Thursday, October 27, 2016

And the Crowd Asks, "Is Bug Beef in My Future?"

Well, darlin', it might be.  The research directs toward the precise nutritional value in bugs relative to beef and you may not like the result or perhaps you will depending on how much you fancy insects.  (Science Daily:  The buzz about edible bugs: Can they replace beef?)

Here are their results for iron alone.


Well, well.  Crickets take the win and easily.


The researchers analyzed grasshoppers, crickets, mealworms and buffalo worms for their mineral contents and estimated how much of each nutrient would likely get absorbed if eaten, using a lab model of human digestion.  The insects had varying levels of iron, calcium, copper, magnesium, manganese and zinc.  Crickets, for example, had higher levels of iron than the other insects did. And minerals including calcium, copper and zinc from grasshoppers, crickets and mealworms are more readily available for absorption than the same minerals from beef.  The results therefore support the idea that eating bugs could potentially help meet the nutritional needs of the world's growing population, the researchers say.

- Science Daily

There you have it and the scientists are giving it a roger for good to eat.


Our first question is just how does that get good to eat.  Here at the Rockhouse, we're assuming this isn't like lobster for which you crack open the claws to get the good stuff inside.  For insects we're assuming we eat the entire corpus delectable.  Maybe the way we do is grind them up so we get some kind of dry mush.  Maybe that can be used for cricket patties, baked into cricket bread, or some such.

I don't know about you but my mouth is so much watering just now for those cricket patties in a hamburger bun with all the fixin's, huh?  How's that for a down home Texas extravaganza of a food sensation:  Cricket Burgers.


The Cave Lion was screwed by the fact they probably taste good plus we thought the fur would look better on us than on them but what taste do you think a cricket can possibly bring.  'Think mini-lobster' is not quite working for me.  (Ithaka:  The Cave Lion Was a Magnificent Creature and, Yep, We Ate Them)


It's your future, kiddo.  Eat hearty (larfs).

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

They already are in the diet of so many part of the world.
I remember the Filipino hangar workers running about catching the rice bugs during a rain which sent the bugs into the open. But this is the same culture that brought us Balut

Unknown said...

A food recommendation from Filipinos or Scots amounts to the same thing: I ain't eatin' it (larfs).

Scots are the ones who hoot at baluts and then scupper up on kippers. Dayum, I must be downtown!

Anonymous said...

Thats why there is more than one kind of food. I guess we could transition to Soylent Green. I wonder what PETAs position would be

Unknown said...

The only prohibitions against that are cultural since we're taught it's disgusting and otherwise we may not even care. We can come up with some great mumbo jumbo like 'we now commit your ancestors to the great Gaia from whence they will return to us and the Great Circle of Life will continue. Geez, I'm getting hungry already!

Nobody raised an eye about chucking deaders into the melting pot to recycle for who knows what purpose in "Waterworld" so I wonder if we really would do that.