Bugs, Fake Meat and Cannibalism
The inorganic push towards "sustainable" consumption
It is apparent to me that there continues to be an “inorganic” push towards certain consumption methods. I recently heard a statistic that “two billion people eat bugs as part of their diet”, hearing that statistic made me cringe and the accompanying video that was attempting to push bug eating as the future left me filled with dread. In my view instead of lowering the standard of living for everyone, why couldn’t we try to raise the standard of living so that we could all enjoy the consumption of meat products? I do not believe that most people would prefer crickets over steak if given the options. This video I watched is nine years old, yet a more recent video still says that 2 billion people eat bugs regularly, showcasing that we’ve done little to raise people out of the poverty of requiring the consumption of insects.
Before I discuss more about “sustainable” consumption I want to point out that the prevailing theory is that meat consumption was one of the primary factors that led to our rapid brain growth and development. The calories, proteins and fats that we derived from the consumption of meat vs other sources left us more filled, allowed us to have smaller guts overall since we didn’t have to use as much energy to process raw vegetables and provided a much better energy source. This became even more refined when our ancestors discovered cooking meat which allowed us to process food even faster and with less risk of disease. (1) (2) (3)
There is also the reproductive rate increase amongst females associated with a meat based diet. The cooperation between the sexes and with each other to find, cook and consume meat may have had some correlation with the development of some early social norms.(1) (2) (3)
Astroturfing History to create a narrative
Well this was the prevailing theory until recently when I believe the inorganic push to change our eating habits began. If you google “Meat and the Development of the Human Brain. The “snippet” that comes up that most people will read and close out with their 8 second attention span is a statement that is not even backed up with a full article, it is a landing page with no other real information. It refers to meat causing anatomical changes in early humans as a “Myth”.
So I dived a little deeper into a few of the number of articles that came out in 2022 (and one in 2019) regarding this change in science. In the articles there is some interesting discoveries. In all of the articles the theory of meat eating cannot be dismissed, instead we are told that “it’s more complicated” then previously thought but the evidence presented is flimsy at best. Instead each article encourages us to ask more questions and accuses the sampling size of being too narrow/small. Finally the articles conclude with a final paragraph where we are told we should question our meat eating habits. To me this sudden push in January of 2022 is another case of astroturfing well established theory to meet a political cause, the cessation of modern meat eating.
To some, an origin story of humanity that’s rooted deeply in carnivory seems to point toward some long-lost masculine ideal that humans owe their very existence to their lust for blood and meat. In reality, the emerging evidence is a little more complex than that. Meat-eating may have evolved alongside a host of other behaviors that unleashed the power of our larger brains and set us down the path to complex language and societies. “Maybe meat made us human not just because we were eating it, but because of the social stuff we were doing around it,” says Merritt. “Rather than asking ‘did meat make us human?’ I would like to know how meat made us human.” -https://www.wired.com/story/human-evolution-meat/
As scientists continue to gather evidence and add nuance to the “meat made us human” hypothesis, modern people will have to grapple with the decision over whether or not to continue to eat meat. Meat may have played an essential role in human evolution, but processed meat is quite unlike what our ancestors once ate. -https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/eating-meat-make-us-human-new-research-casts-doubt-rcna13315
And she also hopes it gets people outside the field reconsidering how they think about their diets.
“There’s a lot of people that adhere to modern ‘Paleo Diet’ movements that think that meat-eating was the most important dietary change in our evolutionary history,” Pobiner says. But our ancestors were omnivores who ate everything available to them.
“I can’t imagine any of our early human ancestors going, ‘no, I’m not going to eat those tubers. I’m not going to eat those lentils.’ Food is food.” -https://www.inverse.com/science/new-study-debunking-meat-made-us-human-hypothesis
Media and Celebrity Obsession with Bug Eating
I don’t think that it’s a secret anymore that there is a strange obsession amongst our cultural elite and their mouthpiece, the legacy media, in attempting to shape a post meat world. In one of the most disturbing propagandized videos I have seen, celebrity actress Nicole Kidman gags down some bugs while sitting on a set decorated in a pompous 18th century décor. Nicole herself performs a spectacle where she eyes the camera sensually while dropping writhing bugs into her mouth. In a set of carefully edited shots afterwards she proceeds to appear to scarf down bugs. She jokes about the flavors and informs us that she is one of two billion people who eat bugs. If one really takes notice it is observed that the majority of the shots are taken from far away and the camera quickly pans away after the bugs are dropped into her mouth. She moans and makes sexual references during the display.
