Please respond  to Cierra  post and reply to them about their ideas on the subject matter  label your response A,B,C,D Discuss all areas of the assignment.Five sentences per Letter.

A. Do you believe that eating insects can sustain human life? Why or why not?  Explain in detail. 

In the video provided, he spoke about the amount of fiber, vitamins, and proteins each 100 gm of insects has per 100 gm of meat. While these values were comparable to those of meat it didn’t say anything about levels of fat. This leads me to believe that insects do not have comparable values of fat in the way meat can/does have. Fat is an important part of the human diet and if there is not a good balance between fats and proteins within a diet, it can be harmful to our organs. We mostly get our dietary fats from animal products, like meat, milk, cheese, and butter. For this reason, I don’t think that insects alone could sustain human life. I do, however, think that it would be more sustainable to incorporate insects and less meat into a diet. 

B. Do you believe eating insects will help sustain the earth? Explain in detail why or why not. 

I can see the argument that eating insects as our main source of protein would sustain the earth. This is because the amount of water we use to grow the plants our livestock eats, and the water that they drink is absolutely astronomical. The video provided also stated that 30 percent of the land we see is used for agriculture and this implies a large amount of greenhouse gas emissions. These two things alone are kind of disturbing when I think about it in depth. The issue I see, though, is as I stated earlier that most of the fats we consume come from animals or animal products. There are other fat sources like olive oil and things like that, but I don’t think that our society is knowledgeable enough on nutrition to know what kinds of oils are healthy vs. unhealthy and therefore the point becomes moot. I think that we do need to reduce the amount of land and water that agriculture is currently consuming and perhaps eating insects could be a solution for that by allowing us to reduce the number of animals we use and eat on a daily basis. 

C. What is another alternative food source (that we don’t normally eat) that we could eat that would help with health and sustaining the earth? Explain in detail why or why not. 

I can’t say that I have really thought about alternative food sources. I think that is a privilege of growing up in a developed country. I think that as far as alternative foods go, the US is not really thinking about that moving forward. Plant based meats are horrible for the environment because of the emissions from the factories that they come from in addition to the massive amounts of chemicals that are added to the combination of ingredients that make up such “meats”. Maybe more ocean creatures could be an option since we have not yet discovered or explored so much of the ocean. I think that wasted foods in our country are abundant. If we could find a way to salvage the thrown away produce and other merchandise from our grocery stores, just because they don’t look pretty, then we could probably put a dent in the amount of new produce that is required and would then help sustain the earth. 

D. What other comments or ideas do you have regarding eating insects? Explain in detail. This question is not optional. 

Personally, I think it sounds revolting. The idea of crunching up bugs and having their little arms stuck in my teeth is stomach churning. I cannot imagine a day that I would voluntarily want to eat insects. I think that it is admirable, as an idea to save water and land in the world. I do believe that if we are able to figure out that insects are comparable to meat protein, then we are on the right track of trying to save our planet. There is a movie called snow piercer that depicts the passengers on the train eating blocks of ground up insects and it did sustain them, but no one thought it tasted good and they were all disgusted when they discovered they were eating bugs. Maybe if we found a way to normalize it within our society it wouldn’t be such a crazy idea, but I think that we are a ways away from that.