Grow Your Daily Protein At Home With an Edible Insect Desktop Hive 381
HughPickens.com writes: Fast Coexist reports on the Edible Insect Desktop Hive, a kitchen gadget designed to raise mealworms (beetle larva), a food that has the protein content of beef without the environmental footprint. The hive can grow between 200 and 500 grams of mealworms a week, enough to replace traditional meat in four or five dishes. The hive comes with a starter kit of "microlivestock," and controls the climate inside so the bugs have the right amount of fresh air and the right temperature to thrive. If you push a button, the mealworms pop out in a harvest drawer that chills them. You're supposed to pop them in the freezer, then fry them up or mix them into soup, smoothies, or bug-filled burgers. "Insects give us the opportunity to grow on small spaces, with few resources," says designer Katharina Unger, founder of Livin Farms, the company making the new home farming gadget. "A pig cannot easily be raised on your balcony, insects can. With their benefits, insects are one part of the solution to make currently inefficient industrial-scale production of meat obsolete."
Of course, that assumes people will be willing to eat them. Unger thinks bugs just need a little rebranding to succeed, and points out that other foods have overcome bad reputations in the past. "Even the potato, that is now a staple food, was once considered ugly and was given to pigs," says Unger adding that sushi, raw fish, and tofu were once considered obscure products. "Food is about perception and cultural associations. Within only a short time and the right measures, it can be rebranded. . . . Growing insects in our hive at home is our first measure to make insects a healthy and sustainable food for everyone."
Of course, that assumes people will be willing to eat them. Unger thinks bugs just need a little rebranding to succeed, and points out that other foods have overcome bad reputations in the past. "Even the potato, that is now a staple food, was once considered ugly and was given to pigs," says Unger adding that sushi, raw fish, and tofu were once considered obscure products. "Food is about perception and cultural associations. Within only a short time and the right measures, it can be rebranded. . . . Growing insects in our hive at home is our first measure to make insects a healthy and sustainable food for everyone."
The leftist agenda (Score:5, Funny)
Get us commoners to eat insects while the ruling class gets steak.
capcha: liberals
Re:The leftist agenda (Score:3)
I'm sure this is covered by Agenda 21 somehow.....
Re:The leftist agenda (Score:2)
Re:The leftist agenda (Score:2)
That was nasty.
That film stands out, not as a good movie, it really wasn't all that great, but it had some serious holding and contemplation power.
Re:The leftist agenda (Score:5, Insightful)
Get us commoners to eat insects while the ruling class gets steak.
My chickens eat insects, while I eat eggs. I turn over a few square meters of topsoil and compost each day, so they can eat the bugs and worms. They also eat table scraps, and a few scoops of commercial laying pellets.
Re:The leftist agenda (Score:5, Insightful)
"So which is better" - a medium rare steak that's been seared in molasses. My system is healthy enough to process it with no problems at all so I ignore hypothetical hysterics.
Re:The leftist agenda (Score:4, Interesting)
Honey is bee puke. They have a "many bees, one cell" puking, eating and re-puking party to make it.
Beans are the reproductive vessels of plants. We're eating innocent bean plants that could have grown and thrived.
Salad leaves are cut from their living bodies.
We're not plants. Inevitably, our food involves the death and destruction of other species, or biological processes, yes, including excretion, even if it's just your bread inflated by the microfarts of yeast.
Your glass of algae still has to decompose, it just does it in your belly instead, first at the hands of your stomach acids and enzymes, then it's passed through a festering mess of bacteria. As you note, microorganisms are vicious bastards that produce all kinds of toxins, far more than macroorganisms. One man's toxin is another man's glass of Chateau Lafite...
The notion that you can somehow strive for "cleanliness" in your food is just effete pretence. Even that bag of Soylent is the product of things writhing through dirt and striving to exist before they are cut down in their prime and ground up.
I implore you to get help for your food aversion [theguardian.com] - you're really missing out on some delicious stuff.
Bacon cures the leftist agenda ... (Score:3)
Sometimes that whole idea of consuming mammal excretions or animal embryos or mammal carcases, in various staged of partial decomposition, with varying levels of our own pollution stored within them, just seems more than a little repulsive or it's actual totally unpalatable state in my digestive tract where it is actually consumed.
The taste of crispy bacon on the tastebuds cures all such silliness. I've seen it happen. Seriously, I've literally seen it happen. To be fair, the hog was raised "at home" not in an industrial facility.
Re:The leftist agenda (Score:3)
That implies it was even written by a human, I am not so sure these days.
Re:The leftist agenda (Score:2, Offtopic)
Just tell them to "bug off".
Re:The leftist agenda (Score:3)
It's all fine and dandy to joke but the division between the rich and poor is becoming quite significant and getting worse, my fear is, it seems to be speeding up this last decade.
