DailyDirt: Protein Is Protein…?
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
Some foods are considered delicacies, but some edible stuff can be just strange or disgusting. It’s actually a bit puzzling how some ingredients and dishes are created. Sure, some weird food items are simply the result of people eating something to avoid starvation, but not always. Here are a few more kinds of protein you might want to try to eat someday.
- A traditional dish from Greenland called kiviaq is made from fermented birds sealed in the skin of a seal. Clearly, this meal was concocted as a way to preserve meat, and it’s not so strange to people who are accustomed to eating it. [url]
- There are plenty of ways to avoid eating gluten. One substitute for regular flour is made from ground crickets. Cricket farms are growing insects specifically for human consumption, and the insects are fed an organic diet. The economics of eating insect protein could become more favorable as resources get more scarce. [url]
- Another alternative source of protein comes from snails, and one variety (Helix Pomatia Linne) is called the “Kobe beef” of snails. “Sustainable. Methane-free. Organic. Free range. Snails are the ultimate protein source.” (According to the only importer of these snails) [url]
If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.
Filed Under: cricket flour, delicacy, edible, fermented birds, food, gluten, kiviaq, meat, protein, snail, weird
Comments on “DailyDirt: Protein Is Protein…?”
I love how insects and snails are described as “sustainable”. Everything is sustainable until it starts being used by big industries and harvested to extinction.
Fish are a sustainable food source as long as we don’t poison their environments, destroy their ecosystems, over-catch them until entire species are depleted and contaminate the remaining ones until they’re barely safe to eat. Oops…
I like the idea of actively using insects in human nutrition in general (a lot of people are already doing it). They are easier to raise in artificial environments and will suffer much less than higher vertebrates. I wouldn’t give up my red meat beef from cows every once in a while though ;/