39 thoughts on “100 Dutch schools forced to serve insects”

      1. You think former President Obama, or DiCaprio, or John Kerry or going to be giving up steak and lobster for mealworms?

        Each of them has a carbon footprint greater than many small towns.

        Like

        Reply

          1. I have nothing against wealthy people, nor against them enjoying their wealth,

            But not when they advocate me eating bugs or giving up my truck, or spending a greater share of my retirement income on electricity.

            $6 gasoline hurts me more than it does the elites with 7 figure incomes.

            Like

          2. $6 gas? I paid $3.19 yesterday at Costco.

            Don, there is so much injustice in the country (try our legal system for a start) and you find it egregious that Gore lives well.

            I think you may have lost touch with reality😇.

            OMG did you vote?😇

            Liked by 3 people

          3. Did you read what I wrote?

            I don’t begrudge anyone enjoying their, but I do oppose the same people pushing policies that will have minimal impact on them but will be devasting to the middle class, and especially the rural middle class.

            Don’t forget, the Strategic petroleum reserves will be out of sour crude shortly, and we will have to start pulling the sweet crude, That will directly compete with fracked oil, further suppressing that source.

            $6 gas by Christmas is quite likely.

            But that won’t really affect Gore’s standard of living, so I guess it’s OK.

            Like

          4. Yes. I saw what you wrote. My point was simple: you don’t have to live in a cave and eat twigs to advocate for cleaner environments.

            Those, like you, are shifting the subject from environmental concerns that will impact our lives for generation to pointing out that Gore’s plane uses a lot of fuel.

            Liked by 2 people

          5. That’s two entirely different issues.

            Of course we should advocate for a cleaner environment, and I have for 60 years, but the obsession with CO2 is resulting in neglect of the things we can do to help the environment.

            Lithium mining is not clean. Cobalt is worse. The land that is occupied by solar farms could feed many small countries. Wind turbines have already killed half the population of Golden Eagles in the US.

            These fantasies of a CO2 control knob on the climate come with a cost.

            Concern for the environment is good, but in the absence of understanding it can lead us astray. CO2 is not the driver of climate alarmists think it is, and that’s a good thing.

            China, alone, emits more CO2 than all of the Americas and Western Europe combined. And India and Africa are following China, not us.

            What the US does about CO2 is literally irrelevant.

            But it can make us poor, and poor countries are dirty countries, 90% of the plastic in the oceans comes from 10 rivers in Africa and Asia. Poor countries cannot manage their garbage, or their sewerage.

            So, these celebrity pied pipers are doing real damage, but their wealth shields them from the consequences. You and I will not be so lucky.

            Like

        2. So, it wasn’t a joke. You were serious. Sad.

          Here in the real world the search is on for alternate, sustainable sources of protein. This small effort in a few Dutch schools to destigmatize a legitimate food product on a voluntary basis is HARDLY the fruit of an elitist conspiracy as you and the “Great Reset” jackass author apparently are eager to believe.

          Funny how when identifying these odious “elites” you always fail to mention that they are overwhelmingly not Obama, DiCaprio, or Kerry. I can see any one of those transitioning to traditional meat substitutes a lot sooner than I see Trump giving up his cheeseburgers. In fact, DiCaprio has already done that. He is a vegetarian. Whiff!

          Liked by 2 people

          Reply

          1. Dicaprio is a vegetarian who flies around the world on private jets and has a yacht that uses more fuel in one summer than I have used in my lifetime.

            Which is OK so long as he is not also advocating me having to limit myself to where public transit goes.

            Oh well, time for baseball. At least I can still afford to drive to the field.

            Like

          2. “Dicaprio is a vegetarian”

            Which means he has already given up steak and lobster which you implied he would never do. Whiff!

            So, if someone lives in a cave and eats only bark, then it would be okay for them to advocate for environmental protection? Otherwise not?

            Liked by 2 people

  3. From the source article:

    “A parasitological evaluation of so-called ‘edible’ insects has highlighted their role in the transmission of parasitic diseases to humans as well as animals.

    “The study pointed out that in the vast majority of cases, crickets from insect farms were teeming with parasites. An investigation found such parasites were present in more than 81 percent of the insect farms tested; in 30 percent of the cases, the parasites found could cause diseases in humans.”

    This may explain why insects are not a significant part of the natural human diet. That is, evolution may have selected for humans that didn’t expose themselves to the risk of parasitic infection that entomophagy entails.

    I suppose that science could solve the parasite problem, but why bother when natural human diets already filter out insect parasites?