The middle class are being wiped out, you either make it big time or you're in the bottom rungs. Sure we're not squabbling over foodscraps yet but the quality of living is slowly dropping for quite a few.
we eat insects already (Score:3)
Re:we eat insects already (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, we all do. Not just the ones that end up in our food by accident that we don't notice (how much bug powder per gram of flour?), but also intentional inclusions like cochineal and various other additives.
Really we just need to get over our insect eating phobia: it's all arbitrary. Steak good, meal-worm bad. Moreton-Bay bugs good, other bugs bad. The distinction is nonsense (not to mention completely absent in many cultures) - get over it people.
Re:we eat insects already (Score:3)
its when people want to tell me that I cant eat Y that we have a problem
Re:we eat insects already (Score:2, Insightful)
Has someone told you that you can't eat something? I mean, assuming you aren't a Jew, Muslim, Catholic, Seventh Day Adventist, Hindu, Sikh or Buddhist.
Other than religious restrictions, who the fuck is telling you you can't eat something? Wait, has your mom been telling you to lay off the Cheetohs and pork rinds again?
Re:we eat insects already (Score:3)
Other than religious restrictions, who the fuck is telling you you can't eat something? Wait, has your mom been telling you to lay off the Cheetohs and pork rinds again?
There is a subset of militant vegans (well, they're not really militant, they just won't STFU) who want everyone else to stop eating meat. They have some good points*, but again, they are mostly annoying.
* sometimes they lock pretty naked girls in cages on the street for others' amusement
Re:we eat insects already (Score:3)
"Want" and "tell me I can't" are a long way apart.
Sounds like the gentleman's club out on Route 41.
Some anit-religious restrictions... (Score:2)
The British Veterinary Association, along with citizens who have assembled a petition with 100,000[20] signatures, have raised concerns regarding a proposed halal abattoir in Wales, in which animals are not to be stunned prior to killing.
Concern about slaughtering, without prior stunning, has resulted in the religious slaughter of animals being banned in Denmark, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland.
source [wikipedia.org]
Re:Some anit-religious restrictions... (Score:2)
How is this anything like telling you that you can't eat something? Are you worried that not having the religious slaughter of animals is going to mean you can't have bacon? Because I can assure you, this is not the case.
Re:Some anit-religious restrictions... (Score:2)
So, you can still eat meat, but just not the magical meat that your religious leader tells you that you have to eat.
So how is this anything like telling you that you can't eat something?
Re:we eat insects already (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:we eat insects already (Score:4, Interesting)
How often do you eat ground cow? No, not ground beef; ground cow? Heads, hide, bones, hooves, guts, and all? You never have and never will? Exactly.
You almost certainly eat mechanically separated meat, which includes all kinds of crap and is cleaned with ammonia.
Re:we eat insects already (Score:5, Insightful)
What do you mean, it's arbitrary?
It's not arbitrary if you're a cow. Cows have hopes and dreams, feelings; the right to exist. And they get to exist in large numbers as long as we like to eat them. I know what you're thinking; the cow doesn't like that part where man kills him and eats him.
Not true. All cows have always died of being eaten by something else. This was the case long before cows ever saw a human. If you tried, and were somehow able, to explain dying peacefully surrounded by your loved ones; they wouldn't understand it. Dying good is being killed quickly and then eaten; a horrible death is being eaten alive while conscious. That's the end of a cow's life in almost every case, since the beginning of the time that there were cows.
Now, possibly, we eat the cows while they are too young. If we as a society, decided to give them more of their lives in exchange for this bargain; a raise, as it were... well, the price of beef would go up. I'd hate that, but I could be convinced. I could see: All cows are allowed to socialize and become old enough to have sex at least once, and females get to have at least one baby, before Bam!, we eat you. Heh, cow rights. I'm ahead of my time.
Now, however weird that sounded, substitute bugs for cows, and see how weird it sounds.
Re:we eat insects already (Score:2)
If they can make the bugs taste like bacon, I might give them a try. As long as they remove the teeth and legs first. And penises. I don't want to be eating bug penises.
No, thank you. (Score:3)
sushi, raw fish, and tofu were once considered obscure products.
Sorry, but tofu is still gross - right up there with rice cakes.
Re:No, thank you. (Score:3)
There's also the soy/estrogen thing. I still remember getting sore moobs from trying soy protein powder.
Re:No, thank you. (Score:3)
Yeah, but they were nice and firm, and you looked good in that sweater.
Re:No, thank you. (Score:3)
Rice cakes? Wait a minute, hey, I've been setting my drinks on these!
