Protein

Confession: I’m no longer a vegetarian.

Over the course of this summer I have eaten at least five fruit flies.

I don’t know what they were thinking when they fell into my wine, but I can’t say it tasted any the worse.

It’ll be a rare day when a sheep climbs into your roasting dish, or a pig into your frying pan, so

Photo credit: Daniel M.N.Turner via iStockphoto.com

as animal protein goes it was a fairly cooperative business. I have to assume those fruit flies knew what they were doing.

But how much did they contribute to my protein intake?

Only about one gram, apparently, or around 2% of my daily needs.

Intriguing that the most accessible source of info on the protein value of insects is a weight-loss website, and their calculation is based on the measurement of a ‘partial swarm’.  I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.

I did think though that the notion of insects as a protein source had been much in the news over the last couple of years and had become, if not mainstream, at least well known (in a futuristic, wouldn’t-that-be-a-laugh kind of way).  But as this Guardian article explains, it seems likely that in the Western world our blind dependence on farmed stock animals as a meat source makes it more

Razing forest for palm oil plantations, Indonesia. 

Fonterra: “They were going to cut those trees down anyway.” 

Photo credit:  Ulet Ifansasti, Greenpeace

likely that insects will form a major part of their food, rather than ours.  Got to be an improvement on all that palm oil industry waste, anyway.

It’s been a good summer for insects in Wellington. My house is full of moths and my Facebook feed is infested with desperate posts from women of a certain age, begging for swan plants to feed their herds of ravenous monarch butterflies.  

It’s been quite a cicada season too. Surely we can make use of all these? Tapas?  Or if the thought of the crunch makes you queasy, how about just grinding them up into powder – pop it into your smoothie. Could be anything in there anyway, who would know. Truth be told, I’m pretty squeamish about eating insects myself, so I shouldn’t tease. But then, I’m squeamish about eating sheep, cows, pigs, fish, hens, other people – and I’m not keen on smoothies either. I figure the time will come soon enough when I’m not able to chew my food, and meanwhile my digestive system is the world's most powerful nutrient extractor. Actually.

But for those of you who are okay about eating your fellow mammals, really why should you be put off by the thought of eating insects?

They’ve been around a lot longer than us, and as the world warms we’ll be seeing a lot more of them; anything you can do to keep their numbers down will be helpful in the struggle to maintain the lifestyles to which we’ve become accustomed. Get them before they get you.