I can’t believe it’s not butter? In a 2020 video Inside Edition showcases an “alternative” butter made out of mashed up and pulverized bugs where the fat is drawn out to make a butter like substance. In the video it is explained that the method is meant to be more sustainable and better for the environment. Random people are seen smiling and happy to be eating the bug butter, even saying that they would eat it again. Is this the consensus though? Would these people, given the choice between butter from mashed up bugs and butter from dairy choose the former? I doubt it except in the most extreme environmentalist cases. Watch it yourself and decide if you’d trade in dairy butter for bug butter.
Let’s address the bug in the room here. I don’t care if you want to eat bugs, I believe in freedom of choice. What I don’t like is being astroturfed about a subject. If humans naturally want to head towards the type of sustainability shown in these mass media videos, it will occur without the celebrity endorsements and the consistent badgering which is forcing culture instead of allowing it occur organically. If humans actually enjoyed eating bugs and the taste, it would already be part of our culture and it would already be a staple on our shelves and not the “natural food section” that most people avoid at the supermarket. We eat all sorts of crazy things from oysters to moldy fromage to exotic fungi yet bugs haven’t made that list. In the old days despite bugs being readily available, they didn’t make up even a peasants normal diet unless it was an utter famine. It simply isn’t a natural want for most people in their diet mostly because it lacks the flavor and value that meat gives us.
Finally before I move on to the next section I think a final note is that one needs to really ask themselves if the rich and connected will eat the bugs like we are told we should? Will our political class sit down to a buffet of cooked crickets soaked in bug butter while discussing policy with other nations? Will Justin Bieber relax after a concert with a shake made from cricket powder? I have a good idea of an answer, we the people will eat the bugs while our betters will eat whatever they want.
Beyond Meat, Beyond Believable
In the inorganic world of sustainability, nothing could be further from natural then the industry revolving around fake meat. Vegans who want to feel like they’re still eating like the rest of us and meat eaters who want to take a toe dip into the world of pretend can invest in eating a product that features ingredients that probably aren’t the best for you and certainly are not natural ingredients, but you can feel better knowing that it might have cost less to make then natural beef.
The biggest problem with fake meat is that the general consensus seems to be that it tastes gross. I tried a fake meat burger at A&W and I had to agree the texture was off and the taste certainly left something to desire. I couldn’t believe people advocated for these items as an alternative. The gross taste though hasn’t stopped the culture push however with Beyond Meat hiring the queen of vapid culture Kim Kardashian to push their product line. In a 30 second commercial that cost them god knows how much money Kim Kardashian is observed holding several beyond meat products with the insinuation that she has consumed them. The problem is, if you look closely, not once during the 30 seconds is Kim ever observed actually putting one of the products in her mouth. A product so good and tasty that even celebrities won’t eat it. Yet, there is an expectation that we as good environmentalists will eat it and that we’ll enjoy it. See the commercial for yourself and decide, did Kim eat the chemical cocktail meat substitute or was it all as fake as vapid celebrity culture?
Soylent Green is People!
Probably the best disturbing cultural trend that is beginning to emerge from the inorganic cultural push towards sustainable consumption is the idea that we will need to start eating each other to save the planet. Cannibalism is one of the biggest taboo’s of human culture. When one thinks of cannibalism, one might conjure an image of a pale sickly person with rotting teeth and a green like appearance feasting upon the rotten flesh of a newly laid corpse in a graveyard. These images are conjured for good reason, the consumption of human flesh by other humans comes with health risks, particularly the brain which can lead to Prion Disease which can spread to other people. There is no known cure.
In an effort to make cannibalism a trend, a company called Bite Labs has developed a lab grown artisanal salami from celebrity tissue samples. My socialist friends can now literally claim to eat the rich, without having to put in any of the effort! Their website also pushes that it’s healthier and eco-friendly. Save the planet folks, by eating the lab grown cells of famous people!
The New York Times recently came out with an article called, A Taste for Cannibalism. While the article does not explicitly call for the consumption of human bean juice, it does elude to the concept of finding alternative, sustainable solutions to our current consumption of animal based diets. We need to keep an eye on these articles because at this point it is the planting a seed of an idea in our heads. In the future we could be looking at a plotline very similar to the movie Soylent Green, which came out in 1973 showcasing a future in which global warming leads to the consumption of humans as part of a sustainable living for the populace. For those interested in reading, the NYT Article is available here: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/23/style/cannibalism-tv-shows-movies-books.html
I want you to ask yourself, is this the society that you want? Does this feel like the natural progression of culture? A culture that revises history to push a narrative? A culture that would rather see people lower their standard of living towards the humiliating consumption of insects? A culture that hires celebrities that won’t even consume the product they are pushing for sustainability? A culture that is slowly attempting to normalize one of the most heinous taboo’s through the idea that you could consume the proto-flesh of your favorite celebrity?