Re:No, thank you. (Score:3)
Raw tofu is disgusting. Properly cooked tofu however takes on the flavor of what it's cooked with, provides no flavor of its own, and the texture can be controlled by how it's cooked.
Re:No, thank you. (Score:2)
Re:No, thank you. (Score:2)
If restaurants are serving you tasteless textureless tofu, then yes, they suck at their job. As the veggie burgers prove, you can make tofu good - if you cook it to the desired texture (the longer you cook it the more it "toughens", to a more meaty texture - although if you cook it too long it can get too chewy or grainy) and season it right (it takes on the flavors of whatever it's cooked in - but they have to be strong enough).
Re:Rice Krispies treats (Score:3)
If rice cakes are gross then you better not like rice krispies treats.
There's a HUGE difference between rice cakes and rice krispie treats, same as there's a huge difference between puffed rice (gross) and dishes made with rice.
Well.. they're not too far removed from (Score:4, Informative)
Lobster and Shrimp...
Re:Well.. they're not too far removed from (Score:2, Insightful)
What about the exoskeleton? We have tools for taking care of that with lobster and shrimp.
We also have ways of removing beef bones. What do you do about all that chitin surrounding the mealworm flesh?
Re:Well.. they're not too far removed from (Score:5, Insightful)
Lobster - arthropods that live on the floor of the ocean, hiding in the dark and scurrying out at night to scavenge on whatever dead muck they can find. Yes, thay are aquatic cockroaches.
We used to use those awful creatures as fish bait, but now it is all exported to those weirdos in Japan who'll eat anything.
Shrimp? Now you are talking. They can be grown in vats in your garage at home, and are big enough that unlike mealworms you can break off the head, guts and shell, and just eat the meat. Yumm.
Personally, I'll just keep the chooks in my back yard coop. They are reasonably efficient at turning grain and scraps into tasty eggs, plus fertiliser for the veggie garden.
Re:Well.. they're not too far removed from (Score:4, Informative)
We used to use those awful creatures as fish bait, but now it is all exported to those weirdos in Japan who'll eat anything.
No. The big lobster-eating countries are the US, Canada, and European countries like France, Spain, and Italy. Not Japan.
Re:Well.. they're not too far removed from (Score:2)
In Sitt Iffrikeh there's a kind of cricket called a Parktown Prawn.
Your chilled mealworms are worthless and weak! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Your chilled mealworms are worthless and weak! (Score:2)
qagh wISop.
jatlh raDpu'lu'.
Re:Your chilled mealworms are worthless and weak! (Score:2)
Nice
The WAF... (Score:2)
was a major hurdle, so I was unable to back the full project. But I did back at a lower level...so we'll get some mealworms to try.
It's going to be difficult to get past many peoples' initial ick factors.
Link to the "actual" product: [Kickstarter.] (Score:5, Informative)
https://www.kickstarter.com/pr... [kickstarter.com]
I enjoy fried mealworms as replacements for salty snacks, like any other pop-and-crunch food covered in chili powder.
One tiny caveat (Score:2)
The part they neglect to tell you: mealworms live exclusively on a diet of Kobe beef and caviar.
Reminds me of st:TNG when the heads of starfleet (Score:2)
Were taken over by insects. And got some to eat bugs that burrowed into their brains.
Re:Reminds me of st:TNG when the heads of starflee (Score:2)
That episode freaked me out when I was a kid!
I just eat flies (Score:2)
Yet another advantage of not showering daily.
Inefficient because they forgot how to do it. (Score:4, Insightful)
currently inefficient industrial-scale production of meat
Yes, it is *currently* inefficient, because *they are doing it wrong*!!!
1 - destroy millions of acres of ecosystem and drain rivers dry to monocrop grains
2 - force-feed feedlot cattle candy
3 - pump them full of antibiotics to attempt to combat their inevitable poor health
4 - bitch about inhumane livestock treatment and conditions
5 - go vegan/grow meal worms to think you've solved the problem
- or -
1 - graze cattle on the 70+ % of land *that is not suitable for monocrop agriculture practices anyways* but happens to be plenty fertile enough to grow stuff naturally that cows will happily, and healthily eat. Let the cows do the work of walking to their food, rather than spending fuel to grow candy and bring it to them.
2 - grow something more eco-friendly in the millions of acres currently being wasted on corn (say, the original natural fauna?)
3 - round up the cattle when it's time to slaughter--they will be healthy and have a much better nutrient profile for us as well
Notice anything missing from the list? antibiotics? feedlots? grains? clear cutting to make feedlot grounds? check check check check.
Read Joel Salatin's works for more info.
Comment removed (Score:2)
Re:Inefficient because they forgot how to do it. (Score:5, Informative)
Never actually been on a ranch I can see....
