Posted on 02/25/2008 3:19:02 PM PST by april15Bendovr
U.N. Conference Promotes Insect-Eating for Everyone From Famine Victims to Astronauts Sunday , February 24, 2008
CHIANG MAI, Thailand —
Crickets, caterpillars and grubs are high in protein and minerals and could be an important food source during droughts and other emergencies, according to scientists.
•Photos: Mmm! Bugs for Dinner
"I definitely think they can assist," said German biologist V.B. Meyer-Rochow, who regularly eats insects and wore a T-shirt with a Harlequin longhorn beetle to a U.N.-sponsored conference this month on promoting bugs as a food source.
Three dozen scientists from 15 countries gathered in this northern Thailand city, home to several dozen restaurants serving insects and other bugs. Some of their proposals were more down to earth than others.
A Japanese scientist proposed bug farms on spacecraft to feed astronauts, noting that it would be more practical than raising cows or pigs. Australian, Dutch and American researchers said more restaurants are serving the critters in their countries.
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimates 1,400 species of insects and worms are eaten in almost 90 countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia. Researchers at the conference detailed how crickets and silk worms are eaten in Thailand, grubs and grasshoppers in Africa and ants in South America.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Aside from the fact that the UN is pushing it, the ick factor is the only reason more people don’t eat bugs.
I’m sure the UN Commissars like this idea for the masses. It leaves more of the best cuts of steak for themselves.
Is it on the menu in their cafeteria?
The money sucking UN is short on cash for the poor of the world..........so the UN solution is to sponsor an expensive junket to Thailand, in order to tell the poor to eat bugs.........I guess that's better than telling the poor to eat s***................(which is what the UN really does every day by its actions....)
They didn’t mention snails in France. (not insects, but in the ‘bug’ category).
I was thinking that finally the U.N. has proved its good for something even if its eating bugs.
Yeah, the idea would be astoundingly practical if it wasn’t for the ick factor, because bugs are portable, high in protein and stuff, they reproduce quickly, etc. There’d even be good entertainment value in watching PETA crusade for insect rights...
Thinking of the enormous clouds of locusts that arise in Africa sometimes.
The locusts eat crops and cause starvation. I’m thinking that nets launched by small rockets over the locusts as they land would capture millions of them and be a replacement for the crops they destroy.
LOL
My cat used to bring in locusts and eat them in front of us. It was the most disgusting thing, hearing him crunch away on it.
Of course I’m sure us people would have the common etiquette to fry em up first.
I once took my little boy to the grocery and grossed him out showing him pigs feet, and a lady watching us came over and told him how good they were. It’s all what you are used to.
If you stop and think about it, the ick factor applies really to any non-plant foods. Cow muscles, chicken embryos stirred into a slimey goo, oysters, fish eggs from the sturgeon and on and on. But once you get used to it you ignore the ick factor.
Nothing wrong with this insect idea, nutritionally it is on the money. But I’d rather somebody else has to get used to it.
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