Eating Insects for the Future
Insects are the food of the future. Despite what society has shaped us to think, eating bugs is not as disgusting as it may seem. Insects are nutritious and gentle to our environment.
Entomophagy is the practice of eating insects. This custom is fairly common in warmer regions of the world (Thailand, Ghana, Mexico, China, Brazil, Australia, Japan) where insects grow to a large size. They provide proteins, fats, vitamins, and minerals with easy harvest and high reproductive rates. The earth’s warming climate will aid to the growth of insects, making entomophagy very practical in the future and eating meats very inefficient because of the large amount of water it takes to raise livestock. Livestock, being one of the largest consumers of irrigated water, only worsens the drought situation. The only way to cut down on water usage and still meet people’s needs for nutrition would be to incorporate insects into our diet.
Western culture strongly discourages entomophagy even though there is absolutely nothing wrong with eating insects. We eat dead cows, dead chickens, dead pigs, and dead fish, so what makes eating dead bugs any different? In his article, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a world of strangers, Appiah argues that the way we form opinions is greatly influenced by the people who surround us. People’s actions are often heavily affected by the paradigm our society has created even though it may be incorrect. We must change our way of thinking as the world is constantly changing due to new scientific discoveries. Climate change is an irreversible consequence of these uninformed societal thoughts. See more: http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/taboo/episodes/extreme-eats/
It’s inevitable that we are going to have to resort to eating insects in the future if the effects of climate change continues to grow. It’s up to us to reduce the impact of global warming by realizing our society’s fast-paced downward spiral towards an unsustainable environment. If society tells us that it’s gross to eat bugs, so what? Society also told us that global warming is not real and look how wrong that turned out to be. Renewable sources are growing larger in use, proving that society has had to eventually change their perception when faced with the facts of a harsh reality that is climate change. Eating bugs will undeniably alleviate the symptoms of global warming.
