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It has one of the same inherent inefficiencies as animal meat: they need to eat something to grow. Therefore we need to use a lot of resources to produce a lot of food for them to eat, before we can eat them.
It always seems much more efficient to use those resources to grow food for us to eat directly. Also, getting Americans to eat a vegetable is slightly easier than getting them to eat a bug.
I think the "magic" of bugs is that they can eat things that would be inedible or unhealthy for other omnivores (like pigs). If we can convert some of our food and paper waste into protein and chitin, it might be worth the investment.
This only works for small farms but regular animals already fill that spot there too. Chicken and pigs are mainly fed kitchen scraps in these settings. The issue is once you go into large-scale commercial farming it becomes way too inefficient to use waste products and buying feed is more economical viable. Doesn't matter if it's insects or mammals or.
A lot of animal feed is already made up of a lot of "food waste". Rice bran, maize and wheat offal, fish meal, and bone meal, all of that are byproducts of food for human consumption and commonly found in animal feed. You can even find some that have things like sawdust or other wood products inside. There are even studies into using waste paper for cattle. And while this might sound wrong, it doesn't harm the animal. But the issue is, humans don't want to eat something that ate something we don't like. And I don't see that changing with insects either.
For me the exciting part about bug farming isn't really their use as food (for humans or animals) but more their potential to eat "real" waste (like things that birds and mammals shouldn't eat) and then be turned into non-food items - like chondroitin or have other derivatives made out of their chitin.
Right now it's not very efficient but with some selective breeding (or faster, GMO mealworm gut bacteria) they could start working on the landfill issue. Their poop would have to be incinerated since it would concentrate flame retardants and other toxins, but we might be able to get something useful out of them.
edit: i have a box of mealworms that I wanted to try feeding just styrofoam to to see how many generations it would take to have mealworms that thrive (not just survive and turn to cannibalism) on the stuff, but i felt bad, now they eat kitchen waste and shredded paper.
I think this is a good alternative on paper, but aren't we in the sixth mass extinction and isn't the insect phyla the largest at risk?
Tried mealworm, crickets and a few others.
Pretty terrible tastewise imo, not worth it past the novelty stage.
I don't really see the point honestly, I'd rather we stabilize our population rather than find ways to accommodate exponential growth a bit longer. We're hitting that wall eventually.
Bugs are always a trophic level above plants. It's always more efficient to 'cut out the middle man' and eat plants instead.
Might be a convenient talking point, but imho plant-based should definitely be the priority.
God. Fucking carnis will eat anything other than plants. Like you can just eat plants and survive and thrive you know? Your "food" doesn't have to be sentient and be able to feel pain.
Seriously if you aren't vegan you aren't an environmentalist, your just a hypocrite.
Remember to stay kind. Encouraging people to make small steps results in more positive change than caustic judgement.
Stay kind about the thing that is literally killing us, the planet, and trillion of sentient beings every year.
People need to wake the fuck up, being kind was what my predecessors did and it's too slow. IF YOU EAT ANIMALS YOU NEED TO STOP! There are no excuses.
Its not about making excuses, its about meeting people where they are. Perfectionism sets people up for failure, and leaves many people feeling like it's not worth doing anything because they can't do everything. Encouraging people to take any steps they can helps the movement overall.
Welcoming new environmentalists and staying kind when having discussions helps the movement. It does take emotional labor, and its okay to take a step back sometimes. It is also okay to vent about how you're feeling in an appropriate space (such as a post in the vegan community, during the weekly how you're feeling thread on beehaw, with friends, in your journal, etc). However, taking that frustration out on random people in an innocuous post about bugs is neither helpful nor healthy.
So yes, please stay kind.
And this is the kind of behaviour I'd hoped people on lemmy would not continue on the solarpunk community
You've just continued the same kind of stuff that alienated a whole lot of users from r/solarpunk because they felt they couldn't participate without being attacked for their food choices
What's next, brigading posts with mass downvoting like you did on reddit to sway the visibility of comments in bad faith
If you can't interact nicely with other users than maybe you shouldn't be here
Solarpunk is not vеgаnism and while I don't mind if you personally participate in vеgаnism it doesn't give you the right to attack users here who don't participate in it and gatekeep any activity on this subreddit
Solarpunk has no inherent ties to veganism and vеgаnism doesn't have any ties to solarpunk
The mods previously back on reddit have said this subreddit is not r/vеgаn
Source: ___ ^^https://libreddit.nl/r/solarpunk/comments/tzoiqs/community_update_the_fine_arts_04_2022/
Be kind, and get along with your fellow humans nicely
I was vegan for many years, people like you aren't the reason I stopped but I definitely don't miss the weird aggression either. (btw farming plants still kills A LOT of bugs, usually in more cruel and prolonged ways than slaughtering them for food)
Yes it does.... But feeding the crops to animals just to eat the animals still consumes just as many crops as well as the animal who ate them.
It's more efficient to just eat the crops the other animals eat.