There is a reason we have those feed lots as inefficient and stinky as they turn out to be. Mainly they are FAST and a cheaper way to generate the meat the consumer wants.
Most folks don't like grass fed beef. They want their beef with lots of fat, as young as possible, and as quickly as we can produce it. That says "Feed Lot" where we do the best we can to get the cattle to eat as much as they can convert to fat/meat as we can arrange. If you preferred grass fed beef, that's what you'd be getting. Trust me, it's easier and a lot less messy to kick them out to pasture to snap up as much grass as you can put in front of them. Rancher's would love it, they'd be keeping their own steers, feeding them all the grass/hay they could find until they reached slaughter weight and just sell them to processors direct. As it stands, they sell their yearling steers to feed lots, who take them to slaughter weight as quickly as possible.
Personally, I've had grass raised beef. It's not bad but it's an acquired taste I'm afraid. You end up making more hamburger because it's way too lean and tough in places, but over all it works if it is cooked right. However, I prefer grain finished beef. That extra bit of fat and marbling is much nicer and makes for better tasting steaks. I've raised my own beef both ways, and obviously the feed lot model produces better results.
The antibiotic issue is not really a problem for feed lots, who generally don't go around just shooting up all the steers with antibiotics as a matter of course. Of course they DO use them in dairy operations quite a bit and you are more likely to find them in milk than meat. Dairy operations also use a lot of growth hormones to boost production which is worrisome if you ask me. Feed lots get in on this as well, but not to as much and they are really just adding on as a supplement a hormone that's already present naturally. I find this hormone augmentation more of a worry than antibiotics which cannot be given within a set timeframe of slaughter.
So... Until folks acquire a taste for grass fed beef, feed lots are where the bulk of your beef will come from. That's just based on what the American pallet will accept and the cheapest way to produce what we want to eat. There is not much else that's going to happen so get used to the idea.
Re:Inefficient because they forgot how to do it. (Score:2)
Why AC?
Gagh (Score:4, Funny)
Call it gagh and serve it with prune juice. Trekkies'll eat it.
Soylent Yellow (Score:4, Insightful)
They never go into detail in the book (I believe... pardon it's been an eternity since I've read it) but my assumption was always Soylent Yellow and Red were some artificially produced edible protein where it's entirely likely yellow came from insects and red maybe even came from real animals (rats?).
The way to get people to eat this stuff is to have it come out in NOT-INSECT-LOOKING form such as a cube of blended worm-meal.. maybe even with some artificial flavoring / coloring added. I mean... people eat Tofu don't they? (I don't... but some people do. ;)
Re:Soylent Yellow (Score:3)
They never go into detail in the book (I believe... pardon it's been an eternity since I've read it) but my assumption was always Soylent Yellow and Red were some artificially produced edible protein where it's entirely likely yellow came from insects and red maybe even came from real animals (rats?).
The way to get people to eat this stuff is to have it come out in NOT-INSECT-LOOKING form such as a cube of blended worm-meal.. maybe even with some artificial flavoring / coloring added. I mean... people eat Tofu don't they? (I don't... but some people do. ;)
Or process it into protein powder (assuming it's cheap enough of course) though that's not viable for the home market.
I think the issue isn't just the repulsion against eating insects but the lack of processing you can do. My biggest amount of squeamishness doesn't come from the fact that they're bugs, but from the fact I'm eating heads, digestive tracts, etc. Of course you can get over it and I think some sardines come in a similar condition but we like to think of our food as nice and pure and it's hard for those to do.
lobster used to be left to rot on the docks (Score:3)
or fed to prisoners and the poor. http://www.lobsterhelp.com/lob... [lobsterhelp.com]
Food aversion (Score:3)
I'll wait (Score:2)
I'll stick with chicken until they either come out with artificially grown meat or bugs that are big enough that you can strip out all of the nasty bits (exoskeleton, guts, brain eyes, etc). You can raise modern broilers in 5 to 7 weeks on about 5 lbs of feed each.
why we don't eat bugs (Score:5, Insightful)
We don't eat bugs because historically and culturally, bugs have been a sign of spoilage and infestation. Some cultures do eat mealworms, but this almost exclusively happens in places where agriculture is difficult and high quality protein sources are rare.
Another reason why we are averse to eating bugs is that they are eaten whole. There are few animals that we consume in their entirety.
Ways to get around both of these issues ultimately come down to processing. Chemical processing has the potential to extract the proteins while rendering the result into a form that is unrecognizable as being derived from an insect. But, for my own personal tastes, I am not any more or less inclined to want to eat a mealworm than I am inclined to want to eat the intestine of a cow. It's just that, on a cow, it's a lot easier to separate the muscle tissue from the organs.
