Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Sparks

If You Eat Sea Bugs, You Can Eat Land Bugs

Crabs are gross too, okay?

Edible insects.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Last week, CNN reported that “Tyson Foods, one of the biggest meat producers, is investing in insect protein.” Nothing about this headline is, strictly speaking, misleading: Tyson produces about a fifth of all American beef, pork, and chicken, and it has indeed acquired a minority stake in the Dutch insect protein startup Protix. But the black soldier flies Tyson has invested in will only be used in pet, livestock, and fish food — they’re not “going into human food,” CNN clarifies, adding ominously, “at this point.”

Still, “the climate people want you to eat bugs!” is a media trope that seems to resurface every couple of months, with bug-eating — or, more politely, “entomophagy” — floated as an opportunity to “save the world” if only Westerners could get over “the psychological ‘ick’ factor.” (Many other cultures and ethnic groups still practice entomophagy today.) Right-wing media, unsurprisingly, loves to play up the gross-out: “The ruling class really, really wants us to eat bugs,” conservative commentator Michael Knowles claimed last year.

The word “bug” usually means “a small insect,” and in that sense, most people in the United States do not electively eat bugs. But colloquially, “bug” is used to refer to any small gross vermin (someone once tried to tell me that a mouse is a bug), and Merriam-Webster and the Oxford English Dictionary both allow for definitions that include “any of various small arthropods” to be considered bugs too. In which case, the ruling class eats bugs … all the time.

Crabs, lobsters, shrimp, prawns — have you ever really looked at those guys?

Crab.This is absolutely a bug.Getty Images

Crawfish.A whole plate of tasty bugs. Getty Images

Like crickets, grasshoppers, and spiders, shellfish are all arthropods, and if they creepy-crawlied their way through our living rooms, rather than out of sight in the ocean, we’d absolutely just refer to them as “bugs” and call the exterminator. In fact, even the human immune system gets confused and “fail[s] to differentiate between bugs of the land and the ocean,” McGill University reports. The 2% of people who have shellfish allergies are typically reacting to the protein tropomyosin, which is also found in “insects like crickets, fruit flies, grasshoppers, cockroaches, locusts, and dust mites.” (I’ve inadvertently tested this out on myself and, uh, can confirm the shared allergen to be true).

Pass the cocktail sauce.Getty Images

While headlines and right-wing commentators continue to scaremonger about “insect protein” creeping closer and closer to our dinner plates, the leap to mainstream bug consumption might not even be that far off because of the relative bugginess of our diets already. In the span of only about 200 years, for example, lobster went from being considered disgusting and barely edible by many Westerners to being one of the most popular last-meal requests of death row prisoners. Conceptually, we’ve already cleared the hurdle of eating animals with more than four legs and that look like they just arrived from outer space. The remaining barrier to bug-eating might be as flimsy as just that: the word bug.

So no, Tyson isn’t going to start sneaking insects into your hamburgers. But when you next walk past your grocery store’s tank of sea cockroaches, consider that if it weren’t for a little residual squeamishness, you could be eating delicious land plankton instead.

Green

You’re out of free articles.

Subscribe today to experience Heatmap’s expert analysis 
of climate change, clean energy, and sustainability.
To continue reading
Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.
or
Please enter an email address
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Sparks

Majority of North Carolina Voters Want to Keep the IRA, Poll Finds

The state’s senior senator, Thom Tillis, has been vocal about the need to maintain clean energy tax credits.

A North Carolina sign and solar panels.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

The majority of voters in North Carolina want Congress to leave the Inflation Reduction Act well enough alone, a new poll from Data for Progress finds.

The survey, which asked North Carolina voters specifically about the clean energy and climate provisions in the bill, presented respondents with a choice between two statements: “The IRA should be repealed by Congress” and “The IRA should be kept in place by Congress.” (“Don’t know” was also an option.)

Keep reading...Show less
Green
Sparks

The Trump-Elon Breakup Has Cratered Tesla’s Stock

SpaceX has also now been dragged into the fight.

Elon Musk.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

The value of Tesla shares went into freefall Thursday as its chief executive Elon Musk traded insults with President Donald Trump. The war of tweets (and Truths) began with Musk’s criticism of the budget reconciliation bill passed by the House of Representatives and has escalated to Musk accusing Trump of being “in the Epstein files,” a reference to the well-connected financier Jeffrey Epstein, who died in federal detention in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

The conflict had been escalating steadily in the week since Musk formally departed the Trump administration with what was essentially a goodbye party in the Oval Office, during which Musk was given a “key” to the White House.

Keep reading...Show less
Sparks

Rhizome Raises $6.5 Million for AI Grid Resilience

The company will use the seed funding to bring on more engineers — and customers.

Power lines.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

As extreme weather becomes the norm, utilities are scrambling to improve the grid’s resilience, aiming to prevent the types of outages and infrastructure damage that often magnify the impact of already disastrous weather events. Those events cost the U.S. $182 billion in damages last year alone.

With the intensity of storms, heat waves, droughts, and wildfires growing every year, some utilities are now turning to artificial intelligence in their quest to adapt to new climate realities. Rhizome, which just announced a $6.5 million seed round, uses AI to help assess and prevent climate change-induced grid infrastructure vulnerabilities. It’s already working with utilities such as Avangrid, Seattle City Light, and Vermont Electric Power Company to do so.

Keep reading...Show less
Blue