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The global elites have shown great interest in insects as a source of food. Not for themselves, mind you, but rather for the rest of us. It is only incidental that using bugs as a food source would reserve fresh fruits and vegetables, beef, pork and chicken, and other current foodstuffs for those most deserving, such as themselves. We have to ask, though, is eating bugs really such a good thing for humans?
Catching the bug
Most of the interest around bugs as a food source has centered around such insects as crickets, grasshoppers, cockroaches, and similar insects that reproduce quickly, have relatively large mass, and will eat all sorts of vegetable waste material and convert it into bugs. While this sounds like a good way to convert organic mass into foodstuff in short order, there are other things to take into account.
The aforementioned insects all have one characteristic in common. They have exoskeletons. That is, unlike mammals who have our skeletons on the inside and the soft parts outside, these insects are much more like crabs and lobsters where their shell serves the purpose of our skeletons, and all the soft, nutritious parts are protected inside. While some might like the crunchy outside, similar in texture to some breakfast cereals, there is a bit of problem – a fly in the ointment, as some might say.
This outer shell is indigestible by humans. Our digestive system cannot convert the shell material into useable nutrients. Eating these insects would be like eating a crab whole, shell and all, and not the soft-shell variety either. Crab shells and insect shells alike use essentially the same indigestible substance that we are not equipped to handle. Since the shell forms a large portion of the insect, that means that a sizeable portion of the mass has no nutritional value, reducing the food value of these bugs.
It’s a feature…
Fortunately, there is a solution. Chickens, pigs, cows, many fish, and other animals have the necessary enzymes in their digestive systems to convert the insect shells into useful food materials. Some, like cows, rely on useful microorganisms in the gut to do the conversion, while others produce the enzymes directly. In either case, the bugs get converted into digestible animal protein that humans can eat and enjoy. By passing the bugs through these natural food processing systems, the nutritional value of bugs is greatly improved from a human standpoint.
A bug in the system
Anyone who has spent time on a traditional farm with chickens, pigs, and cows has witnessed firsthand these conversion processes. One need only witness the delight a chicken takes in hunting down and spearing a tasty cricket to appreciate the gusto with which these tidbits are consumed. Unlike with humans, a bug diet would make millions of chickens happy. Happy chickens are productive chickens.
There is even a useful byproduct in the form of biological waste exhaust materials such as guano and dung. These materials are rich in certain minerals and other plant nutrients and form valuable fertilizer materials for plant growth. Instead of indigestible waste that would have to be processed in human sewage systems, this biological preprocessing yields recyclable organic material that contributes to sustainable agriculture.
Of course, there is also an industrial solution. The digestive enzymes can be mass produced in a variety of ways, including in gene modified bacterial fermentation vats. These enzymes could then be added to a bug mash to convert the indigestible shell material into something humans could use.
The resulting goo would lack somewhat in texture so further processing would be needed to turn what would be a gooey, sticky, paste the consistency of gel toothpaste, into something somewhat palatable. Various flavorings and # could be added to improve taste, and sawdust or other materials could be added to improve texture and fibre content. Entire new food processing industries could be created almost overnight. It would add new meaning to the term “processed food”.
Source: www.saltbushclub.com
Turning the tables
In addition to mashed bug, with or without gravy, the goo could be dried and ground up to make a kind of flour so we could have bug bread, bug cakes, bug petit fours, and bug cookies. All this would be in addition to crispy deep fried bug, bugburgers, buggybits on salads, bug stew, and many other culinary delights. An entire new school of bug cuisine would be formed to attempt to make bugs not only palatable, but even pleasant to consume, much to the dismay of the elites who would seek to force their will on us.
Perhaps the bug mash could even be fermented, yielding one or more beverages, and further converting bugs into consumable substances. It would add an entirely new meaning to the term “bug juice”. This would be in addition to the already wide array of byproducts of fermentation that already exist.
Don’t bug me
Why bugs? As is obvious to many of us, this elite fascination with making people eat bugs is not about nutrition or “saving the planet” or any other positive purpose. Rather, it seems most to be about the demonstration of power and control. Food production and consumption is fundamental to life, and the history of humanity is in large measure the history of securing and producing food. Regional cuisines reflect the adaptations people have made to convert the local materials into consumable foodstuffs.
Strongly # foods found in many areas have been developed to disguise the taste of decay where rapid food spoilage is a problem. Pickling, drying, and other food preservation methods were devised in areas with long periods when food supplies were not readily available. It is only natural that were our food supply restricted to insect materials, we would find ways to make that food source interesting and even enjoyable.
Sic semper tyrannis
No, it would seem that the push to force us to eat bugs is all about the psychological effect of being forced to consume a foodstuff that until now has largely been the food of lower animals and of desperate people. It is promoted for its humiliation value, not its nutritional advantages. Being forced to eat carrion beetles is the next best thing to being forced to eat raw dung. What becomes manifestly obvious is the contempt the “elites” hold for common humanity.
It is the modern equivalent of “let them eat cake”—an expression that eloquently captured the arrogance of the elites of the time. We know what happened to that elite aristocracy. They saw themselves secure in their power and privilege. It was much to their surprise to find that power to be an illusion, a mist dispelled by the sun of revolution.
This attempt to demonstrate the power to force consumption of an unwanted food on common humanity is ultimately doomed to failure. Even were they to succeed, common human ingenuity would transform the source into something positive, just as has been done countless times before. We would transform defeat into victory, humiliation into triumph. It would be the ultimate expression of the invincible human spirit encapsulated in an almost trivial sounding sentence: “When life hands you a lemon, make lemonade.”
Look on our works, ye elite, and weep.
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David Robb is a practicing scientist and CTO of a small firm developing new security technologies for detection of drugs and other contraband. Dave has published extensively in TheBlueStateConservative, and occasionally in American Thinker.
Featured image is from Canada Free Press