Re:why we don't eat bugs (Score:2)
Ahem. May I introduce you to some chitlins [wikipedia.org]? Or a big, steaming bowl of mondongo [dominicancooking.com]? Or, perhaps, ask you what you think your sausages are stuffed into [smokedandcured.com.au]?
This is really preferred to vegan options? (Score:2)
Re:This is really preferred to vegan options? (Score:2)
Vegan options are strange and untested. Bugs are a known quantity, proven safe over a long term diet. Bugs are also tasty, but it's pretty hard to prepare them in a non-gross way. Hopefully that will change.
Do vegans really count meal worms as counting as things capable of suffering? Vegans go that route for moral reasons or health reasons, and bugs score very well on the second test, and pretty damned good on the first one. It's pretty silly to compare a mealworm to a cow. Cows care about their foals, insects spew millions of eggs in shit and then die or whatever. You'd need a religion to tell you to value the feelings of an larvae- you can't get there rationally.
Re:No thank you (Score:2)
It's called "grazing". There isn't even a copyright or patent! Fully open source hardware!
Re:No thank you (Score:2)
Oblig:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re:Protein from plants, not animals (Score:2)
Thank you! I'm tired of people using the word "protein" as a synonym of "meat". Some of the highest protein sources out there are vegetable-based. Growing protein at home doesn't take an insect farm, it just takes.... a farm.
If people want to criticize a vegan diet as lacking something, they should focus on B12, not protein. Plants on average contain plenty of protein per calorie (which is the measure that actually matters).
Re:Protein from plants, not animals (Score:3, Informative)
Some of the highest protein sources out there are vegetable-based.
The problem is not the total amount of protein, but about getting all the nine essential amino acids (ones our body cannot make).
These are present in the right amounts in meat, but not vegetables. It is possible to get the right balance by combining different vegetable proteins, but not all vegans make the effort consistently, and are often deficient in methionine and lysine.
Re:Protein from plants, not animals (Score:3)
I do a fair bit of home gardening, but producing say 50 lbs of beans a year takes a fair amount of space and effort. If you can really get that level of production out of a unit that small then it gives gardening a good run for its money. I don't think you could match the reported production here in a condo or apartment if you were to grow plants.
Re:Protein from plants, not animals (Score:2)
But that's just the issue... you're not actually producing the insects yourself in entirity, you're buying what the insects eat and simply converting that into insect biomass. When you garden, you're producing all of that biomass yourself.
Re:Protein from plants, not animals (Score:2, Informative)
Citation needed.
Citation given:
http://cookforgood.com/blog/2014/3/5/how-much-protein-is-enough-what-are-the-best-sources.html
Those graphs in that blog posting are from the USDA National Nutrient Database. Notice how many plants provide more protein per calorie than, say, chicken. The real surprise to me was how people think scrambled eggs give them a lot of protein, and they just don't. The frellin' Egg Council (or whoever it is) has effective advertising, I must say.
Re:Protein from plants, not animals (Score:4, Insightful)
On the other hand, fried battered chicken is only 38% protein [calorieking.com] on a caloric basis. Same as broiled hamburger patties [calorieking.com], and far better than bacon [calorieking.com].
Yes, it's possible to select meats and prepare them in a manner that gets very high protein figures. But the same applies to vegans, who can choose, for example, gluten, saitan, textured vegetable protein and products made from it, etc. No, your average meat dish doesn't have those kind of protein figures - just like your average vegan dish doesn't. And nor does the human body need such extreme protein levels. Your average meat dish will probably have in the ballpark of 30-35% protein. So will your average greens dish or your average legumes dish.
Re:Protein from plants, not animals (Score:5, Informative)
Apparently you don't know the meaning of the word "based". Heck, some vegatable-based foods (such as gluten, often used in Chinese cooking [google.com]) are nearly pure protein. Most meat substitutes are based around things like TVP, which is overwhelmingly protein. Seitan is 80% protein.
Even common things like tofu have far more calories from protein than carbs (your standard). But really, that's the wrong standard: it's calories from protein vs. calories from "everything else". The majority common vegan ingredients are in the 20-50% protein range - your green leafies (lettuce? 36%; broccoli? 33%; spinach? 50%; collards? 38%; etc), legumes (peas? 33%; lentils? 31%; beans? ~25%; etc), some grains, etc, plus tons of secondary products) are in the 20-50% protein-calories range. While lean fish and skinless chicken cooked in non-fattening manners around 80%-ish percent of their calories from protein, most meats are much lower. A hamburger patty, 80% lean, 20% fat, broiled? 38% from protein [calorieking.com]. Batter-dipped fried chicken? also 38% protein [calorieking.com]. Bacon, fried? 27% [calorieking.com]. Etc. These are just the first "common" things that come to mind, do your own searches. Common meat dishes have the same sort of percent of their calories from protein as common vegetarian dishes.
