Eating bugs

Check the link very good article.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/07/0715_040715_tvinsectfood.html


I think eating bugs or at least raising them for fishfood or chicken feed would be extremely beneficial.

Food, space, and work per lb of protein from bugs is twice that of raising cows. For the environmental purests  Cows produce a lot of CO'2 and methane, greenhouse gases, as compared to bugs.

To me a major draw to premaculture is living efficiently to fulfill our basic needs.

Food wise Bugs make total sense. 

Not to mention they are healthy.  Fish and Chickens eating bugs will produce much healthier meat and eggs because of the omega 3 fatty acids and minerals in  the bug's exoskeleton.   

One reason Wild  Fish are so much healthier for us then farm feed fish is their diet on bugs.

i have just produced some healthy bugs on some fungi by not eating them on time, here they eat and sell lots of fungi. They did not smell. as meat filled bugs smells. mine were fruit fly bugs.
  paul Stamets talks of fungi being good for this he asys in his book tha the threw some rotten mushrooms or other fungi  on his fish pond and the fish hit them to knowck the bugs out.
  ther are people who know how to grow bugs they sell them for fisher men, i bet learning so you could sell them to hen farmers coudl be a good way to earn money.
  i saw a documentary on how some part of south america which included eating flies, you can buy fly powder by the kilo, i wonder how they produce them. THey sell what i imagine is the same for feeding caged birds in some good pet shops.
  We don't know do we how much methane and co2 bugs eat. agri rose macaskie.

crickets and mealworms are simple to grow if you set them up right.....I am not terribly interested in eating them at this point in my life though...

years ago I watched a documentary type doomsday, overpopulation type scenario, and it predicted bugs to be the food of the future......

I did not mean grow insects for eating ourselves rather as chicken food, though the black flour they make of ground flies according to some documentary on south america was used, if i remember right, for tortillas.
  My father always says, "look how much energy insect eating things have, look how swallows fly around all the time". Frogs aren't very energetic which maybe puts paid to that idea.

Should be usefull to know how to breed them just incase we end up in a concentration camp or get ship wrecked or some other extreme situation, its better than eating your companions .
  Anyway please spit it out I would love to know how to breed  crickets and meal worms. I'm sure i would try it if i knew how, it might increase the bird population in my garden.
  Couldn't you sell crictets because they make a home happy according to Dickens, if i remember right. he wrote, "a cricket on the hearth". agri rose macaskie.
 

here is a good site. http://www.feederinsects.co.za/feederinsects_mealworms.htm

keeping optimal temps is probably the hardest part for me. they really need to be inside here for most of the year.......and they can smell a bit...... so I don't plan on raising them until I have a heated/cooled barn or workshop

my mom had a friend that owned a deli when i was a child and he was always giving her bugs..fried or chocolate covered or whatever..we liked the bees, they were like rice crispies..choc covered ants weren't bad either.

ewww...yuck...grooooossss

I've tried the ants.  Not a big fan.

I found this old thread while exploring some of the kitchen forums. At the time (about 13 years ago), eating bugs probably seemed pretty far fetched. But nowadays, eating insects has been promoted as a valid protein alternative.






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Can't say I'm all that interested in trying them. How about you?

Leigh Tate wrote:... But nowadays, eating insects has been promoted as a valid protein alternative.
Can't say I'm all that interested in trying them. How about you?

I always get a little worried when Industrial Food gets involved. Wild or responsibly grown they might be a healthy option, but who knows what they're being fed? So much of the quality of a food is in what healthy food our food was eating. That's been shown with the lower nutrient levels of vegetables grown industrially in depleted soil, so I expect it would be similar with bugs.

If I was living in a city and needed a "you can raise these in your apartment" protein source, I'd be more interested. Living in the country as I do, there are so many healthy protein sources (we have chickens, ducks and geese domestically and lots of rabbits and squirrels wild, not to mention the expletive's deleted deer!) All of these animals get a fair amount of sun, so their Vit D levels will be excellent. Barn raised chicken and pork won't have natural Vit D. Chickens on pasture have a yellowy tinge to their fat which is related to the chlorophyll they eat. So if I needed a source of protein, I'd be willing to try some of these, so long as I got to raise them myself!

Jay, you bring up VERY valid points! I think what you're saying is at the heart of my concerns. So far, my thoughts have focused on cultural food norms and food trends (many of which are fads). But the important questions should be: where are they sourced, how are they raised, what are they fed, and how are they killed?

I think a lot of people get into homesteading to have an element of control over their diets. They want fresher, tastier, minimally processed foods with the absolute smallest carbon footprint. Producing our own food meets all those requirements. When permaculture principles are applied, then we get "better than organic" foods that are better for us, our animals, and the environment.

Most of my husband's and my protein comes from eggs and dairy products (kefir and cheese). We do eat some meat, but we are conscientious about the sources of the animal proteins we eat, and do indeed raise most of our own. Would I raise bugs for protein? For me, it always boils down to the amount of work. It's emotionally satisfying to watch our poultry and goats grazing and scratching around for something to eat. When I bring my little bucket of grubs from the garden, the chickens, ducks, and turkeys all come running for a treat. And then they turn those grubs into lovely eggs, with manure for the compost as added value. Could I take those grubs and tell them, "no, this is my dinner?" I wouldn't have the heart to do that!

I have the same sense when I watch people mowing their large yards. I always think, "that grass could be feeding somebody." Maybe I've lived on a homestead for too long, but it seems that there's a natural system (ecosystem) in place for everything in the food chain. My cooperation with this system makes for a simple, easy workflow on my part. Trying to take shortcuts through the system means somebody gets left out.

For those interested there is a name for the eating of bugs:

Entomophagy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entomophagy

https://permies.com/t/22353/Official-Entomophagy-Thread-Eating-Bugs

First bite is the hardest to get past. After that you have other things to judge by than just the cultural barrier.

I haven't done much entomaphaging, but I have started looking at beetle grubs differently. Kind of a Pumba and Timon sort of way. They are big and look quite satisfying. They're also quite abundant around here. Definitely a back-up source of protein in a pinch. I do believe I remember reading that most of them are edible, though I'd like to confirm that before chowing down.

i’m generally in favor of eating bugs, and have experimented with home-raised mealworms and wild-caught grasshoppers in the past. i’ve mostly shifted over to giving any extra bugs to the chickens. my time is really limited these days, and if someone else can transform those invertebrates into more approachable protein, i’m inclined to let them. i will confess to munching on a loose chestnut or hickory or acorn weevil grub when they show up in nuts i’m working with unless it’s a pile of them at the bottom of a container in which case, they’ll go into a smaller container and go to the chickens.

i might consider raising bugs for my own table again in a truly shtf-sort of situation. similarly uninterested in farmed bugs if i don’t really know what’s going into them.

Although logically there is very little difference between shrimps and woodlice, I'm not sure I'll be able to get past the cultural yuk factor myself, let alone feed them to the husband!
I found an interesting article from 2014 here: bug article which describes many insects as tasty.

This reporter found crickets nicely crisp and nutty (a cross between shrimp and almond), and fried bamboo worms not unlike unsalted potato chips. Palm weevils, to some palates, are likened to bacon soup with a chewy, sweet finish, while insect larvae are rich and buttery. "Mushroomy" is another frequently-used description for some species.

Insect farming is a good business model in Thailand where the insects for food may fetch more money than chicken beef or pork. The insects can be harvested every few months, eat vegetable matter, and need less water to raise than most mammals.