Gateway Bug

Lately I've been looking more and more at ways I can raise at least some of my own food. Gardening is of course a good idea, but it's tough with our small apartment, and frankly it's an activity I've never enjoyed. I've also spent a fair amount of time looking into Aquaponics, and may even attempt to build something, but that's also pretty space intensive, and a fair chunk of work to get started.

More recently I've been looking at Entomophagy, that is, raising bugs to eat. The sound of that might make some people squeamish, but it actually has a number of advantages. For one, it's really easy to get started. Crickets or meal-worms are both pretty easy to breed, even in limited space. They also are a surprisingly good source of proteins and vitamins. Crickets for example, are a great source of iron and calcium, and relatively low on fat.

There's also a macro benefit to be had from the consumption of bugs. The food, water, and space requirements for raising insects are only a fraction of what would be required to raise the same amount of cattle. In addition, the CO2 emissions for insects are 12-54% that of cattle.

So, given all that, Sarah and I have decided to give it a go. We've decided to start out slow; first we'll just be buying some crickets and trying a few recipes to see how we like them. Once we're comfortable that this is something we can see ourselves eating regularly we'll actually trying setting up our own little cricket ranch and raising them ourselves.

We'll be sure to keep this page updated with how it's going.