Re:Protein from plants, not animals (Score:2, Informative)
Animal proteins are complete proteins.
Plant proteins are not.
Eating certain things together can give you a complete proteins (which is how the Mayans survived), but no one does that.
Industrial processing of soybeans can turn it into a complete protein. We call this tofu. Tofu and fortified/enriched staples (such as bread and salt) are what make the modern vegetarian fad possible.
Without complete proteins humans are physically incapable of building (or rebuilding) muscle tissue, and WILL wither and die.
Re:Protein from plants, not animals (Score:2, Insightful)
Sorry, you are abusing the statistics a little here. Plants have high protein % as total calories - because plants have ridiculously low calories to begin with. On the other hand, ground beef provides 38% of calories from protein - because the fat is much richer source of calories to begin with. A more useful statistic for you to consider is grams of protein per 100g serving of the said food.
Lettuce - 1.35g protein / 100g;
Broccoli - 2.8g protein / 100g;
Dried legumes have higher proteins. Keyword: Dried.
Lentil - 26g protein / 100g;
Soy beans - 36g protein / 100g;
Still, meat provides higher protein at higher bioavailability:
Beef, 15% fat - 26g / 100g;
Dried beef (jerky): up to 65g / 100g;
Salmon - 20g protein / 100g.
There is no point in arguing. On a per-gram basis, meats provides much higher protein % than plants. If you want to use protein calorie % as your metric, you can eat meat moderately - or eat a shitlaod and shitload of veggies.
Re:Protein from plants, not animals (Score:3)
I don't get your argument - do you think that vegans eat less total calories per day or something? Of course it's "per calorie" that matters, not "per 100 grams". You write things like "keyword: dried" as if water soaking into them when they cook is supposed to somehow change the nutritional picture - I mean, what the heck?
And since when are legumes low-calorie?
Re:Protein from plants, not animals (Score:3)
There is 4.2 grams of protein in a 5 ounce serving of broccoli and 22 grams in a serving of beef, a serving of ground beef being 3 ounces. It's about protein per serving and there is no question that meat rules.
Re:Protein from plants, not animals (Score:2)
Yes, which is why we use industrial solvents and paint thinners and shit to strip it out into a disgusting paste called tofu.
Soy beans are one of the very few plant proteins that are a complete protein, so for vegetarians it's eat tofu, eat corn and beans together every day, or die.
Re:Protein from plants, not animals (Score:2)
I have no clue where you got this. Cooking and fermentation break down cell walls (cellulose). Raw soybeans are poisonous. Are you saying that there are people out there eating raw, unfermented soybeans and not getting protein as a consequence?
Cooking proteins is a mixed bag. Sometimes they become more bioavailable. But they can also break down via the Mailard reaction (bonding with sugars, a process similar to caramelization), or worse simply through pyrolysis where carbohydrates aren't available, leading to degradation products with adverse health effects. Other processes - including what's commonly used in soybeans, fermentation, but also things like germination and mere soaking - can also increase protein availability (and other benefits, such as breaking down chelators and enzyme inhibitors) without causing significant protein degradation.
All of this applies to both meats and vegetables.
In general, minerals become more available (sometimes significantly more available) in vegetables after cooking; in meats the effect isn't as pronounced. Vitamins and other phytochemicals are a mixed bag - some, like vitamin C, tend to be broken down by cooking, while others, like lycopene, become more bioavailable.
Re:Protein from plants, not animals (Score:2)
You're only partially right. You CAN get all the protein you need from plants, but it's hard, and you need to eat a lot of plants, and you need to occasionally supplement with eggs or milk or otherwise consume processed plant material (like soy protein powder). It's not a 'natural' way of eating by any stretch of the imagination.
Bugs, on the other hand, are probably the most natural food for humans. Our ancestors consumed insects in abundance, and many still do. Insects formed large and important parts of our ancestral diets. We ate larvae, we ate roaches, we ate locusts. They're widely available, the protein content is perfect, the harmful fat and carbohydrate content is very low, and there are few insect diseases that are readily transmittable to humans. It's just that as we became more agricultural and started consuming tasty lamb and beef and chicken, insects became associated with the poor and unclean, and then gradually got forgotten entirely. But now we live in a world where we know that these animals aren't as good for us as insects are, and we're starting to hit severe limits on how many chicken and cattle we can raise. To expand the human population - or hell, even maintain it where it is - we might need to seriously consider eating insects again.
I've had a few bugs. They weren't so bad.
