There are diminishing returns to further optimization of lower-climate-impact meat sources. Look at greenhouse gas emissions per 100 grams of protein in various foods:
Beef is really high at 48.89 kg CO2e, but pork is only 7.6 kg CO2e. Farmed fish is 5.98 and poultry is 5.7. If you can get people to switch from high-climate-impact meat to low-climate-impact meat, you've already reaped most of the possible climate gains from dietary change. To meet a given protein consumption target, you cut 88% of the emissions by getting protein from chicken instead of beef. Trying to get people to eat unfamiliar and potentially "icky" protein sources after they've already switched to chicken can only produce minor gains.
Though most people are reacting to the headline about how humans could eat maggots, the article says that these maggots are actually being fed to chickens, farmed fish, and other animals. That approach reduces waste streams, slightly reduces the already-modest climate impact of farmed fish and poultry, and doesn't have the enormous uphill battle toward regulatory and consumer acceptance that direct human consumption would face.
Makes me think if you can take maggots and make it look like steak would people eat it knowing what it used to be... it's like that video on YouTube of kids watching a guy blend random chicken parts and asking if they'd eat it, then he turns it into a chicken nugget and asks again, all the kids raise their hands.
I think "chicken" nuggets are a better form factor. We already know that most of them are made of meat scraps, and if they're tasty and look "normal" then who's to know ;-)
I'm hoping that cultivated meat can make itself a viable commercial product. And then there's Air Protein, which should be acceptable to all: https://www.airprotein.com/
There was a study in the 90s wherein the authors sterilized a cockroach and dipped it in some juice. Despite knowing the juice was perfectly safe rationally, most people would refuse to drink it. I find myself in that camp.
People also rejected fudge shaped like dog feces or soup stirred with a brand-new flyswatter.
I wouldn’t be so sure about what will happen or not in general, and in that case it’s certainly an option as
- people already do eat maggot without noticing (and pretty sure some *do* notice)
- if you don’t know about cheese you wouldn’t believe I’m eating fat’s mold.
- our siblings ape, pigs and other animals eat them too, it’s a good nutrient source
- someone from the past wouldn’t believe modern humans eat stuff made from petroleum, animals from gigafactories
- being *not-vegan* is like a religion for some and I’m wondering if they would think about cannibalism before realizing they get plenty of nutrients from the plants already on the menu.
These articles have been coming out for I can’t even remember how long - it’s what popular science magazines run when there’s no better news to run. The answer is always the same - no, people are not about to start consuming bugs in large volumes, especially when chicken performs almost as well in feed ratio and produces products that people actually like and consume. Yeah, people always bring up cultures that supposedly love certain insects, but I would bet that those people start eating chicken as soon as it becomes cheap enough. Not to mention that the allergenic potential for insects is almost certainly a lot higher than chicken - I’ve never heard of someone being allergic to chicken, but a ton of people are allergic to shrimp and crab.
At best this is destined to become a potentially higher-quality feed for chickens and pigs.
Somehow I suspect there will be a tech billionaire who will exclusively eat genetically modified maggots while the rest of us will be forced to subsist on chicken.
It’s Logan’s Run to the book. Then they wonder why the west is turning to “crazy populists” when the “sane and democratic” ones go around supporting this kind of stuff…
Investors problems obviously. If you care about the ecological or moral aspect of meat consumption we already have way more than enough affordable/healthy/tasty solutions
Several centuries ago the peasants got uppity. Thought they deserved to eat meat and other decent food. Thought they deserved to wear something other than rags. It wasn't easy to fix, but our masters grinded away this whole time to come up with a solution. You will eat maggots and you will be happy.
There's an incredible piece of biotechnology that converts insects and inedible seeds and detritus into delicious, perfectly edible protein pods with very high efficiency. And at EoL, any of the pods can be used to replace the original, which itself is also edible and delicious. It's fully automated and requires almost no human labor to maintain. This is my preferred method of superfood consumption.
People acting like you can't get protein from fruit, veg, and legumes. You don't need anywhere near the amount of protein that has been touted the past decade.
