Comment on shrimp is bugs
evranch@lemmy.ca 7 months agoValid point. When I grew up fishing for shrimp as a kid I was quite terrified of them until I was taught how to eat them.
I can assume they taste bad, because otherwise we would all be eating them already. Humans eat just about everything on the planet if it’s tasty, even if it’s really weird.
Personally I don’t see the need for it when we have plenty of plant sources of protein like pulses, and we can raise ruminants on otherwise useless land (like my hilly, rocky farm).
It seems to me just an excuse to continue overpopulating the planet. Sure, we could develop new protein sources to feed 10 billion - but if we had kept our population to the 4 billion it was in the 1970s we could all be eating thick beef steaks and salmon without worrying about straining the carrying capacity of the planet.
Maybe we should focus on getting our population down to a sustainable level before we worry about new and exotic foods.
Cethin@lemmy.zip 7 months ago
I think the issue with them is twofold. Presentation is hard to make look alright, and I think we do have a built in aversion to them, because evolutionarily bugs mean food that’s gone bad. That said, plenty of cultures do eat bugs. It’s mostly a European thing that bugs shouldn’t be eaten. Places in both Africa and Asia do eat them, and I imagine other places as well. I have heard they can be tasty. Lobster was considered bad for a long time, but it’s delicious when prepared properly (and butter helps).
I think another good source of animal protein are oysters. They’re pretty easy to farm and they don’t have a nervous system so don’t feel pain. That said, most people think it’s disgusting to eat raw oysters (which are even alive when eaten), but they’re also delicious. It’s just a culture thing. Plenty of foods that seem disgusting aren’t.
I don’t disagree eating plant sources, but they have different nutritional profiles. Animals have nutrients that we need that you won’t get from almost any plant. We need diverse sources of food. I have no issue with small scale animal farming, but large scale is wasteful as hell. We grow so much corn to feed cows and other animals that could better be used for other things.
I disagree with this though:
What is “overpopulate” mean? If everyone is fed and taken care of, isn’t that by definition not overpopulated? Who decides what the correct amount of people is? If you’re religious then certainly more people alive means whatever god(s) decided that, and if you aren’t then you must know it’s arbitrary. More people isn’t bad, as long as it’s sustainable and doesn’t cause damage to the planet. That said, we are causing damage to the planet and we aren’t going to stop reproducing just because someone said so. We should reduce the impact people have instead, because that’s the only real choice we have. A mandate stopping reproduction is not a real choice.
evranch@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
I draw the line at “overpopulated” when our resource consumption is unsustainable to the point where we are becoming the sole consumer of the planet.
It’s commonly stated that we would need 2 planets the same size to sustain our current population in a way that doesn’t result in eventual collapse.
We’ve cleared vast land areas and scoured the sea of fish in our quest for calories. Eating bugs will not be the solution that makes us sustainable.
It’s been proven our population increases every time we increase our carrying capacity, such as through the invention of nitrogen fertilizer, mechanized agriculture etc. And there has never been a time that there were not people starving somewhere.
If we carry on this path we will be eating bugs and people will still be starving while ecosystems continue to collapse. It sounds like there is no net gain, IMO.
Cethin@lemmy.zip 7 months ago
It’s almost all about resource allocation. We can easily support a much larger population, but we have so much waste.
Yeah, I don’t get this. The bad thing in this sentence seems to be emphasizing the eating of bugs. I could write the same sentence and say corn instead. I still haven’t seen a reason of why eating bugs is a bad thing, besides you just thinking it’s gross. I eat raw oysters. Gross is relative, not intrinsic.
The carrying capacity of Earth is based on how efficiently we use resources. We could feed everyone on earth today if we didn’t have waste, and we aren’t even using all the arable land that’s available, let alone using it efficiently. Farming bugs would easily multiply our efficiency.
I can only see that as a good thing. More people means more ideas. More ideas mean more innovations and things that could move us forward. I see Humans, assuming we survive the next century or so, as a multi-planet species. If we can get to the point that life as we know it isn’t stuck to one rock I see that as a good thing to seek. If we have more innovations, that can only speed up that process and increase the chance we make it.