Re:Protein from plants, not animals (Score:3)
It's not "hard". At all. Period. Whole broad classes of vegetarian ingredients (legumes, greens, etc) have as high of a percentage of their calories from protein as things like hamburger patties, fried chicken and bacon. You don't need to "supplement with eggs and milk" for protein; you're confusing B12 with protein.
Also, it's wrong to overgeneralize about ancestral human diets; they varied greatly from society to society. The Masai didn't eat the same thing as the Aryans who didn't eat the same thing as the Inuit and so forth. Humans are omnivores and are adapted to diverse diets.
Re:Protein from plants, not animals (Score:5, Informative)
Our diets weren't as diverse as vegetarians like to think. If you look at the diets of most major human populations, there are some common themes: A mix of gathered plant matter, including roots, leaves, fruit, and nuts. And hunted meat including insects, birds, and large game. Even Inuit ate lots of plant food, contrary to the widely-circulated myth that they just ate meat (an important part of the Inuit diet is the half-digested plant matter found in the stomachs of wild game). But meat seems to be a constant. You can not find a major human population that didn't eat meat. They all did. They HAD to, because paleolithic plants were not nearly as nutritious or calorie-rich as modern agricultural inventions like potatoes and corn. None of these modern agricultural marvels existed for our ancestors. But they had buffalo.
The average caloric mix seems to be about 70% plants and 30% meat.
Re:Protein from plants, not animals (Score:2)
You think that the Masai eat the same thing as the Inuit?
Yes, the Inuit traditionally eat some plant foods, but the vast majority of their calories traditionally come from meat. While the Masai survive off of cattle and notably cattle blood - a meat diet, yet a very different one from the Inuit. Yet both of them are abnormally high in their meat percentage - 80-90% of calories, versus 10-40% among most hunter-gatherers. And some tribes consume little to no meat at all. It depends on the area and the tribe.
Again: humans are omnivores. We have adaptive digestive systems, which have helped us fill niches all over the world.
Re:Protein from plants, not animals (Score:2)
You can not find a major human population that didn't eat meat.
Um...what about the many parts of India that have been vegetarian for centuries?
Re:Protein from plants, not animals (Score:3)
If you do some research on the subject you would discover a few things. Like the real critical point for "not starving" was not meat but fire. Eating meat (without using fire to cook it) has a detrimental effect because of the health hazards. But fire (used to cook food) has the property of increasing available caloric content.
The rated caloric content of a food is pretty much just theoretical with only a weak correlation to what the digestive system is able to extract from it. Cooking food improves the available caloric content with an effect ranging from mild to extreme (I forget the exact examples of top providers, but it is something like yams/potatoes/bananas).
Focusing on protein alone is not silly, its stupid. You need protein, you need calories, you need fiber, and so on.
There are all sorts of attempts to justify a particular diet. A popular one is that a lack of red meat leads to diminished stature (which makes the error of assuming that great stature is even desirable and lacks strong evidence for the claim). Another popular one is that humans digest meat more easily -- and conversely that humans digest vegetables more easily. In both cases there is an agenda attached to the claim.
Having surveyed available research data on the "ease of digestion" claim I can say that both are wrong. There is too much individual variability. It is sufficiently difficult to measure both rate and extent of digestion that only very narrow studies have been done with scope and results that preclude making any strong statements.
Accept that digestion is not that well understood. Make a reasonable attempt to eat well, whatever that means to you. And accept that others will make reasonable attempts to eat well that do not follow the same diet as you. Not only is there no need for you to be right, there is too much individual variability for there to be "one right way" and too much over time variability in an individual for one diet to best suit a person over time.
Be flexible. Avoid foods that cause upset (e.g., if you suffer from IBS it is wise to at least try cutting out tomatoes). Be willing to try new things. Be willing to try old things. Avoid mandating specific regimens or insisting that another person's diet is wrong (except in unusually extreme cases, like parents that insisted on a diet solely consisting of bananas to the detriment of the children's health -- IIRC they lost their children over that one).
Re:Protein from plants, not animals (Score:3)
"It's just that as we became more agricultural and started consuming tasty lamb and beef and chicken"
Tasty, yes. Agricultural, no. We ate those things before that. The man who has cows and sheep and chickens does not eat bugs.
Without those things, you are poor. Good thing there are always bugs to eat. They are nasty though, that is why no one else eats them. Or sometimes, prepared as well as possible, some are, as you say, not so bad.
Re:Protein from plants, not animals (Score:2)
That's why I said harmful fat, not all fat. E.g. trans fats, saturated fats. Learn to read, my friend.
