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posted by cmn32480 on Friday November 20 2015, @04:37PM   Printer-friendly
from the stomach-bugging-you? dept.

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."


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  • (Score: 2) by Snotnose on Friday November 20 2015, @08:15PM

    by Snotnose (1623) on Friday November 20 2015, @08:15PM (#265948)

    At 28 grams per ounce, they're talking 1/2 to 1 pound of meat a week. The average american eats much more than that.

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  • (Score: 2) by SanityCheck on Friday November 20 2015, @08:20PM

    by SanityCheck (5190) on Friday November 20 2015, @08:20PM (#265952)

    Per day no less.

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2015, @08:27PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 20 2015, @08:27PM (#265956)

    There's also this bizarre connection to patriotism and masculinity that meat-eating has in the USA. If you suggest someone's diet has far too much red meat in it, they often react like you just spit on the flag. You'd think a burger a day was in the Bill of Rights or something with how seriously it's taken. I don't think this is an accident, I think it's an attitude that was deliberately created by the meat industry over decades.