Which is better? Eating insects or eating meat

Creatures like salamanders, bats, and birds have diets that are mainly insect-based. From crickets to flies to insect larva. 

Keep in mind that most small creatures live shorter lives than larger ones. However, even though salamanders, bats, and birds are small, they have long lives. For example, an African Gray Parrot weighs on average 1 lb, but can live 50 years. A Mexican free-tailed bat weighs 1/2 ounce and can live up to 18 years.

Diets made up of insects seem to be very healthy for the animal as well as the environment. For example, insect-eating bat poop (or guano) is high in nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. There is much more diversity of species in and around caves which bats have colonized. Guano has been prized as an excellent fertilizer given its high nitrogen and mineral content.

And another thing I learned from reading up on guano is that guanine was first obtained from guano in the mid-1800s. Guanine is one of the 4 major components of RNA and DNA in our cells.   

We are what we eat. Which would you rather be? an old lion or a young salamander? A lion's diet is made primarily of meat whereas a salamander's is made primarily of insects. 

What does an insect diet have that a traditional meat-based diet does not have? For those of us that have difficulty increasing  the fiber in our diet, you can imagine that insects would be a great source of fiber. Meats provide none. Insects have higher content of the health-producing minerals, like manganese, zinc, copper, and calcium. They also have higher levels of many of the vitamins compared to meat, including vitamin C. And the fats from insects are higher in polyunsaturated fatty acids, as compared to meat's packed saturated fat content.

Finally for each 100 grams of insects, you get more calories and more protein compared to the same 100 grams of meat: caterpillars have 50% more protein than chicken; bees and ants have twice the amount of protein as eggs from chicken; crickets have 20% more protein than beef. In addition, like fish, insects provide more unsaturated fatty acids.

In fact, several international agencies, such as the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations are advocating insects as supplemental foods in many developing countries to help ameliorate the effects of food insecurity and vitamin and mineral deficiencies.

Why do we think a lobster is good food, but a cricket is bad? They belong to the same phylum. Why are crabs, crayfish, shrimp, and lobster delicacies, but spiders, scorpions, crickets, grasshoppers, and tarantulas not?  If you look at the dish of grasshoppers (shown below), it could be mistaken for a dish of fried shrimp.

In many countries, particularly in Africa, insects are seen as a food delicacy. Sometimes this started because of problems with insects. In Thailand, in the 1960s and 1970s, there was a major problem with the Bombay locust attacking the crops. At first, the government responded by using pesticide. But as the pesticides didn't work, the farmers started harvesting the locusts. Today, in Thailand, the Bombay locust is one of the most popular street food snacks, called patanga. In Mexico, favorite insect foods are deep-fried ants with guacamole and smoked grasshoppers. 

When is the last time you ate a cricket? or an aphid? Did you know that we eat about 2 lb of insects per year without knowing, from insect body parts, to bugs in coffee beans, to fly eggs in fruit juice.

Insects are making it in trendy restaurants, with offerings of  insects on their menus. Insect food has even hit major League Baseball! The Seattle Mariners have been selling chapulines, toasted grasshoppers served in four-ounce cups with savory chili-lime salt seasoning since 2017. They are one of the favorite items in their concession stand.

If you’ve never tried one, you might wonder what an insect tastes like.  I hear that cricket-flour powder has a very good taste. Some have compared sauteed waxworms to mac and cheese. Giant water beetles taste like “melon soaked in banana-rose brine, with the consistency of red snapper". Scorpions taste very much like popcorn, shrimp, and crab. Fire-grilled tarantula is a Cambodian favorite, with a texture that's similar to chicken.

However, insects aren’t something anyone can eat. Those who are allergic to crustaceans like shrimp are likely to also be allergic to insects.

We may have to jump on the bandwagon, anyway, and start eating crickets. Substituting meat with insects is an effective way to cut back usage of land, water and feed on farming. It can also alleviate global warming—insects emit 1% of the greenhouse gases versus almost 20% for domestic livestock.

Also, insects have a much higher efficiency of food conversion than other animals. Every 45 kilograms of feed yields 4.5 kilograms of beef. Compare that to a yield of 20 kilograms of grasshoppers, for a similar amount of feed (more than 400% better).

Finally, from a waste reduction standpoint, insects can help more than hurt. Mealworms can survive by eating plastic foam: a hundred mealworms can consume several grams of plastic every day.

In this article, I have highlighted several points

• Certain species live longer, and their diet amazingly is insect-based
• Our poopies could be "healthier" when our food is insect based
• Part of the health benefit from eating insects versus meat has to do with higher protein, fiber, and health-promoting minerals while lower in saturated fats
• Why do we fuss about eating insects? We eat "water-based insects" like shrimp and lobster without any problem
• Many societies already have insects as part of their mainstream diet. In Western societies, insects are hidden in many of the foods that we already eat
• Insects taste very much like foods that we already eat
• Moving towards using insects in our diet and cutting out meat may be environmentally greener  

If most of our protein in our diet changes to an insect-based diet, will our grandchildren live to be 200? Will the "guano" that children produce be used to fertilize the vegetable garden in the back yard? We are what we eat. Which is better: to be an old lion or a young salamander? How about joining me for a lunch of toasted grasshoppers and cricket flour brownies tomorrow?