Science

It's said that John the Baptist lived solely on honey and dried locust.

That being said, energy retention drops by 1/10 every time you go up a trophic level. Insects are great for converting unusable energy (most plants) into food, but wouldn't really hold up with the conservation of energy idea.

Going back to the original idea (post apocalyptic mushroom consumption - I believe), you'd want to save as much of the energy as possible.

-SG

--quote--
UN urges people to eat insects to fight world hunger
BBC News 13 May 2013

Eating more insects could help fight world hunger, according to a new
UN report. The report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization says
that eating insects could help boost nutrition and reduce pollution.
It notes than over 2 billion people worldwide already supplement their
diet with insects.
http://www.fao.org/docrep/018/i3253e/i3253e00.htm

Wasps, beetles and other insects are currently "underutilised" as food
for people and livestock, the report says. Insect farming is "one of
the many ways to address food and feed security". "Insects are
everywhere and they reproduce quickly, and they have high growth and
feed conversion rates and a low environmental footprint," according to
the report.

Nutritional value

The authors point out that insects are nutritious, with *high protein,
fat and mineral content*. They are "particularly important as a food
supplement for undernourished children".

Insects are also "extremely efficient" in converting feed into edible
meat. *Crickets, for example, need 12 times less feed than cattle to
produce the same amount of protein, according to the report*. Most
insects are are likely to produce fewer environmentally harmful
greenhouse gases than other livestock. The ammonia emissions
associated with insect-rearing are far lower than those linked to
conventional livestock such as pigs, says the report.

The report suggests that the food industry could help in "raising the
status of insects" by including them in new recipes and adding them to
restaurant menus. It goes on to note that in some places, certain
insects are considered delicacies. For example some caterpillars in
southern Africa are seen as luxuries and command high prices.

Most edible insects are gathered in forests and serve niche markets,
the report states. It calls for improved regulation and production for
using insects as feed. "The use of insects on a large scale as a feed
ingredient is technically feasible, and established companies in
various parts of the world are already leading the way," it adds.

--end quote--
--quote--

Edible insects: Do insects actually taste any good?
By Charlotte Payne University of Cambridge
BBC NEWS 18 January 2018

Returning home later that day, the men have hundreds of hornets
swimming in liquor - and a 7kg (1st 1lb) nest.

Over bottles of beer, they pick the remaining hornets from the nest
with tweezers, while their wives simmer the larvae - which taste like
a gamey clotted cream when eaten raw, but like sweet mussels when
cooked - with ginger, soy sauce, and mirin. They fry any semi-adult
hornets until their exoskeletons are crispy coverings for the soft
meat within. Neighbours drop by and toast their bounty with a glass
of aged liquor made on a similar adventure, the hornet's venom having
turned the ordinary white alcohol into a dark, smoky brew. As they
enjoy the feast, they joke about how none of them will sleep much that
night - hornets are considered a powerful aphrodisiac.


Different agave species contain different worms. The red worms are
especially prized: even raw they have a distinct smoky taste. They
are in such demand that harvesting is strictly regulated, though visit
a provincial Oaxacan market out of the official season and you may be
approached with an offer of some illicit wriggling red worms.

The vast majority of edible insects, however, are easy to harvest,
with many of them quite literally falling from the sky. Take termites,
which are eaten across sub-Saharan Africa. ...Children are
particularly keen collectors, since the process involves scrabbling
around on all fours in the dirt before pulling the wings off each
termite in turn. They are then boiled and sauteed with a little salt.


Edible insects

Entomophagy is the name for eating insects

Most insects are 100% edible, compared with about 40% of a cow

Mealworms produce only between 1% and 10% of the greenhouse gas per
kilogram produced by pigs

*Many insects are high in calcium, zinc, iron and protein*

Beetles make up 40% of all recorded edible insect species


Other edible insects grow on trees, in vast quantities. Visit
southern Burkina Faso in the rainy season, and you'll find the trees
stripped of their leaves and the ground covered in shea caterpillars.
Villagers wake as early as 02:00 to collect the juiciest specimens,
which they cook into a stew for a hearty meal or fry as a snack.
They've been described as tasting like meaty vegetables.


Others grow inside trees, such as palm weevil larvae. These plump
white grubs are popular in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where
forest-dwellers take an axe to rotting palm trees to find the insects
living inside. The larvae are wrapped in leaves and cooked in an open
fire. They taste like small parcels of buttery pate. Many of the most
widely eaten insects worldwide are grasshoppers, crickets and locusts.


In Asia, farmers trail nets through fields of rice to catch
grasshoppers. In Mexico, they sweep through fields of maize and
alfalfa with large buckets for the very popular chapulines - the
colloquial name for a pleasingly lemony species of grasshopper.
Locusts are mentioned in the Old Testament because they were and still
are a common edible crop pest in the Fertile Crescent region of the
Middle East. Lighter than meat and heavier than seafood, they're
delicious. Each one of these plant-loving insects absorbs the taste
of your chosen seasoning and adds a satisfyingly crunchy texture.

Like other crops, most edible insects are highly seasonal, with many
celebrations of the coming harvest held around the world - including
wasp festivals in Japan and caterpillar festivals in Burkina Faso and
the Democratic Republic of Congo. So, while there's been a lot of
recent interest in farming insects for food, we've been doing it
non-intensively for millennia. The movement towards bringing edible
insects to more dinner tables worldwide has been driven by the belief
that eating insects could help boost nutrition and reduce pollution.
There has been interest in the possibility that bugs - already eaten
by two billion people - may have a lighter environmental footprint
than livestock. Enthusiastic "ento-preneurs" - or bug businesses -
are looking for new ways to appeal to the discerning consumer, with
powdered insects now appearing in bread, pasta, and protein shakes. It
could be that such powder-pushing is what introduces more consumers to
the pleasures of bug eating.

--end quote--


On 4/29/18, Jonathan Cline <jcline@ieee.org> wrote:
> Consider insects.
>

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## jcline@ieee.org
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