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Table-top insect breeder allows you to grow your own protein

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Ripclawe

Banned
...nooo...just nooo.

http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/table-top-insect-breeder-allows-you-to-grow-your-own-protein-1.1392194

An Austrian designer has created a table-top insect breeding kitchen appliance that can produce 2.4 kilograms of larvae protein and serve as an alternative “grow-your-own” source of protein for families. Industrial designer Katharina Unger’s Farm 432 has been getting a lot of media buzz for turning a UN recommendation -- “eat insects” -- into a household appliance which she hopes will one day become as useful and banal in kitchens as food processors and blenders.

Here’s how it works: after 432 hours, one gram of black soldier fly eggs will multiply into 2.4 kg of larvae protein. The organic, self-harvest larvae drop into a small container and are ready to eat, be it as a crunchy topping on risotto or pan-fried as a meat substitute for stir-fries or snacks. One week’s worth of harvest (500 g) produces enough larvae for about two meals.

For years, meanwhile, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization has been touting edible insects like beetles, caterpillars and wasps as alternative sources of protein to meat in light of current consumption rates around the world. A burgeoning middle class in China and an overall global population growth, for instance, are driving meat consumption to unsustainable rates.

It’s estimated that by 2050, meat production will have to increase by 50 percent to meet the world’s protein needs. But while insects are common food staples in other parts of the world like Mexico, Africa, China and southeast Asia, experts acknowledge it may be a challenge to convince squeamish Western palates to tuck into a plate of larvae. Unless, that is, it’s being served up at one of the hottest dining destinations in the world.

Danish chef René Redzepi, whose Copenhagen restaurant Noma was named the world’s best restaurant three times, likewise shares Unger’s philosophy, and is exploring insect gastronomy as part of his R & D center, the Nordic Food Lab. Brazilian celebrity chef Alex Atala of D.O.M. likewise features lemongrass-flavored Amazonian ants on his menu.

Not only do insects serve as rich sources of protein, they’re also low in calories. For example, 100g of insects is 72 percent protein and clock in at 96 calories and 16 per cent fat. The same weight in beef is 52 percent protein, and clocks in at 285 calories and 48 per cent fat.

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Ermc_G6

Member
It makes so much sense.

It really does... I get it... but I just don't want to eat insects. I just don't.

I think I would rather just become a vegetarian.
 
I had a dried cricket for the first time a few weeks ago. tasted like a mix between shrimp and a sunflower seed. A shame the disgust makes insects so unappetizing when they seem to be a decent source of food.
 
anything can look gourmet when you garnish it with an herb

take a shit on a plate and garnish it with with some cilantro with a glass of red wine on the side
 

magichans

Banned
I've been reading articles about this push for "insect food" by the U. N. and these gym wierdos.

But this stuff just isn't natural. Humans have evolved to generally have a disgust of eating insects for good reasons.
 
I've been reading articles about this push for "insect food" by the U. N. and these gym wierdos.

But this stuff just isn't natural. Humans have evolved to generally have a disgust of eating insects for good reasons.

It's not natural? Are you for fucking real?
 

sangreal

Member
I've been reading articles about this push for "insect food" by the U. N. and these gym wierdos.

But this stuff just isn't natural. Humans have evolved to generally have a disgust of eating insects for good reasons.

Evolved or taught? You ever watch Bizarre Foods or even No Reservations?

People all around the world eat insects, and they do it because they like it not because the UN told them to
 
I've been reading articles about this push for "insect food" by the U. N. and these gym wierdos.

But this stuff just isn't natural. Humans have evolved to generally have a disgust of eating insects for good reasons.

What are those reasons and how do they apply to a closed system like this?

Evolved or taught? You ever watch Bizarre Foods or even No Reservations?

This too. Eating meat fed a chronic dose of antibiotics, etc, seems more worrisome to me.
 

Derwind

Member
I really don't understand why I love shrimp but can't eat insects

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Nothing but a sea bug

I know.

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This bastard is grotesque but fuck is it delicious.

I've been reading articles about this push for "insect food" by the U. N. and these gym wierdos.