Maggots are commonly found on rotting food or dead animals. They're a clear indication that decomposition has set in.
Of course this only applies to species of flies that go for these food sources. Most fly larva (really most insect larva) look like "maggots", including for species like hoverflies that eat nectar. But these "maggots" are usually hidden in the soil or on the plant and don't show up in one place in large quantities. Thus there's an obvious association between maggots and rot.
Can anyone provide a coherent explanation for why we shouldn't just skip the inefficient step where we convert plant protein to animal protein and just eat a bowl of black beans instead of a maggot concoction? Couldn't we just go for beans if we want supply chain efficiency or meat if we aren't optimizing for that?
If it {tastes,feels,looks} like eating shrimp, I don't see why people wouldn't go for it. After all, much weirder looking bugs of the sea (e.g. lobsters, crabs) are considered luxuries.
I remember a NileRed video where he explained that the taste of chicken soup comes from the specific combination of amino acids, which he demonstrated by mixing chemically produced amino-acids in the exact same proportion, and the end results tasted the exact same.
We have those maggots (BSFL) sometimes in our compost naturally and I would never eat anything made with them.
The problem is not even the animal/maggot itself but the fact that it consumes ANYTHING. Old apples, coffee grounds, house plants, dead rats, everything.
The incentives to produce them more cheaply by feeding them trash (actual trash not mango peelings) is obvious and just too risky.
When cost is the only reason they matter anyways, why waste money on quality ingredients or good QA?
Watching millions evaporate on new protein sources that people. don't. want. is the ultimate example of founder hubris. Imagine thinking you can overcome the subconcious ick factor most humans have with a product made of nightmare fuel. I kind of appreciate the delusion and commitment but these companies have failed to make insects a) more palatable than traditional food b) cheaper than traditional food c) healthier than traditional food.
This wouldn't happen unless they think they've cracked the code to mass control of human minds and spirits. They believe (correctly?) that not only can they do that, but that they're so far along in their mastery that they can announce this shit right now without causing themselves problems.
If you disagree, perhaps you're just one of the outliers they have determined they can ignore (for now). We see these threads on HN once a month, at least, and the comments are overwhelmingly positive. I will take a 15 point updoot hit just for the comments in this thread before midnight.
"These guys are much better than houseflies... ...They don’t transmit disease" -- My worry is for houseflies to sneak inside and cross-breed and "poison the well", is that possible?
My take is to use cultivated insects (Black Soldier Flies), duckweed, and algae as protein feedstock for chickens and fish. Along with more humane husbandry of them it should be an acceptable path for protein for people.
barely off topic, but we feed dehydrated mealworms to the birds outside and they love them. always fun checking out of Tractor Supply saying "nothing goes better on yogurt".
Plenty of tourists enjoy eating deep-fried maggots in Thailand every year. But Thai people don't, they find the idea as disgusting as anyone else does.
However if they can be turned into nondescript foodstuffs like protein powder, I figure it will come down to cost; can it be sold cheaper than plant based powders?
This is missing the forest for the trees. Coal plants alone accounted for 20% of emissions back in 2018, so I assume the fraction is only slightly lower now. Like so badly - coal is 5% of energy generation worldwide, yet the entire emissions from electricity generation is only 25%!
Agriculture is also responsible for its own level of emissions but only because the world has been conditioned to dairy, and by consequence beef. Those are hard dietary habits that won't be changed any time soon. Also rice cultivation is responsible for GHG emissions, so are we going to let 80% of the planet starve?
Strangely enough, I have no problems with animals eating maggots. I could eat a chicken that ate bucketfuls of potato beetle larvae. But eating maggots is ever so closer to their own food.
Unsurprisingly, the name InsectiPro (the company featured in the magazine article) comes up in publications from the Gates foundation, the WEF and the World Bank.
NGOs trying to convince the rest of us to eat bugs to save the planet, while many of their members are soon going to be boarding private jets headed to Davos. Hard pass - I'll continue enjoying eating meat thank you.
FTFY "Next Superfood for Poor Humans". Hollywood and politicians will shame us for not switching to maggots and roaches that are good for planet, from their jets and $20KK mansions.
Tech bros want to feed humans intellectual AI slop and physical maggot slop. Ironically, during the Biden years MAGA complained daily that the WEF wants to make people "eat ze bugs".
There are diminishing returns to further optimization of lower-climate-impact meat sources. Look at greenhouse gas emissions per 100 grams of protein in various foods:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-per-protein-poore
Beef is really high at 48.89 kg CO2e, but pork is only 7.6 kg CO2e. Farmed fish is 5.98 and poultry is 5.7. If you can get people to switch from high-climate-impact meat to low-climate-impact meat, you've already reaped most of the possible climate gains from dietary change. To meet a given protein consumption target, you cut 88% of the emissions by getting protein from chicken instead of beef. Trying to get people to eat unfamiliar and potentially "icky" protein sources after they've already switched to chicken can only produce minor gains.
Though most people are reacting to the headline about how humans could eat maggots, the article says that these maggots are actually being fed to chickens, farmed fish, and other animals. That approach reduces waste streams, slightly reduces the already-modest climate impact of farmed fish and poultry, and doesn't have the enormous uphill battle toward regulatory and consumer acceptance that direct human consumption would face.
Makes me think if you can take maggots and make it look like steak would people eat it knowing what it used to be... it's like that video on YouTube of kids watching a guy blend random chicken parts and asking if they'd eat it, then he turns it into a chicken nugget and asks again, all the kids raise their hands.
It's the Snowpiercer food bar
That "guy" on Youtube is Jamie Oliver, a world class chef who made a documentary on processed food in American diets.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKwL5G5HbGA
Some people find him a bit too preachy or wears his heart on his sleeve. However his battles for healthier food in schools is commendable.
maggot nuggies with french cricket fries please
I think "chicken" nuggets are a better form factor. We already know that most of them are made of meat scraps, and if they're tasty and look "normal" then who's to know ;-)
I'm hoping that cultivated meat can make itself a viable commercial product. And then there's Air Protein, which should be acceptable to all: https://www.airprotein.com/
It depends on the person's disgust response.
There was a study in the 90s wherein the authors sterilized a cockroach and dipped it in some juice. Despite knowing the juice was perfectly safe rationally, most people would refuse to drink it. I find myself in that camp.
People also rejected fudge shaped like dog feces or soup stirred with a brand-new flyswatter.
> People also rejected fudge shaped like dog feces
Have you ever seen the popular Halloween party food "Cat Litter Box Cookies"?
Here's some examples: https://www.cdkitchen.com/recipes/recs/302/Litterbox_Cookies...
https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/15195/cat-poop-cookies-ii/
In my experience, people don't mind eating them. We served them at a Humane Society event once.
People keep trying to push for this. It won't happen. Masses will go vegan before they eat maggots if we run out of meat.
I wouldn’t be so sure about what will happen or not in general, and in that case it’s certainly an option as
These articles have been coming out for I can’t even remember how long - it’s what popular science magazines run when there’s no better news to run. The answer is always the same - no, people are not about to start consuming bugs in large volumes, especially when chicken performs almost as well in feed ratio and produces products that people actually like and consume. Yeah, people always bring up cultures that supposedly love certain insects, but I would bet that those people start eating chicken as soon as it becomes cheap enough. Not to mention that the allergenic potential for insects is almost certainly a lot higher than chicken - I’ve never heard of someone being allergic to chicken, but a ton of people are allergic to shrimp and crab.
At best this is destined to become a potentially higher-quality feed for chickens and pigs.
Somehow I see how this ends. Steak for upper classes, maggots for the rest of us.
Somehow I suspect there will be a tech billionaire who will exclusively eat genetically modified maggots while the rest of us will be forced to subsist on chicken.
It’s Logan’s Run to the book. Then they wonder why the west is turning to “crazy populists” when the “sane and democratic” ones go around supporting this kind of stuff…
But why? What problem is this actually solving?
The birthrate is reducing everywhere, we produce more food than the current population can eat. The problem is not production, it's distribution.
I'm assuming the climate impact of meat
> What problem is this actually solving?
Investors problems obviously. If you care about the ecological or moral aspect of meat consumption we already have way more than enough affordable/healthy/tasty solutions
Several centuries ago the peasants got uppity. Thought they deserved to eat meat and other decent food. Thought they deserved to wear something other than rags. It wasn't easy to fix, but our masters grinded away this whole time to come up with a solution. You will eat maggots and you will be happy.
We could, instead, simply eat beans.
Why'd y'spill yer beans?
There's an incredible piece of biotechnology that converts insects and inedible seeds and detritus into delicious, perfectly edible protein pods with very high efficiency. And at EoL, any of the pods can be used to replace the original, which itself is also edible and delicious. It's fully automated and requires almost no human labor to maintain. This is my preferred method of superfood consumption.
People acting like you can't get protein from fruit, veg, and legumes. You don't need anywhere near the amount of protein that has been touted the past decade.
As maggots have been around a lot longer than humans, perhaps there are evolutionary reasons that (in general) humans prefer not to eat them?
As red meat is a leading cause of bowel cancers perhaps there are evolutionary reasons that we should not eat so much of it ?
> As maggots have been around a lot longer than humans,
Mushrooms and cows (ancestors) too, "evolution" is almost never a good argument for anything
Maggots are commonly found on rotting food or dead animals. They're a clear indication that decomposition has set in.
Of course this only applies to species of flies that go for these food sources. Most fly larva (really most insect larva) look like "maggots", including for species like hoverflies that eat nectar. But these "maggots" are usually hidden in the soil or on the plant and don't show up in one place in large quantities. Thus there's an obvious association between maggots and rot.
Can anyone provide a coherent explanation for why we shouldn't just skip the inefficient step where we convert plant protein to animal protein and just eat a bowl of black beans instead of a maggot concoction? Couldn't we just go for beans if we want supply chain efficiency or meat if we aren't optimizing for that?
Many people find meat an order of magnitude more tasty than beans.
So eat meat or eat beans. Where do maggots enter the picture.
And you will like it! Now, I did not expect this on hacker news
"I'm a farmer."
"I saw that. What do you farm?"
"It's a protein farm. Wallace design."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jCjB-hFhWk
If it {tastes,feels,looks} like eating shrimp, I don't see why people wouldn't go for it. After all, much weirder looking bugs of the sea (e.g. lobsters, crabs) are considered luxuries.
I remember a NileRed video where he explained that the taste of chicken soup comes from the specific combination of amino acids, which he demonstrated by mixing chemically produced amino-acids in the exact same proportion, and the end results tasted the exact same.
We have those maggots (BSFL) sometimes in our compost naturally and I would never eat anything made with them.
The problem is not even the animal/maggot itself but the fact that it consumes ANYTHING. Old apples, coffee grounds, house plants, dead rats, everything.
The incentives to produce them more cheaply by feeding them trash (actual trash not mango peelings) is obvious and just too risky. When cost is the only reason they matter anyways, why waste money on quality ingredients or good QA?
All I can say is silkworm pupae are delicious. Once you get over the ick.
Watching millions evaporate on new protein sources that people. don't. want. is the ultimate example of founder hubris. Imagine thinking you can overcome the subconcious ick factor most humans have with a product made of nightmare fuel. I kind of appreciate the delusion and commitment but these companies have failed to make insects a) more palatable than traditional food b) cheaper than traditional food c) healthier than traditional food.
This wouldn't happen unless they think they've cracked the code to mass control of human minds and spirits. They believe (correctly?) that not only can they do that, but that they're so far along in their mastery that they can announce this shit right now without causing themselves problems.
If you disagree, perhaps you're just one of the outliers they have determined they can ignore (for now). We see these threads on HN once a month, at least, and the comments are overwhelmingly positive. I will take a 15 point updoot hit just for the comments in this thread before midnight.
