Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Edible insects are a novelty today, but they'll be mainstream tomorrow

foodnavigator-usa.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 113 posts

Re: Edible insects are a novelty today, but they'll be mainstream tomorrow

#91

Post by technomancy »

Dewie wrote: post #83

Insects might be more economical, or at least eventually when their production is more mainstream. But food is relatively cheap today anyway; what is expensive is rent/or mortgage. Food for a single, working person doesn't really make such a dent in the budget that they are forced to thin "damn, there has to be some alternative to this", compared to what they spend on their rent. So I don't think it's that much incen…

If this were the case, why does Coke contain cheap corn syrup instead of good-tasting cane sugar?

Even if there's not enough of a difference for an individual to choose one over the other it doesn't mean companies with huge economies of scale won't choose differently.

Re: Edible insects are a novelty today, but they'll be mainstream tomorrow

#92

Post by coldtea »

aaron695 wrote: post #88
tehchromic wrote: post #33

The article capitalizes on a popular foreboding about resource limits with a thrilling "ick" factor, but it's premise is unsubstantial. I once met an ancient Jewish gentleman who, due to poverty, had been forced to eat lobsters as a youth. In that day they were considered on par with rats as a food source (not to mention they were forbidden by his religious culture) and he had never recovered from the experience, and…

> I can relate: if it became popular with the youth of tomorrow to broil rats and serve them at market price, I'd probably never get on board. Then you will become like most old people. New things like interracial marriage, gay marriage, trying to not use a lot of resources(baby boomers not pre war), computers etc frighten old people. And you also will get older and die, like they will before you. But while you are d…

>But while you are dying off the youth will embrace the new and the better.

Yeah, ain't that a shame? Those old belle-epoque people getting older, while the younger generations embraced Word War I and then the Nazi party.

Or those people that got older after the sixties, were the younger generations embraced Raeganism...

Sarcasm aside, new is not necessarily better. It's not even a strong correlation. There is new stuff that can be better than old, and old stuff that can be better than new in equal measure.

Only technology monotonically progresses to better and more advanced things. Morals and customs (and aesthetics) can and do change either way.

Re: Edible insects are a novelty today, but they'll be mainstream tomorrow

#94

Post by pikachu_is_cool »

robhack wrote: post #60

Am I the only one bothered by the sheer amount of killing this means? You might have to feed poultry 2lb to get 1lb of food, but you kill only one living creature. With insects, how many living creatures are you going to kill to get 1lb ? (even though that would only require 1lb of feeding). Yes I know, they are not conscious at the same level, and are killed in a way so that they don't suffer, but still.

I kill insects in my house all the time so I'm not bothered by it.

Re: Edible insects are a novelty today, but they'll be mainstream tomorrow

#95

Post by philwelch »

tehchromic wrote: post #33

The article capitalizes on a popular foreboding about resource limits with a thrilling "ick" factor, but it's premise is unsubstantial. I once met an ancient Jewish gentleman who, due to poverty, had been forced to eat lobsters as a youth. In that day they were considered on par with rats as a food source (not to mention they were forbidden by his religious culture) and he had never recovered from the experience, and…

They used to have laws limiting how many times a week you could feed lobster to prisoners because it was considered inhumane.

Re: Edible insects are a novelty today, but they'll be mainstream tomorrow

#96

Post by philwelch »

Brakenshire wrote: post #16
Nursie wrote: post #10

People have been publishing this article every few months for as long as I can remember. They may well be an efficient form of protein but... squick. Basically.

It's just unfamiliarity - you would have the same reaction to a prawn if you hadn't grown up with it. And many outsiders would have a similar reaction to squid cooked in its ink (Spain), half-rotted herring (Scandinavia), or even just strongly flavoured blue cheese (everywhere). For that matter, lots of people feel icky about fresh tomatoes. It's not likely to become something which is mainstream overnight, but there…

I do have the same reaction to prawns and I did grow up with them.

Re: Edible insects are a novelty today, but they'll be mainstream tomorrow

#97

Post by Dylan16807 »

coldtea wrote: post #92
aaron695 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can relate: if it became popular with the youth of tomorrow to broil rats and serve them at market price, I'd probably never get on board. Then you will become like most old people. New things like interracial marriage, gay marriage, trying to not use a lot of resources(baby boomers not pre war), computers etc frighten old people. And you also will get older and die, like they will before you. But while you are d…

> But while you are dying off the youth will embrace the new and the better. Yeah, ain't that a shame? Those old belle-epoque people getting older, while the younger generations embraced Word War I and then the Nazi party. Or those people that got older after the sixties, were the younger generations embraced Raeganism... Sarcasm aside, new is not necessarily better. It's not even a strong correlation. There is new s…

>new is not necessarily better

Sure, sure, but getting rid of prejudices that are objectively nonsense is better. Things like which foods are delicacies and which are icky that are not at all based on nutrition, sanitation, etc.

Re: Edible insects are a novelty today, but they'll be mainstream tomorrow

#98

Post by 7952 »

cgh wrote: post #36
tehchromic wrote: post #33

The article capitalizes on a popular foreboding about resource limits with a thrilling "ick" factor, but it's premise is unsubstantial. I once met an ancient Jewish gentleman who, due to poverty, had been forced to eat lobsters as a youth. In that day they were considered on par with rats as a food source (not to mention they were forbidden by his religious culture) and he had never recovered from the experience, and…

The article is about cricket flour, not eating whole crickets. Cricket flour products are already on sale in hundreds of stores. The key is to mass produce the flour as right now it's quite expensive. That's what's specifically addressed in the article, not the issue of convincing people to eat it in the first place.

I understand that Cricket Powder contains protein and other nutrients. But is it more efficient than just using plants as a source of those things? Surely the choice is not steak vs crickets but crickets vs soya?

Re: Edible insects are a novelty today, but they'll be mainstream tomorrow

#99

Post by 7952 »

Brakenshire wrote: post #16
Nursie wrote: post #10

People have been publishing this article every few months for as long as I can remember. They may well be an efficient form of protein but... squick. Basically.

It's just unfamiliarity - you would have the same reaction to a prawn if you hadn't grown up with it. And many outsiders would have a similar reaction to squid cooked in its ink (Spain), half-rotted herring (Scandinavia), or even just strongly flavoured blue cheese (everywhere). For that matter, lots of people feel icky about fresh tomatoes. It's not likely to become something which is mainstream overnight, but there…

People feel icky about fresh tomatoes? Really?

Re: Edible insects are a novelty today, but they'll be mainstream tomorrow

#100

Post by smorrow »

7952 wrote: post #99
Brakenshire wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just unfamiliarity - you would have the same reaction to a prawn if you hadn't grown up with it. And many outsiders would have a similar reaction to squid cooked in its ink (Spain), half-rotted herring (Scandinavia), or even just strongly flavoured blue cheese (everywhere). For that matter, lots of people feel icky about fresh tomatoes. It's not likely to become something which is mainstream overnight, but there…

People feel icky about fresh tomatoes? Really?

Tomatoes are so bitter I'd assume they were poisonous if I didn't know about other people eating them.

I can't think of anything else that's even close to tomatoes. I don't touch beer or coffee with a ten-foot pole either, but tomatoes are worse even than that.

There's a chemical(s) in raw tomatoes that most people just aren't able to taste. Cooking alters it in some way; I like tomato soup and stuff, and was very surprised to learn, at 25, that most people find tomatoes and tomato soup taste similar, when they couldn't be more different to me.

Liking tomatoes is basically like being colour blind, except that they're a majority, which makes the non-colour blind people the weird ones.

Post reply on HN