SOYLENT GREEN IS…….Crickets.
June 30, 2015
We are, of course, going to need new sources of protein to feed the additional 2 billion or so mouths that are coming.
Look for this news item to be offered as proof of the UN’s secret Agenda 21 plan to take away our hamburger, then remember you read it here first.
…now, national burger chain Wayback Burgers is taking a major step towards normalizing bug protein by adding Peruvian chocolate-flavored cricket powder to a limited-edition Oreo mud pie milkshake, starting July 1.
CNBC’s Katie Little reports:
Wayback’s bug-infused shake originally began as an April’s [sic] Fool’s joke this year to generate buzz. But the response was so positive when Wayback tested the item briefly on Long Island that the chain decided to actually add it to the menu for a limited time…
The current concoction is the result of testing about 20 to 30 different variations with five different flavors of cricket powder.
Climate Denial Crock of the Week 
June 30, 2015 at 8:30 am
The appropriate longitudinal test audience for bug protein should start with the Pope and anyone who goes along with the unsustainable model that organizes and helps fund campaigns against contraceptive use and fights the legal empowerment of women to control their own reproduction globally.
June 30, 2015 at 9:01 am
Pay no attention to tildeb’s maunderings, folks. A visit to his website—Questionable Motives—will reveal that he has posted the Solar Roadways indiegogo fundraiser clip, and seems to think SR is a good idea. That raises serious questions about his cognitive abilities.
June 30, 2015 at 1:24 pm
You don’t think intentional overpopulation in the name of piety is a wee bit of a problem for enabling food sustainability? That’s my point.
Words are easy for people like this pope to espouse talking about climate change and laying blame on humanism as if real concern for the welfare and well being of real people in real life is somehow not quite adequat; acting on these principles of welfare and well being through sustainable practices and responsible stewardship isn’t quite so glib and – gasp! – may even demand that we seriously criticize those in positions of authority unwilling to walk the walk but remain very much a root cause of a central problem.
And yes, I love new ideas that might be able to make steps in the right direction towards sustainability. Producing sustainable energy to meet needs that might succeed will probably require 999 failures for every 1 that works out brilliantly.
You continue to live up to your moniker and focus on the 999 and I’ll continue to support efforts towards the 1… or do you criticize me because my criticism dares to question the privilege far too many people are willing to grant to religiously inspired practices that demonstrably harms real people and actively impedes the empowerment of half the world’s population to have some say in the matter?
And let’s have a little less arrogance telling other readers who to pay attention to, shall we? I’m sure they’re quite capable without your ‘free’ advice.
June 30, 2015 at 3:02 pm
Ooooh! Stick a small pin in tildeb’s overinflated ego and watch him explode with indignation, ad hominems, and more pretentious maundering.
“You don’t think intentional overpopulation in the name of piety is a wee bit of a problem for enabling food sustainability? That’s my point”, you say?
No discernible “point” to be seen there. Neither the Pope nor anyone else is advocating “overpopulation in the name of piety”, and the people the Pope is hoping to obtain greater “food sustainability” for are mostly NOT Catholics (or even Christians).
Your next paragraph is actually ONE long run-on sentence—quite glib and – gasp! – just a self-satisfied rhetorical excursion that doesn’t warrant to unravel and answer. Root cause of a central problem, my ass!
“And yes, I love new ideas that might be able to make steps in the right direction towards sustainability etc…”. Yep, more glib, self-satisfied, and meaningless rhetoric. There is nothing “new” about Solar Roadway other than that it is a new and clever way to separate well-meaning fools from their money. It is going to be one of the 999 failures, and you lose credibility for your otherwise fairly intelligent site by posting Solar Roadway propaganda. Have you not seen the debunking of SR? Do you not have the science and technical background to understand it?
“….or do you criticize me because my criticism dares to question the privilege far too many people are willing to grant to religiously inspired practices that demonstrably harms real people and actively impedes the empowerment of half the world’s population to have some say in the matter?” Wow, such florid BS! Impressive!
Actually, I criticized you because you hadn’t done your homework on Solar Roadway, but after reading your new BS, will add to that that you apparently don’t understand the science behind population dynamics, “food sustainability”, and global economic development—and misrepresent what it is that the Pope is trying to achieve as you wave the red herring of “intentional overpopulation in the name of piety”. Lord love a duck, but that’s just mindless.
You say in closing: “And let’s have a little less arrogance telling other readers who to pay attention to, shall we? I’m sure they’re quite capable without your ‘free’ advice”.
Thanks for the laugh. For someone who gives the type of “free advice” that you have here and on your website, it’s quite funny to hear you speak of “arrogance”. I’ll make a deal with you—you speak your piece, I’ll speak mine, and the “capable” readers can choose who to listen to. Be careful, though. You have forgotten that the BS sword you have attempted to wield cuts both ways.
June 30, 2015 at 8:33 am
Crickets and Soylent Green again? Thanks for getting my day off to a bad start by running a piece that shows why mankind deserves extinction (or at least the modern western world variety thereof does). Does eating bugs make some sense? Perhaps, but we don’t have to burn up so much carbon importing them from Peru. We can grow them here and “bring home jobs to the USA”.
We can see the hand of the marketers at work here. “The bug-infused shake initially started off as an April Fool’s joke this year “to generate buzz.”? Yeah, the wasteful “buzz” of “new and improved”—-like changing the styling of a car every 6 months, and offering cars in hundreds of colors (sky blue is the “buzz” color here this year).
