'Disgust factor' must be overcome if planet-friendly insect food to become mainstream

The "disgust factor" must be overcome if insect-based foods are to become mainstream, according to a study.

Insects can be high in protein and making them more acceptable could help cut the high greenhouse gas emissions that come from farming cattle.

There are also potential benefits for cutting obesity and researchers say the idea of farming insects is gaining more attention.

Hundreds of millions of people in Asia, Africa and Latin America are estimated to already eat insects to some degree.

There are hopes Western attitudes could shift over time, perhaps in a similar way that food such as sushi has become mainstream.

"Insects are a potentially rich source of protein and micro-nutrients and could help provide a solution to the double burden of obesity and undernutrition," said study lead Dr Lauren McGale, from Edge Hill University in Lancashire.

"Some insect proteins, such as ground crickets or freeze-dried mealworms, are cheaper and easier to farm, often lower in fat and have a lower environmental impact than traditional livestock."

However, most people are still very reluctant due to preconceptions over taste and appearance.

But the study also found they were significantly more likely to give insects a go if they are ground into a powder.

"This has been done successfully with rice products fortified with cricket or locust flours in other parts of the world," said co-author Dr Maxine Sharps from De Montfort University.

Only 13% of the 603 people questioned in the UK study said they would be willing to regularly eat insect food.

Some 47% said they wouldn't eat it regularly, and 40% were unsure.

More than 82% of people expected insect food to be crunchy, 64.6% salty, and 62.4% bitter.

Only 24% said they expected to like the flavour, with just 14.1% believing insect food would look appetising.

Younger people also appeared more squeamish - and each year younger was associated with a 2% increase in saying "no" to the idea.

"The disgust factor is one of most important challenges to be overcome," said Dr Sharps.

"After all, there may be eventually no choice with climate change and projected global population growth."

The study's findings are being presented at this week's European Congress on Obesity (ECO) in Venice.

Sky News
Archive [May 14 2024]

 

[Grub]

I would farm Guinea pigs in a closet for meat before I eat the bug slop.

Actually, on that note, around 2013-2014, there was a bunch of news articles pushing Guinea pigs as the 'new sustainable meat alternative' with some actually fairly compelling arguments. The space requirements are minimal, the meat's high in protein and low in cholesterol and cost wise, it's one of the cheapest animals you can raise for meat. It was being pushed by the same kinds of outlets and people that push the bugs now.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/03/12/174105739/from-pets-to-plates-why-more-people-are-eating-guinea-pigs

But come 2015-2016, it became all bugs and lab grown meat and farming Guinea pigs at home just stopped being a thing.

 

[TowinKarz]

Never tell a free man he "MUST" do something.

Especially when it comes to his food.

In the late 1980s, you'd see articles all over Reader's Digest and Prevention and all these other old person magazines about ostrich meat

Also, remember the 5 minutes in the 00's where pomegranate juice would cure everything short of pancreatic cancer? And everyone named "Karen" bought it up?

This is not just another fad push, but, it's the pushers getting increasingly aggitated that nobody is biting (ha, see what I did there?)

They *points finger* got their plant meat, they *points again* got their soy turkey! Why can't WE have our BUGS?!?!?!?! is what they're saying with this incessant propagandizing.

 

[Prince Lotor]

It's simply not happening. The proteins in insect chitin are basically identical to the proteins that kill people with shellfish allergies as crabs and shrimp and whatnot are also chitinous, so any food they stick bugs in will have to be plastered in warnings or they'll be sued into oblivion after dozens die from unknowingly eating something they're terribly allergic to.

I have no objection to eating bugs, I'm perfectly willing to give them a try. I already eat sea bugs, clams, snails, squids, eels, any number of weird fucked-up animals, and they're all tasty. My only real concern is that most insects would have a bad meat to shell ratio; if you eat a crab there's a decent amount of tasty edible bits, but for something like a grasshopper you'd be mostly eating shell and guts, not up my alley.

Yeah, chitin is a polysaccharide indigestible by humans. When your gut detects chitin it triggers an immune response, inflammation, it treats it like an allergen.

I don't really care about eating insect protein but until you build the 'Cotton Gin' of separating that protein from chitin I'm not going to eat it.

 

[Snekposter]

That's why we like @Otterly around here. This bug thing though, I rarely even eat sea bugs, just not my thing, I can't imagine actual bugs being much better. I eat more than my bodyweight in proper meat every year and I have no intention of stopping.

What's really impressive is I get the impression from some of her posts she's a bit up there in years considering her overall posting style and some of the things she brings up. I guess us young 'uns are rubbing off on her.

 

[Android raptor]

If we breed spiders the size of cows, I can think of other uses for them, like riding them into battle like mighty steeds and using them to cocoon globalists.

I want one or 1000

Kiwi Farms, where a female scientist compares people who eat bugs to Slaaneshi Cultists.

"Scientist"

 

[Corpun]

I will do an IRL fedpost on anyone who tries to force a single insect down my throat, mark my words.

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

Once I got very drunk and ate a package of crickets. It was absolutely disgusting. Fuck these people for trying to push this.

