I'll keep waiting for cultured meat, thank you very much. Now excuse me as I attempt to use needles to purge the sight of those 'meals' from my retina.
Farm 432
141–150 of 151 posts
Re: Farm 432
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is the point of eating insects, though? Why not just eat lentils?
And have my teeth rot from all the phytic acid?
Umm what?
You're supposed to cook lentils. Also, turns out lentils don't even contain that much phytic acid from the start.
Finally, your teeth rot? How? I suppose if you didn't cook the lentils, you might want to chew and ruminate them in your mouth for a few hours (tip: no, you don't), which might be long enough for the acid to have some effect on your teeth. But if you consume them like normal, and apply some basic dental hygiene, you're going to have to explain to me how this could really affect your teeth worse than most other foods (which are usually also slightly acidic).
Re: Farm 432
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
They're cost efficient, not "resource efficient".
how is there a difference? less cost = less capital = less resources.
They're only correlated up to a point. If you optimize for cost, you'll end up at a different maximum than if you optimize for resource usage.
Re: Farm 432
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
These guys are working on cricket bars as a protein source: https://www.exoprotein.com/ (No affiliation, they were a few desks over at a coworking space)
I used to go out and catch some crickets just for snacks when I was little back in my hometown. I don't think they're that bad. A little much can make you dizzy though (dunno why).
Where did you grow up?
Re: Farm 432
#145I talked to my kids about eating insects the other day with the expected results in the form of 'ew' and such. We've spent so much time in modern society associating insects with disease it's hard to dissassociate. For some reason shrimp which are essentially bugs are no problem because (I think) they come from the ocean, so there's an obvious mental line that can dissassociate them from other bugs. This is a great i…
For the record, a soldier fly is about as closely related to a shrimp as you are to a Cod. Same phylum, different class.
Hmm. multiple legs, exoskeleton, antenna. To the uninitiated person they share a lot more in common than I do to a Cod. We're not talking science here but perception.
Re: Farm 432
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
But not as different as, say, lobsters and cows. Lobsters and Cockroaches are both nocturnal, omnivorous, scavenging, arthropods.
This is an absurd comparison in the context of food. When it comes to eating animals, we (Westerners) are used to eating muscle tissue. Cows and lobsters have large, edible muscles that can be separated from the rest of the body for consumption, cockroaches do not.
Not even if scaled up to the size of a lobster?
Re: Farm 432
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have gone flexitarian for this reason. As someone concerned with global warming, I found it troubling to eat meet regularly. Couple that with industrial agriculture and that did it for me. If its at someones place I won't make a big deal, but I basically won't buy meat unless its particularly hard to get around. Even then its pretty much only fish and chicken...
I've always found this fish-is-holier-than-red-meat take a bit confusing. Overfishing is a huge problem worldwide. Eating responsibly farmed beef, while expensive, seems less impactful than eating many (most?) types of commonly consumed fish.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/01/07/w...
Responsibly farmed usually refers to ethical treatment and has nothing to do with CO2. That being said, I am totally in agreement that eating fish has pretty substantial problems. The thing is that fish more wholistically face problems resulting from global warming including coral bleaching and ocean acidification to name a few. Overfishing and harvesting of marine life in nonsustainable ways is just that, but if you are selective about the species and the source it makes a big difference.
Re: Farm 432
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've gone to a couple vegetarian restaurants where they've made some pretty convincing "beef", "chicken", "duck", and "pork" out of tofu, so why not insects?
But how were the insects raised, farmed and killed? Was it insectane?
I think the idea is that insects are so far down on the animal scale. For example, they don't really have pain [0]. At some point we have to relate animals to robotics. And insects are so low on the scale of intelligence it might as well be below our currently technology (Watson merely being massive specialized application of our current technology).
Where as animals like cows have emotions, can feel pain, have memory, personalities, relationships, etc. They are better than our current AI software in many ways.
[0] http://relaximanentomologist.tumblr.com/post/51301520453/do-...
Re: Farm 432
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have gone flexitarian for this reason. As someone concerned with global warming, I found it troubling to eat meet regularly. Couple that with industrial agriculture and that did it for me. If its at someones place I won't make a big deal, but I basically won't buy meat unless its particularly hard to get around. Even then its pretty much only fish and chicken...
I've always found this fish-is-holier-than-red-meat take a bit confusing. Overfishing is a huge problem worldwide. Eating responsibly farmed beef, while expensive, seems less impactful than eating many (most?) types of commonly consumed fish.
Indeed there are many different kinds of impacts to consider. For instance if you look at CO2 emission per kilo of food, beef emits apparently more than two times more than farmed salmon and more than four times more than canned tuna (source: http://static.ewg.org/reports/2011/meateaters/pdf/methodolog...).
Re: Farm 432
#150I could see myself buying and using the device, but not eating the worms myself... The worms would feed pets and aquaponics fishes. Cats an dogs have little in a way of yuck factor. Fishes even less.
Fish -> nitrogen -> plants -> compost -> worms -> chicken/fish