But this stuff just isn't natural. Humans have evolved to generally have a disgust of eating insects for good reasons.

Eating_beetle_larvae.gif


Delicious. Hahahaha!!!!
 

kswiston

Member
I've been reading articles about this push for "insect food" by the U. N. and these gym wierdos.

But this stuff just isn't natural. Humans have evolved to generally have a disgust of eating insects for good reasons.

Every extant hunter gatherer tribe on earth eats insects.
 
I would eat cow shit if it was found to be beneficial to my health or assisted in my survival of the eventual apocalypse. Will buy two
 
I've been reading articles about this push for "insect food" by the U. N. and these gym wierdos.

But this stuff just isn't natural. Humans have evolved to generally have a disgust of eating insects for good reasons.

Naturalistic fallacy plus a misunderstanding of evolution. It's clearly a social aversion, they eat insects in many parts of the world. I've got no problem eating them.
 

akira28

Member
I would be down to eat insects if it was somehow like eating shrimp, like if it was a big enough insect and I'm not just crunching down on bug exoskeletons or worms.

But I'm allergic to shellfish and apparently there is reason to believe eating bugs might give some of the same reactions.
 

magichans

Banned
Naturalistic fallacy plus a misunderstanding of evolution. It's clearly a social aversion, they eat insects in many parts of the world. I've got no problem eating them.
Humans living in less than ideal conditions are known to do many things to try to get by in the world.

But be my guest, have fun with the diseases you can potentially get by eating insects, for the sake of following some faux "hunter-gatherer" diet for the gym.
 

Wallach

Member
Humans living in less than ideal conditions are known to do many things to try to get by in the world.

But be my guest, have fun with the diseases you can potentially get by eating insects, for the sake of following some faux "hunter-gatherer" diet for the gym.

I'm pretty sure there are quite a few diseases you can wind up with eating any number fauna or flora. That's not a problem unique to insects.
 

teiresias

Member
I've been reading articles about this push for "insect food" by the U. N. and these gym wierdos.

But this stuff just isn't natural. Humans have evolved to generally have a disgust of eating insects for good reasons.

I have little interest in eating insects - actually larva seem like the most boring thing in the world, I think I'd rather go for something more interesting, besides I eat eel and squid without a second thought - but this above post is just so damn ridiculous.

EDIT: I take it back, your next post is even more ridiculous.
 

sangreal

Member
Humans living in less than ideal conditions are known to do many things to try to get by in the world.

But be my guest, have fun with the diseases you can potentially get by eating insects, for the sake of following some faux "hunter-gatherer" diet for the gym.

I'm gonna have to ask for a citation that eating insects exposes you to more disease than eating any other meat. Beef and Chicken are huge vectors for disease (not to mention pork and fish)
 
I didn't become the product of millions of years of evolution and thousands of years of civilization and critical thinking just to sit down and eat a bowl of bugs. PASS.
 
I've been reading articles about this push for "insect food" by the U. N. and these gym wierdos.

But this stuff just isn't natural. Humans have evolved to generally have a disgust of eating insects for good reasons.

Humans have been eating insects for as long as we've been around.
 

kswiston

Member
I have little interest in eating insects - actually larva seem like the most boring thing in the world, I think I'd rather go for something more interesting, besides I eat eel and squid without a second thought - but this above post is just so damn ridiculous.

Eel are just fish.

Washed and cooked insects are as safe to eat as anything else though. The disgusted poster above has probably eaten all manners of weird things in his food including beaver musk (listed as natural flavoring in the US) and Lac bug resin. A few grubs aren't going to hurt anyone.
 

inky

Member
It makes so much sense.

It really does... I get it... but I just don't want to eat insects. I just don't.

I think I would rather just become a vegetarian.

Would you consider them if they were mashed and processed to look like meat, say, like a burger?

I really do think about this a lot, lol. I remember watching Demolition Man and thinking insect burgers in the future made much more sense.

The still ongoing demonization of animal fat is still mind boggling.

It's about the ecological damage maintaining farm animals bring and the apparently unsustainable consumption rate of meat, not about "demonization of animal fat". That's the editorializing, not really the UN's concern.
 
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