I would farm Guinea pigs in a closet for meat before I eat the bug slop.

Actually, on that note, around 2013-2014, there was a bunch of news articles pushing Guinea pigs as the 'new sustainable meat alternative' with some actually fairly compelling arguments. The space requirements are minimal, the meat's high in protein and low in cholesterol and cost wise, it's one of the cheapest animals you can raise for meat. It was being pushed by the same kinds of outlets and people that push the bugs now.

It's a very popular meat in Peru and Ecuador, and Indians there have been raising them for food for thousands of years.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/03/12/174105739/from-pets-to-plates-why-more-people-are-eating-guinea-pigs

But come 2015-2016, it became all bugs and lab grown meat and farming Guinea pigs at home just stopped being a thing.

That's around the time methane became the go-to obsession for pop science articles on climate change. Cars and livestock produce methane emissions, and the elite want to take away our cars and meat, so they picked a new obsession. Turns out in reality, methane isn't as bad of a greenhouse gas as they think and may even cause global cooling if enough of it gets into the atmosphere by breaking down into other gases, just like it did on Earth around 3-4 billion years ago when we had several times today's methane concentration in the atmosphere. But they don't want you to know this.

 

[SCV]

Around the same time, to the northerners, they hawked bison. Bison was delicious, as good as beef but with a fat content even lower than white meat turkey, and the bison practically raise themselves. Farmers who lived in areas where the cattle froze to death (Minnesota, Nebraska, Dakotas) could raise bison with no fear of the same happening, since they're natively cold-hardy.

Did anyone actually try to fence in and farm bison?

 

[AnotherPleb]

Kiwi Farms, where a female scientist compares people who eat bugs to Slaaneshi Cultists.

I love the Farms, and Otterly has become my favorite regular here.

 

[jertzog]

It's the thirdie countries that have population problems which can't sustain livestock demands. Give the bugs and the gmo to the fucking thirdies. Why can't they leave us alone?

 

[clipartfan92]

Hundreds of millions of people in Asia, Africa and Latin America are estimated to already eat insects to some degree.

Hundreds of millions...estimated...to some degree.

 

[demicolon]

The thing with bugs is they can eat anything, need little water and space and the whole production is easily automated. What it means is you can supply a whole city with a large warehouse or two of cockroaches that are fed by robots with sewage, corpses etc. then you fine blend it and superheat to kill 99.8% of whatever Lovecraftian horrors it harbors. Producing this nutra-paste costs almost nothing, so the profit margin is astronomical if you mass-supply it as a protein food additive to local food manufacturers. Of course, people are going to get sick with weird diseases and parasites still unknown to science because nobody before was retarded enough to eat this crap, but who cares? You're a billionare, what are they gonna do, sue you for millions of dollars?

 

[Balr0g]

you all now the truth: they want us to eat the bugs so they can eat their 5 star steak without guilty conscience

 

[FunPosting101]

They aren't. Mass production of insects is inefficient and would be worse for the world than farming cattle.

This, and even if they did make the mass production of bugs efficient, the main thing that would happen is that poultry industry would buy up this new source of 'all-natural' animal feed for organic chicken, turkey, duck, and other commonly edible fowl.

People eating the bugs just isn't going to happen for all sorts of reasons.

 

[TowinKarz]

you all now the truth: they want us to eat the bugs so they can eat their 5 star steak without guilty conscience

This is the main reason.

Not some grand depopulation plan, not a desire to make us neoserfs, none of that.

The elite are very dumb. Very sheltered. And very prone to panic as well as not tolerating any form of humility.

They've bought their own propaganda that the world is on the brink, and all these pushes to make soylent green a thing are driven by that self-enforced fear.

They're afraid they'll run out of steak.

And their fragile egos can't stand the idea that the global elite would ever be denied steak on demand.... that would be a FATAL humbling.

And instead of expanding meat production? The easy way to fix what they legitimately think is looming beef extinction, is to convince us to eat bugs and mud.

I know this doesn't sound any different than an actual pogrom, but,

There's a subtle difference between "none for you" and "more for me", and anti meat is the latter.

 

[Diana Moon Glampers]

Hundreds of millions...estimated...to some degree.

I, too, eat insects to some degree. I've eaten hot dogs. I know what the rules look like for contamination in those. But I'm not going to eat them on purpose.

 

[WonderWino]

We already have a way to easily make bugs safe and edible for humans. Its called feeding them to chickens and eating the chickens

 

[Super Dilator Duel 3D]

Mine kicks in when I see a baby or think about pregnancy.

>thread about eating ze bugs
>”i hate babies! pregnancy is gross”
if we’re forced at dildo-point to consume bugs then the first ones I’m eating are your roaches

 

[Mac Monster]

Anyone who seriously suggests converting to an insect diet should be forced to slurp down one of these bastards like a giant noodle. Perhaps then they can finally see why this retarded idea is so hated.

 

[Would]

The "disgust factor" must be overcome if insect-based foods are to become mainstream, according to a study.
The "disgust factor" must be overcome if pedophilia is to become mainstream, according to a study.
The "disgust factor" must be overcome if rape is to become mainstream, according to a study.

Right...