| Make Your Food Footprint Buzz Off: Eat Bugs |
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| Written by Heather McKee | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Tuesday, 03 June 2008 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Two of us Envirovores were at a Maryland wedding last week, and naturally, there was a softshell crab appetizer - a small square of bread topped with a sauteed half of a crab. Shell and everything. Some of us savored the oily crunchiness, others exclaimed it was “like eating a big cricket.” But David Gracer, a Rhode Island college professor recently interviewed by Discover magazine, says if we want to reduce our food footprint, we should get used to eating exoskeletons. Of course, the exoskeletons we’re supposed to be eating aren’t crab shells – they’re bugs. Gracer says we should be eating insects, because they can provide us with protein, while using significantly less water in their growth and creating less pollution than cows, pigs or chickens. Gracer has made it his personal mission, through his company Sunrise Land Shrimp, to spread the gastronomic perfection of insects to developed counties. One hundred grams of water bugs or grasshoppers contain 20 grams of protein, nearly as much as the 27 grams of protein found in 100 grams of beef. Drying insects can increase their protein content to nearly 60% - a potential goldmine for REI as a trendy new power snack. And it may be up to companies like REI to popularize the things. Even though over 1,400 different species of insects are eaten around the world, and Americans unknowingly eat quite a few of them in processed foods, Gracer still has quite a challenge in front of him. As USDA researcher William White states frankly, “I don’t believe that we’ve reached the level of scarcity in our food supply, at least in Western societies, where people would be willing to incorporate insects at any level in their diet.” Maybe one day, when food prices have quadrupled instead of just doubled, we’ll have more incentive to skip the buffet line at SouperSalad and head out to the nearest farm field to glean a meal of crop pests.
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It's true what our moms said...we are what we eat. In fact, it's truer than they thought. What I eat doesn't just affect me anymore, it affects all of us.
Unfortunately, the story of food can sometimes be complicated. But envirovores help each other out...which is why this blog will be bringing you news, tips, and information about food and the environment every step of the way.
