Clinton Grants $1 Million To Edible Insect Farmers 277
An anonymous reader writes "Former US President Bill Clinton, through the Clinton Global Initiative, has awarded $1 million to a group of Canadian MBA students who are looking to solve urban hunger by feeding people insects. The students will use this as seed money for their start-up, Aspire Food Group, which aims to farm, produce, and sell edible insects as a way of solving world hunger, particularly in slums. Aspire says it will even work toward replacing livestock farms with insect farms in some areas." Insects as food aren't necessarily incompatible with conventional livestock, either.
Re:Yecch! (Score:5, Informative)
Eat bugs? No thanks, I'll stick to birds, fish, and mammals. No escargo or grasshoppers for me, thank you.
It's possible that you won't have a choice.
Re:Yecch! (Score:4, Informative)
That's your call to make.
While I've never eaten grasshopper, spider, or cricket, I do know people who have eaten them and they say that it doesn't taste that significantly different. Apparently, locusts taste like chicken.
Esgargots are similar to squid, I find... they don't really have much flavour on their own and get most of their flavour from how they're prepared. Fried up in garlic and butter, they're quite tasty.
How about shrimp? (Score:3, Informative)
Shrimp are, after all, arthropods. Some even call them "insects of the seas."
Re:God and Cockroaches (Score:5, Informative)
Even though insects are indeed edible and can be quite good (try them roasted or chocolate covered), TFA talks about using this product as a cheap replacement for animal feed for both livestock and fish farms. Currently livestock is fed reprocessed livestock leftovers which causes several problems. One, it's expensive to reprocess this into a healthy mix two, it's not very efficient. If you do it wrong (which is the case in a lot of 3rd world countries), you could help spread stuff like Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease or FMD among your livestock. Additionally (if you're into that) the current processes are not organic so organic products cannot process their own waste.
According to the article, the larvae of these insects eat 90% of whatever you give them, once they're fat, you throw them in an oven and they become toasty bits to feed.
Re:Yecch! (Score:5, Informative)
I would bet money you have eaten plenty of insects in your life. You may not have noticed, but check out how many insect parts are allowed in various kinds of processed foods one time.
Re:Yecch! (Score:4, Informative)
http://xkcd.com/1268/ [xkcd.com]
They can keep the water bugs, I'll stick to steak.