be nutty and earthy and earnest, yo? We need to talk. \{ ; > ))
Before eating insects, I would make another try at becoming a vegetarian.
The insect population is experiencing a serious decline, so you had better enjoy them while you can. Ed Wilson once observed "If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed 10,000 years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.” For an interesting read on the subject, see https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/11/01/where-have-all-the-insects-gone-e-o-wilson-silent-earth
If insect protein were to replace existing farm animal protein in the human diet, it would not be pollinators gathered from nature but mass-produced meal worm or black fly larvae or crickets, most likely. And the food quantity to produce every hundred pounds of insect protein would likely be orders of magnitude greater to produce an equal weight of cow; less and less for pig, then chicken. Insects are much lower on the food web.
Insectopocalypse is real and perhaps one of the most chilling and already-present signs we have fouled our nest--perhaps beyond the point of no return to avoid biosphere-level damage, including vast numbers of extinctions among insect-pollinated plant species and insect-eating animals--especially birds.
After reading this your gastronomical thoughts worry me. When we go out to lunch, I’ll choose the place.
I once watched some good friends eat roasted cicadas on a pizza. And crickets: they just gotta be nutty and earthy and earnest, yo? We need to talk. \{ ; > ))