A Question Bugging Many Of Us....

[ecosophia]

Why are the corporate elites so fixated on the notion that the rest of us ought to eat bugs? Insects and other arthropods aren't that efficient as a means of turning other substances into human food, and there are plenty of other ways to produce good nourishing protein for human consumption, reaching from rice and beans (and other plant based foods) to intensive aquaculture and small livestock such as rabbits and pigeons. All of them are better sources of human food than the deep-fried cockroaches the World Economic Forum and its equivalents insist everyone else ought to eat. (You know as well as I do that they're going to keep chowing down on filet mignon, while insisting that everyone but them ought to do without.)

So what gives? Are they simply longing to be able to sneer at the rest of us as "bug eaters"?  Is it some kind of weird Freudian obsession on their part? Did some clever charlatan sell them on the idea? Inquiring minds want to know. 

I'm interested in serious answers. On the other hand, I'm just as interested in funny answers. The whole bizarre "You vill eat ze bugs" fixation among the corporate elite is worth understanding, but it's also worth laughing at...

Comments

[jprussell]

Ah, thanks very much for clarifying. In that case, we're in full agreement. Thank you especially for the concrete example - I suspect that the mental model of the folks pushing for mass-insect-consumption is something like "they're just bugs, they're all over the place even when we don't want them, how hard could it be to raise them on purpose?" Your example clearly demonstrates exactly what they're not thinking about.

[(Anonymous)]

I think the model they're thinking about is mealworms: grow a bunch of bugs in boxes with some grain, sift out the wastes (or not if the sterilisation step is strong enough), grind them up, turn them into patties. I expect you could use robotic warehouse picking machines to deposit the grain, shake the boxes to sift out the wastes and then put the bug boxes onto a conveyor belt at the appropriate time for processing. I think the whole thing could be almost completely automated which would be very attractive to the trans-humanists.

Problem being it would be VERY energy intensive with the need for climate control to optimise growth, all grain diet and robotic processing - like intensive chicken meat farming and processing but worse due to the poorer feed conversion. Also, likely highly polluting and being complicated and tech intensive with minimal need for human oversight during normal operation it would be easy for things to go wrong without being detected until it started making people sick. Or alternatively, if there is a power outage, the climate control goes awry like in intensive chicken farms and you lose the lot and suddenly have food shortages.

Also, I'm sure that industrially produced and processed bugs will be just as healthy as other types of industrially produced and processed meat.