“Chains are getting bolder and bolder with their milkshake offerings these days by mixing in everything from bacon to red wine. The restaurant will debut milkshakes next month made with cricket flour — which has been called the food of the future — and another made with everyone’s favorite dried meat snack, beef jerky.”
“There are beef jerky-flavored ones too….If crickets aren’t a customer’s animal protein of choice, Wayback’s second non-vegetarian milkshake features jerky. It comes in three flavors — barbecue, maple syrup, or hickory spice — is garnished with a Slim Jim stick or two, and most likely comes with a side of regret”.
If one looks at the Wayback menu, you will find a burger they call the “Triple Triple”, which has NINE patties stacked on one bun. Wayback is just an attention seeker that has NO (repeat NO) concern for anyone’s health.
PS The cricket sound clip has some real high points around 7:32:00 and 9:14:30. (Yes, that’s HOURS). It was recorded in Georgia, and you can hear Dixie being sung faintly in the background by the Boy’s Choir of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Sound quality is a bit better if you “view” it on Youtube.
June 30, 2015 at 10:10 am
No worries, DOG & tildeb!
They’re actually correct that insect protein is a MUCH more sustainable source than anything vertebrate. But that doesn’t mean you have to develop a liking for cricket legs or something – it’s typically used as a flour or powder as indicated here.
And no, you don’t have to import from Peru to get crickets (probably it’s the cacao that’s driving that decision). But you *do* have to have an FDA-approved manufacturing facility with regular health inspections (how exactly you count the number of unacceptable bug parts when you’re processing bug parts, I’m not sure). Which does bring up the other point that we all ingest bug parts and no doubt some “acceptable” level of other detritus. Think of it as maintaining your immune system.
There are quite a few US entrepreneurs starting companies around this value proposition, including past client of mine, SixFoods (six foods (dot) com). Scroll down for some interesting comparisons with beef production. I’ve eaten a number of their products and have to tell you that it’s no big deal – if they hadn’t told me it was made of insects, I wouldn’t have known.
June 30, 2015 at 5:28 pm
Crickets are definitely more sustainable than “vertebrate sources”, but crickets will need to be farmed, fed, have their poop cleaned up so it doesn’t pollute waterways, etc. Why waste energy growing crickets?
What makes better sense is to eliminate all consumers like crickets in the food chain and go back down to the producer level. Some folks survive on a vegetarian diet now, and when the SHTF we can start growing algae and bacteria in huge tanks and turning them into “flour” or “powder”. They can be genetically modified to produce animal proteins, and thereby be more “complete” foods..
“Which does bring up the other point that we all ingest bug parts and no doubt some “acceptable” level of other detritus. Think of it as maintaining your immune system”.
True enough about the “ingesting”, although the immune system will hardly care. See: http://www.sixwise.com/newsletters/05/06/29/how_many_insect_parts_and_rodent_hairs_are_allowed_in_your_food.htm
And GB?, that peanut butter in the cricket powder is no joke. They aren’t required put on the package labels how many rodent hairs or insect parts are in our food, but they DO warn about peanut contamination. I can see it now—-on the label of my Hungry Jack Cricket Flour Pancake Mix will be the warning “This product may have been processed on machines that also processed peanuts”.
June 30, 2015 at 11:07 am
Perhaps they have to report on the number of unacceptable chunks of peanut butter in the cricket powder?
June 30, 2015 at 2:24 pm
😀
June 30, 2015 at 3:51 pm
Hey! There’s a fly in my crickets!
July 1, 2015 at 12:35 pm
Lucky!!
July 6, 2015 at 4:36 am
No, we don’t have to find any new sources. We just have to stop being idiots about the sources of food we already have. In the US 40% of what’s grown is thrown out. It’s somewhat less in other places but still huge. We could feed an extra 2 1/2 billion by reducing the meat we eat to only that that’s grown on land that’s too dry, too high, too cold to grow plants for the few people who live there, and meat that’s fed irreducible waste and pests in the perennial plant-based permaculture systems that have to feed the vast majority of people in the world. The vast inequality of wealth, income and power in the world feeds the inequality of climate effects, including that caused by food, especially meat.
July 6, 2015 at 7:44 am
Jeffy4Z is back! With another one of his polemical ideological rants that has no discernible target.
Yes, we waste a lot of food at many levels in the U.S. and (probably) in other developed parts of the world with similar lifestyles, but rectifying that failing is not something Jeffy talks about. Instead he makes the very bald assertion that:
“We could feed an extra 2 1/2 billion by reducing the meat we eat to only that that’s grown on land that’s too dry, too high, too cold to grow plants for the few people who live there”. (Got a reference for that 2-1/2 billion figure? Sounds a bit PFTA to me).
Really? We could feed an EXTRA ONE-THIRD of the Earth’s population simply by limiting the meat we eat to only that which is grown in places where we can’t grow fodder for meat-producing animals? WHAT? Jeffy’s “meat substitute diet” must be heavily laced with hallucinogenic mushrooms.
Jeffy closes with something that at least sounds good on its face, although it makes less sense each time you read it. “The vast inequality of wealth, income and power in the world feeds the inequality of climate effects…” is certainly true, but “…including that caused by food, especially meat” evokes another WHAT?
Up your game, Jeffy. You have a valid point to make but aren’t going to convince anyone with this kind of crap.