Bug season has begun in my
part of the world with more rehashed research on the benefits of bugs and why
we need more of them. More bugs are not something anyone wants to contemplate
on a cool damp morning in cottage country. Clouds of biting blackflies are gathered
outside my windows hungrily waiting for me to step outside. Millions of
stinging mosquitos are breeding in puddles left by the spring rains. Not to
mention deer flies, horse flies, gnats, no-see-ums and many others whose sole
purpose for living is to drive humans mad.
Meanwhile
news sites are reminding us of the United Nation’s report on how insects are
good for our planet and good for us to eat. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization says
that 35 years from now the world will have nine billion people and food
production will need to almost double. Land scarcity, fished out oceans, water
shortages, and climate change will make feeding the world more difficult. Insects, the UN says, are the solution to
feeding a hungry world.
“In the future, as the prices of
conventional animal proteins increase, insects may well become a cheaper source
of protein than conventionally produced meat and ocean- caught fish.”
Raising livestock for beef, pork, lamb,
poultry is inefficient, and some people say, unethical. You have to grow
billions of tons of grain to feed those animals, then they pass gas which adds
to global warming.
Insects are protein packed and can be reared
with little technical knowledge and capital investment. They don’t require
butchering; you can eat them whole. And, I gather, they don’t pass gas.
So there it is: the solution to the spring
fly season is to start eating them.
I’ve unintentionally breathed in and
swallowed my share of bugs. I have never found them tasty, satisfying nor
healthful. Whenever I feel myself running low on protein I’ll vote for a
hamburger or a couple of strips of bacon.
