It’s “L’atelier à pâtes”. 
Their website: http://www.pastadelices.fr/
2 Likes
Given how many vegetarians freak out about cochineal, I’d say this would be a no-go area for them. (Though I’m amused by those people who say they oppose it because they don’t want insects to get killed for their food. I mean, do they have any idea how many insects get killed in the production of vegetables?)
8 Likes
Vegan here.
I was actually coming here to point out this exact thing. Insects are not vegetarian. That’s it - that’s all there is to it. So that whole statement about meat replacement is false.
Sure, you can start discussing whether there is a ranking of animals that you would rather not eat (is it more ok to hurt a bunch of crickets to save a cow?), but none of that is vegetarian. Not eating animals is vegetarian. And just like fish, insects count.
Besides, “we” already have way better meat replacements already, which, you know, have NO animals in them. I’d talk about these replacements, but I have to get back to this burrito now.
4 Likes
I’m not a vegetarian anymore (was for 18 years though) and I came here to say someone isn’t clear on the definition of vegetarian. However I can see some people who would find this more ethical or environmental than say eating red meat.
Those meat replacements may end up killing/hurting more insects in the course of harvesting the ingredients than are hurt in producing the insects for human consumption. Raising crickets or mealworms for human consumption is conceivably more environmentally friendly than a field of soy beans.
You may be interested in this:
3 Likes
The life cycle of fig trees involves a particular species of wasp dying inside the growing fruit-- if you eat wild figs you are eating dead wasps too (apparently some species of cultivated figs in the US don’t require wasps to fertilize them, so if you’re a vegan and like figs you have an out.)
4 Likes
I can get it in certain contexts, but then you have the fun thing of caring about where the eggs come from. Were I vegan, I would eat the eggs from my family’s chickens, who are basically pets who happen to lay eggs.
4 Likes
Since ‘cruelty to animals’ is a big driver of vegan ideals, I’ve never understood why having your own backyard chicken coop or milking your own dairy cow is such a no-no, as long as they are treated well. My sister is a vegetarian, but she had a chicken coop in her back yard for years, the birds were basically free-range (the coop opened at dawn and closed at sunset automatically, the birds came out, ate bugs in the yard all day, knew enough to get back inside before dark.) She even cared for the old birds that wouldn’t lay anymore. They had a good life. . . at least until she had to move to a new place where they didn’t allow chickens.
I am not opposed to veganism, but I see it as drawing a strict moral line in the sand, and ignoring some of the complexities of existence. I know a vegan who works at a restaurant that is decidedly un-vegan. She can’t eat anything on the menu except bread and salads. By working there is she not contributing to the thing she is opposed to? While veganism might be offering a smaller human footprint on the world, our very existence in the modern world is contributing to all its environmental problems.
6 Likes
I’ve seen that documentary! Its so weird!!! How did that symbiotic relationship even start! Both species have adapted to such a weird partnership! Its crazy!!
3 Likes
I’d be curious as to how the US FDA would regard potential import of such pasta, seeing as there’s a tolerance level (the so-called “Food Defect Action Level”) of only so many insects per unit of weight. For pasta it’s: “Average of 225 insect parts per 225 grams in 6 or more subsamples”.
Then again, that’s the tolerance for incidental, unadvertised inclusion. People who are appalled at M. Pates’ artisanal efforts probably don’t realize just how much insect ingestion they’re already doing.
“An Ohio University fact sheet estimates that we eat from one to two pounds of insects per year, and without knowing it.”
2 Likes
That is not really difficult to understand if you know something about the breading/milk cycle of cows or goats (to name the two most important western dairy producers). To give milk and to stay in milk production they need to have young.
Every year.
Approximately half of the young born will never give milk. And you can’t leave them around.
Apart from that, each young want to drink his mommy’s milk, and we want that milk. For our milk, yoghurt, cheese.
And I love cheese, but also know about the background and I’m also not afraid of a part of a good raised cow.
But knowing the story above, I understand vegans, less vegetarians. Dairy and eggs are not that different from insects. Only the killing is less visible or known.
3 Likes
“Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.”
I’m like 99.9% vegetarian, mostly for economic reasons (which is to say, I don’t like my money supporting factory farms).
At the same time, I don’t actually identify as vegetarian because of all the meat-eaters out there who love to find hypocrisy in vegans and vegetarians. It’s like they get off on pointing out the fact that a field mouse may have died while threshing wheat or something (which this thread is proof of).
2 Likes
Ate bugs in Thailand, common snack food. Woulda been more appetizing if it wasn’t still recognizably bugs… NEEDS MOAR PROCESSIN’
srsly, make bugs into chee-tos and they’ll sell. Cheeetos don’t look anything like whatever the hell they are
4 Likes
OK, I understand now, but at the same time, if humanity were to completely stop eating all dairy, it’s not like dairy cows would run wild and free. They can never be wild, and if they are not producing milk they would have to be killed as there’s no economic reason (or will) to keep them alive, even for the remainder of their lives (except perhaps in a zoo.) Is letting them go extinct a valid way to satisfy the moral quandary?
Then of course there are the economic and cultural problems that would create, particularly for Europe and their long, complex cheese history.
My life has so little joy in it, I’m not going to give up the pleasure I get from cheese (I do love it so, far more than meat which I eat sparingly), but I suppose a drug addict could use the same reasoning.
(Sometimes I wonder if the boing-boing editors deliberately put in little bombshells like “pasta from insects. . . a meat substitute for vegetarians” because it will drive a debate here, increasing page views.)
3 Likes
Let me guess, next you’ll be telling me that spoo isn’t vegetarian either!
That was one of the things that kept me from going mostly-vegetarian for a long time. In a lot of the cases the animals would make good pets, but cows are kinda the outlier there.
I was hesitant to google that, because of what it might be short form for…
but it was rather benign as dodgy search terms go
[quote]
DEFINITION of ‘Spoo’ A slang term for an S&P 500 contract that trades on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME). The S&P 500 contracts trade on the CME independent of the S&P 500 index itself, and expire quarterly in the months of March, June, September and December[/quote]
2 Likes
I didn’t know about that spoo, I was thinking of this one:
3 Likes
This reminded me of this NPR story:
2 Likes
