Eating Insects?
In a world whose burgeoning population and ravenous appetite for meat only continues to grow, sustainability is finding itself stretched to new limits. The environmental, food safety, and ethical issues of raising cows, pigs, and fowl on such an extensive scale are myriad. Take the example of beef and consider that pound-for-pound:
It takes ~200 times the amount of water to produce than potatoesIi takes about 5 pounds of grain for every pound of beef a cow produces
Feeding livestock consumes about 40% of the world's grain *
in overview....
Given this, what other options might there be for animal protein? Perhaps one of the most common ones there is? That's right - insects! Here are some very impressive nutritional statistics and recipes from National Geographic. In fact Time magazine has a a data-rich article on topic, while David Gracer, from Small Stock, also males a nice case for bug brunching here on the Colbert Report a little while back. The recent Insects Are Food website is also a good resource.
However, all that said, if you want a really nice and compact reference, I can suggest nothing better than than this new zine in the collective simply called "Entomophagy" by Moinca Ramirez. If gives a nice overview on these issues in a very handy format. Click on the image here to read it in comic form:
By the way, if you are interested in specific insects to dine on, consider cicadas! Here is a zine about them in particular (recipe included) as well as an article.
And some more of this topic from our sister site, the Insect World as well as your editor here at Small Science partaking of some giant water bug found in the local grocery store...