Pasta made from insects selling well in France!

[FunkDaddy]

Ah, that is equally benign and makes more sense

[some_guy]

“Pasta made from insects selling well in France!”

That’s nothing, cheese made with live maggots has always sold well in Sardinia.

Casu marzu

[Shuck]

I have to say that, in general, if your fruits and vegs aren’t full of bugs, it’s only because they were previously killed. I grow almost every fruit and vegetable I eat, and have fairly precise knowledge of just how many invertebrates need to die to allow me to eat the products of my garden - it can be quite a lot. A number of products tend to have insects in them - certain types of expensive dried mushrooms so consistently have certain kinds of maggots that there’s speculation they might actually contribute to the distinctive flavor of the product.

[StVincent]

@generic_name

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.

For a while, we joined a cow share. Ethically treated cows, fresh milk, cream, and cheese. Sooooo good. But a bit expensive.

[Trent_Baker]

IT DOESN’T MATTER!!! If your vegan, vegetarian, carnivorous or whatever, its just a fucking label used by idiots to make themselves out to be morally superior.
Eat what you want, draw your line where you want, but for the love of god don’t turn it into a fucking song and dance number. So sick of these fucking labels.

[L_Mariachi]

@Thrower

vegetarians don’t need a replacement for meat

Yes they do. It doesn’t have to be insects or fake meat, but you can’t simply omit meat from a “normal” diet, like getting a hamburger minus the patty. Something needs to supply the proteins, amino acids, etc., so vegetarians need to eat more quinoa and nuts and legumes to replace meat.

[pacifica]

People eat vegetarian or vegan diets for various reasons: health, ethics, environment, etc. Personally, I gave up meat so long ago that I’ve earned a good honest repulsion for it, so I need no other reason. When people quiz me about it, I ask them if there is some part of some animal that would sicken them to think of eating. (The answer is almost always yes.) I then point out that I react that way to the entirety of every animal. So, no insect pasta for me, thanks.

[Israel_B]

If the crickets led fulfilling lives of arts & science and passed peacefully amongst family before being used to make pasta, does that answer the moral objections of the vegetarians?

[anon26470017]

@generic_name

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?

Indeed, that is the dilemma. And I don’t think that it is a good idea to stop eating and producing.
I’ve read ones, long time ago (so no quotation), a bit tongue in cheek comment, but also philosophical, from a biologist: ‘if we assume that one of the reasons to exist is reproduction than all the meat and dairy (and eggs) animals are doing a quite good job. Lots of animals (and breeds) wont exist if they are not eaten.’

But, although I can agree with using and eating animals (I do it myself) above statement is not an excuse to treat them like beasts. And for me that is an important point. Take good care for them, we are obliged to do that.
And also, don’t fool yourself by thinking that only eating dairy and eggs is ‘not killing animals’. You still do, to produce there needs to be killing, and being aware off that will hopefully help in the wider understanding (and hopefully movement) to take better care of the animals and nature.

Bla,bla, in short my philosophy: eat less, but better. How much meat a person needs (if) is totally overestimated, so even with better threated animals we can feed a lot of people.
However, how much meat a person wants is an whole different story. And don’t get me started about the question ‘what is taking better care of animals’. Because that is a different but not less difficult discussion.

(Edit, hours later, sorry, sometimes it can take ages before I realize that I again have written a post that can be offensive and/or wrong interpreted.)
Above I said ‘yourself’ and ‘you’, I did not meant ‘you’ as in the person behind 'generic_name '(lol… English is not easy and now…) but people in general.

@generic_name

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.

I agree with you, cheese can be lovely and if it gives you joy (it does to me) you should enjoy it! Also on the meat part. Not on the addiction part, I only think people should be aware, know what they eat.

[anon85905360]

I wonder if these critters accumulate pesticides?

[some_guy]

@L_Mariachi

vegetarians don’t need a replacement for meat

I think this is a semantic issue, vegetarians are opposed to the phrasing since it implies meat is necessary, the proper phrasing should probably be “a protein source” (of course there are other nutrients in meat that are harder to get elsewhere, B vitamins for example.)

[some_guy]

@pacifica

I ask them if there is some part of some animal that would sicken them to think of eating

Ha. A friend of mine used to preach about how disgusting milk was “its the glandular excretion of an animal!”, meanwhile he would chow down on hamburgers. I would just say “you know, there are probably some glandular excretions in that meat.”

For me it’s about my own skill as a cook-- even with two Moosewood cookbooks around I’m not talented enough to keep my diet interesting, or get enough protein to satisfy my body, so I continue to eat meat.

[Missy_Pants]

I want to do that! But the amount of meat I’d have to sign up for is too much!
We just don’t eat that much meat or dairy!

If we had kids or more that two people in the house it’d be worth it, but not for two.
We did look into sharing with a friend, but even split 3 ways its still so so much.

[jsroberts]

@tekk

In a lot of the cases the animals would make good pets, but cows are kinda the outlier there.

Cows kill more people than sharks do - eating beef is basically a form of self-defence.

Considering that a number of animals that are bred for their meat would have serious health problems if you let them live long past the time they are intended to be killed (and it’s not like they weren’t going to die anyway), I don’t think it would be too big an ethical problem to put them down and end those breeds if the world suddenly decided to go vegetarian. The economic impact would be important, but that’s a different issue.

[monkeybars]

I’m baffled. As far as I know, the pasta noodles I eat now don’t have any meat in them. Why would adding dead insects to the noodles make them in any way better for vegetarians?

If I need protein, I’ll add in some chickpeas.

[SomeDude]

@onemanmob

Hell, everyone eats insects, whether they know it or not.

It’s happened to all of us. You’re riding a bicycle on a sunny day, breathing heavily from the exercise – and not really paying much attention to filtering what might accidentally get sucked in – and all of a sudden BAM you accidentally eat an entire chicken.

Happened to me all the time during my vegan phase. So I gave it up as too impractical.

[ChuckV]

I thought you meant this:

https://books.google.com/books?id=FB0O_HCpBy0C&pg=PA170&lpg=PA170&dq=zappa+spoo&source=bl&ots=cttb80_jzE&sig=bUy-TRQitiufaPPx9NJf66GTdec&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj5q7PGkqjLAhXD_R4KHdXxB7QQ6AEIHzAB#v=onepage&q=zappa%20spoo&f=false