The key difference is size. There's a lot more meat in your typical prawn, and this allows you to peal and prep it in a way that distances you from its natural appearance. There's less meat inside the cricket, so you pretty much have to eat it whole, shell and all. The resulting texture is less meaty and more mealy/crunchy.
In my experience eating crickets, I've always been aware that I'm eating crickets. There is no fantastic way to mitigate the texture and the mouthfeel, shy of grinding up the crickets into a powder and reconstituting them in some other form.
(The texture doesn't bug me per se, but it sure does seem to bug a lot of people who've tried crickets. No pun intended.)
An approach to making it more tractable to meet food needs is to integrate it back into our urban/suburban environments and take advantage of advanced indoor farming which can be carefully monitored and tended by humans or robots, which can dramatically reduce resource usage for agriculture and greatly improve land use.
https://bioteaching.wordpress.com/2012/03/24/gigantism-in-in...
Also: Jurassic Park is BS for the same reason. The T Rex would not function in earth's current atmosphere -- at least not without tampering with their physiology and/or some kind of extra support system.
http://listverse.com/2013/01/14/10-prehistoric-bugs-that-cou...
The huge dragonflys were still only somewhere between a crow and raven in size.
We were obviously very interested in the study! It turns out that the paper missed some crucial factors that make insects a sustainable, efficient protein source.
I guest-wrote this post with some details; do take a look if you're interested.
- Crickets are slightly better than poultry at converting poultry feed into protein.
- Crickets are great at converting processed grocery store waste into protein; poultry can't do this at all.
- Both species are awful at converting low quality food waste (a mix of chicken poop and straw) into protein.
- The efficient feed conversion of modern poultry comes only after years of research, development and breeding; the efficient feed conversion of insects comes "out of the box" and will only improve over time.
For one thing you can go more 3D with crickets, whereas with chickens you would have to build additional levels if you wanted to 'stack' them.
Also, many people care about the welfare of the animals they eat, such as making sure they have space to roam and live some kind of life before they are slaughtered. I doubt anyone will care if you cram crickets in so tight they can barely move. So at least in terms of space, I imagine you're going to need much less land for a cricket farm.
The study says that crickets are not that much more efficient converters of plants->protein. The "clarification" accepts and applies the information from the study. It then takes into account an understanding of current processes in chicken cultivation to argue that overall impact on the environment would still likely be substantially reduced, especially with better technology.
[1]: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....
http://www.care2.com/causes/cow-versus-chicken-the-true-carb...
Pun intended??
Every food has protein in it. Bananas have protein. Tomatoes have protein. All plant foods have a complete amino acid profile fit for human consumption. In fact, protein is the easiest macronutrient to get enough of, provided caloric needs are being met. So it's perplexing why eating insects is billed as a 'sustainable source of protein'. Is it more sustainable than say, rice or potatoes?
That's a really weird phrase. I guess suggestions that a protein complete diet is easier when eating meat are also a bit overwrought, but it's possible to eat plants and end up not getting all essential amino acids which is usually what is meant when "complete" is mentioned together with protein.
No, that isn't possible. You could eat nothing but potatoes, or even mangoes, and still get enough protein. There isn't a single whole plant food which is completely lacking in any essential amino acid. How could it? Plants can't "hunt" and "eat" other plants - they must synthesize all amino acids themselves. The "complete protein" myth is one which has been debunked for decades, yet somehow refuses to die.
https://medium.com/war-is-boring/eating-too-much-rice-almost...
And probably diabetes too!
People are willing to pay high prices for meat because meat is tasty and features in numerous delicious recipes, as well as being a source of protein. Crickets would have to be much, much cheaper than meat if the intended market is cricket flour for protein supplementation.
