Let’s eat bugs! Don’t squirm and say icky. Get ready because a millennial entrepreneur has started a Texas company selling roasted crickets. They are “ecologically responsible” snacks and taste like corn nuts with a sour cream and onion flavor. YUMMY! Americans are late to the bug party: two billion people around the world consume insects, including scorpions says this NY Times article.
How can we entice Americans with their timid palates to try insects? The obvious approach is to conceal the specifics of this great protein source. But maybe the opposite is more palatable. Let’s say you hate cockroaches. Worse you have been told that they will be on earth after the last human is gone. Wouldn’t this be the motivation mouths need to chow down on them?
Still not convinced? You say you are planning to go vegan — — your palate is less sophisticated than a toddler’s. Bad idea, human bodies need amino acids, which are the protein building blocks of all our cells. Animal meat provides these essentials in their most concentrated, absorbable form. Expanding our choices reduces the strain on our supply system, decreases our reliance on the most calorically dense meats, and reduces the impact on any one species.
A balance (yin and yang) of plant and animal nutrients is key to optimizing health: a diet that is mostly vegetarian or carnivorous quickly leads to overconsumption. The more you eat, the more you stretch your stomach. When your stomach’s elastic lining expands, the hormones that affect digestion and hunger control, Leptin and Ghrelin, malfunction. Soon, your stomach’s ability to detect fullness is impaired, you eat more and more, and then you size up, up, up.
Get over the ethics of meat eating. This is a distraction. You are not virtuous because you overeat kale, aka Kale Gluttony. Forget the forks over knives battle, and turn, instead, to the concept that less is better. Less is enough.