• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

UN urges world to eat more insects.

Status
Not open for further replies.

Lonely1

Unconfirmed Member
Eating more insects could help fight world hunger, according to a new UN report.

The report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization says that eating insects could help boost nutrition and reduce pollution.

It notes than over 2 billion people worldwide already supplement their diet with insects.

However it admits that "consumer disgust" remains a large barrier in many Western countries.

Wasps, beetles and other insects are currently "underutilised" as food for people and livestock, the report says. Insect farming is "one of the many ways to address food and feed security".

"Insects are everywhere and they reproduce quickly, and they have high growth and feed conversion rates and a low environmental footprint," according to the report.

The authors point out that insects are nutritious, with high protein, fat and mineral content.

They are "particularly important as a food supplement for undernourished children".

Full Article.

2gf4XVK.jpg
 
I really would eat them if I didn't hate them so utterly much. It seems like a good idea.
 
I would try them if they didn't look freaking disgusting. I've tried... packed crickets? I think they were crickets, just way smaller. Nothing remarkable, I wasn't really grossed out but I don't think I'll have them again.
 
I've never even considered using them as feed for livestock. I wonder if that could be a profitable business venture in the future.
 
I have no problem using them as livestock feed, especially for fish and chickens. It'll definitely be healthier than corn.
 
So we can export all of our insects to starving nations? You are welcome to take all of the spiders and yellow jackets from my house for free.
 
I'm sure they are tastier and way more healthy than French Fries.

She wouldn't agree with you on the tasty

Hong-Kong-Delicious-Inn-Bug-Restaurant-11.jpg


Meal Worms – 0/6

Meal worms sauteed with salt, chillies and green onions $40HKD – about $5CAD
Ew… just looking at the picture makes me shudder… thinking back… *shudder*
Imported dead from China.
I take that back. Never mind, deep frying everything does not make it better.
I did not enjoy these and they didn’t taste like fries. It had a weird after taste and odd crunch.
See video here – eating meal worms.
 
After the browsing the UN report, there seems to be environmental benefits.

Consuming insects has a number of advantages:
• They have high feed-conversion efficiency (an animal’s capacity to convert feed
mass into increased body mass, represented as kg of feed per kg of weight gain).
• They can be reared on organic side streams, reducing environmental contamination,
while adding value to waste.
• They emit relatively few GHGs and relatively little ammonia.
• They require significantly less water than cattle rearing.
• They have few animal welfare issues, although the extent to which insects experience
pain is largely unknown.
• They pose a low risk of transmitting zoonotic infections.

http://www.fao.org/docrep/018/i3253e/i3253e05.pdf.

From the section titled "Environmental opportunities for insect rearing for food and feed"

I see no problem with getting protein from insects, especially if it is better for the environment.
 
You haven't been to Thailand if you haven't tried some.

I guess more people'd be okay with the 'meat' when it isn't recognizable as insect anymore. Same with, say, most other animals.

Then again I think we're among the last generations to eat meat as much as we do.
 
Like eating lobster and crab? YOU'VE ALREADY BEEN EATING INSECTS

But yeah I expect this to become more common in the future. It sounds helluva lot easier to farm insects than it would be to farm cows.
 
They would have to be heavily processed (ie ground up and mixed with other things) and spiced for me to even consider it. If they still look like insects, I'm not going to be OK with eating them.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom