Urban Farming Agriculture

Food Chain Radio Host Michael Olson

#934 •  August 31, 2013  •  Sat 9AM Pacific

Guests:  David George Gordon, Author of Eat-A-Bug 

Bugging Out with Edible Insects!

Why don’t you and I eat bugs?

This Poll is closed!!

Which is the most resource-efficient food?

Caterpillar

Chicken

Beef

83%

16%

An estimated 80% of the world’s population is entomophager, which is to say, bug-eating!

 People have been eating bugs throughout their time on earth for a very simple reason:  bugs are nutritious.  100 grams of crickets, for one tiny example, yields 12.9 grams of protein, 5.5 grams of fat, 5.1 mg of carbohydrates, 75.8 mg of calcium, and 9.5 mg of iron.

Furthermore, when it comes to converting food ingested to food yielded, conventional farm animals fair poorly to bugs.  The Eat-A-Bug book’s efficiency of conversion (ECI) rating measures how much food is produced per 100 pounds of food consumed.  For example, a steer’s ECI rating is 10, meaning that for every 100 pounds of food consumed, the steer produces 10 pounds of meat.   By comparison, the ECI rating for the German cockroach is 44, meaning for every one hundred pounds of food cockroaches consume, they produce 44 pounds of meat.

 That bugs are so efficient at converting natural resources to food, and that so many of the world’s people consume bugs, lead us to ask…

Why don’t you and I eat bugs?

(Food Chain Radio & Forums #934)