Why are we pushing this when we have beans
Less calories, more protein.
Also, I tried to buy insects to eat, and they were way way more expensive than most meat. Maybe the infrastructure isn't there yet.
"These guys are much better than houseflies... ...They don’t transmit disease" -- My worry is for houseflies to sneak inside and cross-breed and "poison the well", is that possible?
If its delicious, and I don't know what its made from, but confirm its healthy. I'll eat it. Ignorance is bliss sometimes.
How can you confirm that a food is healthy, if you don't know what it's made from?
I'll leave this for following generations.
You can also feed the maggots to chickens.
And fish.
My take is to use cultivated insects (Black Soldier Flies), duckweed, and algae as protein feedstock for chickens and fish. Along with more humane husbandry of them it should be an acceptable path for protein for people.
Yep, and the chickens can make eggs! We could eat the eggs!
I can't believe this timeline sometimes. Cultivated maggots at scale.
barely off topic, but we feed dehydrated mealworms to the birds outside and they love them. always fun checking out of Tractor Supply saying "nothing goes better on yogurt".
Back in the height of the Atkins diet craze, I got some Larvets and put them in the break room with the sign "high protein carb free snacks - free".
https://hotlix.com/product/larvets-original-worm-snax/
They were left largely untouched.
Not this human...
This is fodder for right wing populists. Well-meaning environmentalists and animal-rights ethicists desperately need to keep this stuff to themselves.
Reminder: it’s bad on purpose to make you click
Plenty of tourists enjoy eating deep-fried maggots in Thailand every year. But Thai people don't, they find the idea as disgusting as anyone else does.
However if they can be turned into nondescript foodstuffs like protein powder, I figure it will come down to cost; can it be sold cheaper than plant based powders?
This is missing the forest for the trees. Coal plants alone accounted for 20% of emissions back in 2018, so I assume the fraction is only slightly lower now. Like so badly - coal is 5% of energy generation worldwide, yet the entire emissions from electricity generation is only 25%!
Agriculture is also responsible for its own level of emissions but only because the world has been conditioned to dairy, and by consequence beef. Those are hard dietary habits that won't be changed any time soon. Also rice cultivation is responsible for GHG emissions, so are we going to let 80% of the planet starve?
Once again, what will actually happen (assuming this does work out), is you 'Vill eat the animal that eats ze bugs' instead.
ew! why? Why?
can it be processed to be more protein dense than current whey powder? Can it be cheaper?
Thats is a niche that could help the cultural perception of eating bugs
59 comments when I got here and no "soilent green" yet? Oh dear... we are truly doomed and deserve the owners make us eat bugs
No.
Too much ick IMO.
I can’t think of maggots separately from thinking about what they eat.
Also, cut a maggot up, and pus-like fluids come out of it.
They also contain a lot of poop.
> I can’t think of maggots separately from thinking about what they eat
If you're not vegetarian you most likely eat animal fed with animal or insect "flours"
Unless you eat local meat from the farmer next door you would be extremely disgusted at how your meat is made too
Strangely enough, I have no problems with animals eating maggots. I could eat a chicken that ate bucketfuls of potato beetle larvae. But eating maggots is ever so closer to their own food.
Although probably not
you vill eat ze bugs und you vill be happy.
Unsurprisingly, the name InsectiPro (the company featured in the magazine article) comes up in publications from the Gates foundation, the WEF and the World Bank.
NGOs trying to convince the rest of us to eat bugs to save the planet, while many of their members are soon going to be boarding private jets headed to Davos. Hard pass - I'll continue enjoying eating meat thank you.
never in a fucking million years
never crickets, definitely never maggots
FTFY "Next Superfood for Poor Humans". Hollywood and politicians will shame us for not switching to maggots and roaches that are good for planet, from their jets and $20KK mansions.
> Hollywood and politicians will shame us for not switching
how much would you bet?
Tech bros want to feed humans intellectual AI slop and physical maggot slop. Ironically, during the Biden years MAGA complained daily that the WEF wants to make people "eat ze bugs".
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