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Fast Coexist reports on the Edible Insect Desktop Hive, a kitchen gadget designed to raise mealworms (beetle larva), a food that has the protein content of beef without the environmental footprint. The hive can grow between 200 and 500 grams of mealworms a week, enough to replace traditional meat in four or five dishes.
The hive comes with a starter kit of "microlivestock," and controls the climate inside so the bugs have the right amount of fresh air and the right temperature to thrive. If you push a button, the mealworms pop out in a harvest drawer that chills them. You're supposed to pop them in the freezer, then fry them up or mix them into soup, smoothies, or bug-filled burgers. "Insects give us the opportunity to grow on small spaces, with few resources," says designer Katharina Unger, founder of Livin Farms, the company making the new home farming gadget. "A pig cannot easily be raised on your balcony, insects can. With their benefits, insects are one part of the solution to make currently inefficient industrial-scale production of meat obsolete."
Of course, that assumes people will be willing to eat them. Unger thinks bugs just need a little rebranding to succeed, and points out that other foods have overcome bad reputations in the past. "Even the potato, that is now a staple food, was once considered ugly and was given to pigs," says Unger adding that sushi, raw fish, and tofu were once considered obscure products. "Food is about perception and cultural associations. Within only a short time and the right measures, it can be rebranded. . . . Growing insects in our hive at home is our first measure to make insects a healthy and sustainable food for everyone."
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday November 20 2015, @07:14PM
Anyway, one of their recurring shticks is lampooning stories like this. Their thesis is that insects-as-food is another New World Order plot to make the slaves (working/middle class) eat the cheapest food possible and use media manipulation to convince them it's good for them and for the environment...
Worked for lobster.... [history.com]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2015, @08:56PM
But that wasn't a conspiracy, it was just exploitation of an extremely abundant and convenient food supply which caused the diet to become monotonous and boring.
For another example of his delusion, he thinks the fad of tiny houses, those little one-room dwellings [curbed.com], is also a NWO plot to condition "the slaves" to think it's chic and desirable to live packed together in slums--which is where the elites want us all to go along with our bug farms. I guess the newly depopulated countryside will then be used for...something? Maybe they want to make the entire Great Plains into a giant golf course.