    Like

    Reply

    1. Parasites?

      That seems a pretty silly point. Our conventional foods are also teeming with parasites – ones that prey on mammals. I doubt that there are living parasites in properly cooked and processed foods whatever the source.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      1. RE: “That seems a pretty silly point.”

        Instead of guessing, perhaps you can provide a study that compares parasite load in edible insects with parasite load in non-insect human diets.

        Like

        Reply

        1. As an educated person I do not need to guess or do a study. I just know stuff. In modern countries – such as the Netherlands – processed foods are not allowed to have harmful parasites in them.

          But, hey, I get it. You people seize on this little story so you can say “Leftist elites will make you eat bugs!” Add it to your litany. It is a real winner.

          Liked by 1 person

          Reply

          1. Much of the stuff you know is wrong.

            Most helminth parasites (worms) require an intermediate host, a mollusk or an insect. You can’t get liver flukes from mammals, you get them from snails which got them from mammals. Malaria, a protozoan parasite, you can’t catch from your neighbor, you get it from a mosquito, which got it from your neighbor.

            I once had a very painful case of “nutria itch” which is caused by an intestinal parasite in nutria. But you can’t get it from contact from nutria, or their wastes, you get it from the wastes of herons, which got it from nutria wastes, all in the marsh mud, I waded around in hunting. The heron gets infested and the parasite larva matures in the heron into a form that can penetrate the skin. In nutria it finds its way to the intestine to complete the cycle. in people it just burrows around under the skin for a few weeks, leaving a trail of painful hives until it dies.

            Parasites are complicated, and most have intermediate hosts, in many cases, insects.

            Like

          2. “Much of the stuff you know is wrong.”

            Actually, unlike you, I know what I don’t know. And hold off make categorical statements based on ‘druthers or guesses.

            In this case I made it clear I was referring to processed foods. So, sure, there are parasites and some are very bad. They can be found up and down the food chain. They are just not allowed in processed foods. And even in raw foods, parasites do not survive proper cooking.

            Liked by 1 person

        2. RE: “As an educated person I do not need to guess or do a study. I just know stuff.”

          I don’t think you do. For example, you are apparently unaware that parasite contamination of food in Europe is considered an “emerging problem.” Hence the justification for the study cited in the article.

          RE: “You people seize on this little story so you can say ‘Leftist elites will make you eat bugs!'”

          Do you not see what is presented to you? I posted this story to ask a discussion question. You have turned it into a fight against windmills.

          Like

          Reply

          2. You can do your own research. There is no good reason for anyone here to depend on the quality of your education.

            Like

          4. And all this time I thought the little black pieces on my pizza were olives.

            Consumer Reports has been reporting on this for decades. Mass production and processing would probably be unaffordable if there were zero tolerance for organic detritus in our foods.

            We like to think we are separated from and above the natural world. The joke is really on us as we are slowly finding out.

            Liked by 2 people

  4. Just one more thing to get yer nickers in a twist about. Now you’re a victim of the Dutch school system.

    Eating insects is nothing new. My biology teacher in the 50s offered to give any student in the room an extra “A” if they’d eat a chocolate covered cricket. She’d bought a jar of them at the grocery store and handed them out to the class. There was a time when you could buy canned insects locally. They sold candied ants too. She told us we might as well get used to it because insects were going to be a major food source one day.

    (And actually I don’t find eating a cricket any more disgusting than eating a snail or chitterlings or fish roe, but that’s just me.)

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    1. RE: “She told us we might as well get used to it because insects were going to be a major food source one day.”

      I have been hearing that all my life, too, but I have never understood the reasoning. As a rule, people don’t eat insects. There must be a reason why.

      Like

      Reply

      1. In theory, they’re a high source of protein, but I think farming insects turned out to be more problematic than most people thought. That plus the fact they just aren’t appetizing… even when covered in chocolate.

        Liked by 1 person

        Reply

      3. RE: “World wide insects are a regular part of the diet of about 2 billion people.”

        So, somewhere between a quarter and a third of all living people eat insects at least some of the time. I’d say that substantiates my claim that as a rule people don’t eat insects.

        I have anecdotal evidence, too. Two years ago in the Spring — just before the start of the annual harvest opportunity — I posted a recipe for cooking cicadas here in the Forum. Since no one reported back that the recipe was good or bad, I conclude that no one tried it.

        Like

        Reply

  6. Sorry! I realized I had typed “Laura Ingram” instead of “Laura Logan” at exactly the same time as I hit the post button. If there’s a way to edit comments in WordPress, I can’t find it.

    Like

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s