I raise my own crickets on the farm and grow my own vegetables. It's basically a closed system, I compost everything. I add additional nutrients using seaweed.
How far do your plants have to travel to get to your plate? Last time I checked so-called modern farming uses a lot of petrochemicals. Organic farming isn't any better--they use so much plastic to block weeds and pests.
Also, most plant material I grow is not edible by humans. I cannot eat corn stalks. Maybe you can. It seems wasteful to compost all this biomass as there is still so much nutrition left over.
Sounds to me like your carbon footprint is higher than mine. Maybe you should try to create a farming system yourself. One that yields 100% of the daily nutrition humans require. It is not so easy.
I am glad you are vegan. Much better than eating cows. They drink too much water.
You just made up a strawman and assumed a bunch of stuff about me.
Growing animals from food you can eat will always take more energy than just eating the plants yourself. Or if you can't eat it then growing plants you can eat that have protein instead of getting your protein from a sentient animal that again FEELS PAIN.
I'm nice to my crickets though. You don't have to hurt them, you just place them into the freezer and they fall asleep like it's winter time. And then you roast them and mill them into flour. Okay that part does hurt them, but they're asleep. Seems kinda peaceful.
I get that hurting a mammal with complex emotions is very unethical, but where's the limit?
What about fermented food? Tiny bacteria are alive when you eat them. They probably don't feel pain but I can't imagine they're thrilled to meet their doom.
How about mushrooms? They aren't plants, and they apparently communicate with the trees. How do you know they don't possess some kind of sentience?
What about harvesting plants? Everytime you run a combine through a field it's like an insect genocide. Even if you're only eating plants you're still eating insects because they get caught by the harvester and milled into the final product. The FDA allows up to 50 insect parts per 1/4 cup cornmeal.
What about hurting a tree? They're not sentient and cannot feel pain but I still believe it is unethical to harm a tree. Do they not deserve our empathy because they lack our human conception of sentience?
Being a good human is hard. I feel like in principle you're right but I don't know how to exist and not hurt anything ever. You're right, I don't know you. Maybe you're just a better person than I am.
The line is sentience. If they can experience their surroundings. Bacteria don't feel pain or care about "Meeting their doom", they are machines.
Also animals in the field can run to the edge when they hear the combine coming... theyre not just gunna sit there and die: https://www.surgeactivism.org/articles/debunked-do-vegans-kill-more-animals-through-crop-deaths
Even if harvesting plants causes a bunch of animal deaths, it would still be more ethical just to eat the plants rather than feeding them to a cow or chicken to then eat.
The answers to your propositions are quite simple, you just choose to not see them or ignore them because you prefer your tastebuds over anything else. Other sentient beings, the world, us...
Can I just say... It is a joy to argue with you. I mean that sincerely.
Okay, I read up on what sentience actually is and a few studies on insect sentience, social lives and capacity for pain. Having spent a lot of time with the little critters, I can see their point. Like they're obviously social for one. Sometimes they really seem like they're thinking. I don't know.
Let's say in principle I agree with you. How am I supposed to not die of anemia from lack of vitamin B12? I didn't want to do laying hens for obvious reasons. Mushrooms have some B12 and I do grow them, but it's not gonna be enough to keep you healthy long term. And don't say supplements or fortified foods... I need something I can grow or forage locally.
What am I missing here?
PS. I dunno know about the taste buds thing, they're okay but not delicious 😅
B12 comes from bacteria on the ground. If you eat dirty food you should get some.
I just have a B12 supliment I take.
I'm not sure where to get the active bacteria, but you could culture some nutritional yeast, or buy some inactive yeast from the store.
Nah I can't do supplements, and the B12 in nutritional yeast isnt naturally occuring. Some microorganisms do produce B12 but not the ones they use to make nooch. I know, I was surprised to.
I did some more research though, and I do have a source of B12. Remember I said I was using seaweed for fertilization?
Boom: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11430774/
I can just eat the seaweed. 😂
In fact, it appears my people have a long history of eating seaweed: https://www.wildwalks-southwest.co.uk/all-about-laverbread/ (didn't know that existed!)
So I guess I'll go vegan. You win. The crickets will be disappointed that they're getting evicted but I'm sure they'll get over it.
I'm going to go 6 months eating just seaweed and potatoes, while doing blood work to check my nutrient levels. I'll let you know if I don't die 😅. Thanks for all your help.
It legitimately looks like the satire went over Nora's head and made a woosh sound
Haha yeah, I love seaweed. Didn't know it had B12 in it. I think it also has some good omega fats too.
Wow, well I hope it goes well for you! I think this Is a first for me. Lemmy really is a better place.
Have a good weekend 😊. Feel free to DM me if you have any questions.
Using logical fallacies in bad faith doesn't make you look good
I am aware that users like you throw around logical fallacy terms in your comment all the time when you feel your being called out
I've observed it on reddit before multiple times
If you can't be nice you should just give up
This is not the space to aggressively attack users
This is not a strawman argument and you know it, your just trying to throw "strawman" in response because you don't like the response you've been given