Editor,
Bugs. They’re the latest craze, they say. The greatest thing since Wonderbread, we’re told. Delicious and nutritious! Sustainable. Best of all, they’re eco-friendly, require far less farming land, and possess the carbon footprint of a jigger flea. All this from an obnoxious minority of self-appointed environmentalism minders. Any say to the contrary and you’ll risk the wrath of an insane green priesthood of grub munching Gia worshipers.
Celebrities like Nicole Kidman, James Cordon, Stephen Colbert and Robert Downey Jr. giddily endorse them with a cult leader’s fervor. Shows such as TED Talks promote them with big name agricultural entrepreneurs like James Rolin who’d have us plebs believe that Americans switching from burgers to bugs is an already foregone conclusion. CNN and The Washington Post write puff pieces about it. Even the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation have hitched themselves to the bug eating bandwagon, raising $100,000 for a U.S. start-up group called All Things Bugs, committed to developing a “ready-to-use therapeutic food product made from insects for children in famine stricken countries.”
Right. Because that’s what hungry kids want, of course. Never-mind the basic dignity of meat and grain, eggs and dairy, or God forbid, an occasional ice-cream cone. No no. What they’d much rather prefer is a hearty bowl of ground up meal worms.
I mean give me break. It would be one thing if they were somewhat good for you and we all actually had a choice in the matter. But they’re not good I’m here to tell you, and it’s becoming more evident that we don’t have a choice.
Apart from being manifestly disgusting, insects are extremely toxic, containing an array of chemicals like peptides and polyamines that are well known to cause cancer. Particularly carcinogenic is the compound chitin, which makes up the insects’ entire exoskeleton and is essentially a natural polymer used in several industrial applications such as flocculants in water treatment plants, chelates, and coating materials. Regular ingestion of chitin in mammals has been shown to cause inflammation in the lungs and digestive tract as well as autoimmune responses. The human body doesn’t recognize chitin and attacks it accordingly. We’re simply not built to process bugs the way other animals, like birds or reptiles can. And yet they’re quietly being introduced in school lunches in over a thousand schools in Australia alone, and the E.U. recently agreed to use ground up insects as an additive in pizza, pastas and cereals across Europe. All without our knowledge or consent.
The biggest dreadnought however, steering this movement is by far the World Economic Forum, with it’s founder and Chairman Klaus Schwab at the helm. I find it rich that while these well-heeled celebrities and elites are literally trying to shove bugs down our throats, they themselves wouldn’t touch ‘em with a ten-foot pole. No.They’re enjoying caviar, Chilean sea bass, grass-fed Kobe steaks and swilling thousand dollar bottles of wine, I can assure you.
Christopher Phares
Thomas, WV 26292