Re:Protein from plants, not animals (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Protein from plants, not animals (Score:2)
Re:Protein from plants, not animals (Score:3)
I'm a carnivore. I eat plants very seldom. I'm sure it means I'll never see 90 years but my Dad is 90 now and seeing him I think I'll be good with about 70 or so. I eat meat because I like the taste. If they can make the bugs taste like a grilled medium rare aged black angus ribeye steak then count me in. If it is like most of the bland tasteless shit veggie lovers always prattle on about they can keep it. I see no point in suffering just to live a little longer.
Re:Protein from plants, not animals (Score:2)
the problem is that going veg requires you to be SMART and have access to certain plants
(you have fat B12 and 8 different amino acids to balance that eating a chunk of critter does for you without thinking)
heck as far as the moral thing goes eating critters that have not been abused covers most everything (and not eating the whole hog yourself covers more).
Re:Protein from plants, not animals (Score:2)
Is that why 90% of vegans are severely undernourished?
Is that why 90% of statistics are made up?
The whole "moral" thing is a scam too. Humans are omnivores, ignoring that is a falsehood, a falsehood is a lie, therefore vegetarianism is unethical.
Ooh, let me play!
"Humans are warlike, ignoring that is a falsehood, a falsehood is a lie, therefore peace is unethical."
Did I do that right?
Re:Protein from plants, not animals (Score:2)
David Hume worked out that "is", is not the same as "ought", about 300 years ago. Apparently you haven't.
Re:Protein from plants, not animals (Score:2)
That's simply not true. Please stop confusing B12 and protein.
How much more basic of a diet could you get than, say, rice and beans? Well, guess what? Those two amino acids that are supposedly "hard" for vegetarians to get, methionine and lysine? Rice is rich in methionine. Beans are rich in lysine. Most grains are rich in methionine. Most legumes are rich in lysine. If you have a vegan diet that contains relevant quantities of both, you're not at risk of deficiency. Which represents by far most vegan diets. More to the point, even if you don't "combine" them, most grains have enough lysine for a person to not be deficient, and most legumes enough methionine to likewise not cause deficiency.
Vegans do statistically have some risk of deficiencies. B12 is the most common one. Many statistically are also iron deficient, particularly vegan women. But protein deficiency is not statistically common among vegans.
Re:Channeling Tracey Morgan (Score:2)
My Facebook is getting blown-up with stories about Syrian Refugees refusing food because it isn't good enough for them
Perhaps you need less douchebag-y Facebook friends.
Re:Channeling Tracey Morgan (Score:2)
Re:Channeling Tracey Morgan (Score:2)
Re:Channeling Tracey Morgan (Score:3)
No, I'm saying that if an Islamaphobic site [barenakedislam.com] publishes some bullshit story about a "refugees throwing away food", and people are sharing that story on Facebook, they are probably douchebags.
And yes, I realize you're just trolling at this point. But maybe not; maybe you're just an idiot and legitimately don't see how those people are douchebags. Your call.
Re:Channeling Tracey Morgan (Score:2)
Wut?
Re:Channeling Tracey Morgan (Score:2)
Meanwhile, on Bizarro-Earth: "My Facebook is getting vlown up with stories about some of the Some-Christian-Country refugees refusing our pentagram-loaves because isn't good enough for them. Can you believe those ingrates?"
If only we had a seasonally appropriate story about middle-eastern people seeking refuge being turned away by the heartless...
Re:Lead by example, perhaps... (Score:2)
I don't know about worms, but I do know that certain species of locust are listed in the Torah as being kosher.
Re:Poe's Law? (Score:2)
Re:worm burgers (Score:2)
No that was bubble yum. Or was that spider eggs?
Yeah, spider eggs.
Re:No. Fucking. Way. (Score:2)
But if it has ten legs you can charge $9/pound for it if it's lobster, $15/pound if it's shrimp.
The distinction between crustaceans (like lobster and shrimp) and insects is literally academic. In fact about five years ago a paper came out suggesting that insects are crustaceans [nature.com], although this has been tidied up by introducing a new clade to sit between the Arthropoda phylum and the Hexapoda and Crustacea sub-phyla: Pancrustacea [wikipedia.org].
And in point of fact eating insects has at some point in most cultures been considered normal. In Europe cheeses were often traditionally eaten with their accompanying insect populations -- the cheese mite for cheddar for example, or Piophila casei larvae for casu marzu in Italy. It has only been in modern times that its even possible to create such foods without insect hitchhikers, and we have come to associate insects with harmful contamination -- which they may be -- and consider them harmful -- which they may not be, any more than fungal growth is necessarily harmful (e.g. blue cheese).
In my lifetime I've seen a big shift in attitude in the US toward bacterial fermentation, which was also associated with contamination. Americans were introduced to yogurt around the time I was in middle school; it was exotic stuff. When James Beard published his "James Beard Cookbook" in 1959, he had to explain that "sour cream" wasn't the same thing as spoiled cream.