It's time to start eating bugs
Cultural food phobias are a funny thing. I understand personal food phobias - I myself cannot tolerate the squishy-yet-gritty texture of beans - but our cultural taboos about what you can and cannot eat are as odd and arbitrary as they are unquestioned. Americans eat cows, for example, but not horses. We eat pigs, but not guinea pigs. We eat sheep, but not goats.
More to the point: we happily eat aquatic arthropods (including crabs, shrimp, and lobster). But we draw the line at terrestrial arthropods (i.e. insects).
Some people believe we should change that opinion. The European Union, for example, has a three million-Euro bonus for any member state that promotes eating insects. And from a logical standpoint, they have a good point. The world is getting increasingly more crowded, and the ecological overhead of raising beef, chicken and pork is simply unsustainable. If Americans insist on continuing to eat meat, we may have to compromise and start eating insect meat, instead.
Nevertheless, the phrase "insect meat" gives me the shivers.
