Would you eat insects?

Last week I was reading this fascinating article over at new blog The 9 Billion: Is eating insects the answer to feeding the world in 2050?

Apparently it’s an eco-friendly solution to feeding our growing population without further straining our farmland and water resources. Producing a pound of caterpillar takes a tenth of the resources as a pound of beef, according to the National Geographic video in John Johnston’s post above, but it’s an equally good source of protein. And archeologists say there’s evidence people have been doing it for millenia, so maybe we’re just getting too picky for our own good.

I can’t say I’ve ever tried it, and I like to think I’m an adventurous and omnivorous eater! Dave has eaten scorpion, which is pretty close, while he was in China (that’s him in the picture). He said it was crunchy and salty. I wonder if you could substitute fried insects into a salad where you might normally add a bit of crumbled bacon or an egg? Hmm.

Whether we eat insects or not, we’ve got to start thinking about how we’re going to feed the world. We’ve got more people all the time on this planet, but we’re running out of water and depleting the nutrients from our soils. If we’re not willing to try new things and new methods, then our current food security problems are only going to get worse.

Marcel Dicke gave a TED talk about eating insects as well. He raises some interesting points, including that the waste from farming them will be much less than the currently problematic amounts of cow poop we deal with, and that there are fewer health concerns for the farm workers than when they work with mammals. He also shows a chef at the end, making the insects look like a yummy treat.

So if I ever have the opportunity, I’ll try eating insects. I don’t promise to like it, but I’m willing to at least experiment for the sake of adventure!

How I choose eco-friendly food

If you want to be green and ethical, there are so many factors to consider when you’re buying food. I used to struggle a bit to juggle all the different eco-friendly choices, but last weekend I noticed that I’d settled into a bit of a pattern. I figured I’d share it with you to see what you think:

When shopping for food, I choose based on these priorities:

1. Produced in my state. If I can’t find anything produced in my state, I look for…
2. Fair Trade, which mostly means coffee and chocolate! If no Fair Trade is available, I look for…
3. Made in Australia. But usually there’s lots of these, so to decide between them I look for…
4. Organic products. If there aren’t any, I choose…
5. The product with the least packaging, or the most easily recyclable packaging.

It’s working out reasonably well for me so far, by reducing the amount of time I spend standing in the aisles looking at labels.

If I can find local, organic produce that’s got no packaging at all, I do a little dance of joy. Mostly that happens at farmers’ markets rather than supermarkets!

The Fair Trade element is interesting: there are some foods that just don’t grow well in Australia, but I want to be sure that the workers still get paid well and treated right. Coffee and chocolate need tropical weather (humid heat) and have plenty of Fair Trade choices. But I’d be happy to buy Fair Trade rice or anything, really, that needs lots of water to grow.

How about you? Would this priority order work for you, or do you have a different way of doing it?

Better eating on busy days

I recently did the Tiny Choices reader survey, and they posted mine last Friday. If you’re not a regular reader of Tiny Choices, or haven’t heard of them before, I highly recommend subscribing to their posts either by RSS or email. They’re one of the first eco-blogs I started reading and are always full of useful information with an upbeat attitude.

And the readers there are lovely too. As an example, I mentioned in the survey that I still succumb to the lure of junk food, even though I don’t like eating it anymore and am well aware of how bad it is for the environment. The Tiny Choices crew gave me lots of good ideas in the comments on the post, for which I’m very grateful!

And it inspired me to come up with a list of “lazy food” I can stick up on my pantry door. The idea is that when I’m brain-dead after a long day at work, and am tempted to choose takeaway, I won’t have to go to the effort of thinking of something low-effort to do with what I’ve got in the pantry. The ideas will already be there, and all I have to do is go through the motions to get dinner sorted.

The suggestions from Tiny Choices so far have been:

• Breakfast for dinner: fried egg on toast; porridge; cereal with fruit. These sound pretty good to me, actually!
• Stashing meals in the freezer for eating later. Although I tend to use up my frozen leftovers for lunches, since I’ve never gotten the hang of making sandwiches for myself.
• Tinned soup, with grilled cheese on toast.
• Pasta with pantry staples like olives and sundried tomatoes.
• The Tiny Choices Meal List and Rice Cooker meals – a similar list to mine for quick-ish, healthy meals that give good leftovers. Although on the days I’m looking at takeaway, even spending half an hour on dinner feels like too much.
• Vegetarian chili, which seems to be frying an onion in a pot and dumping in other easy ingredients, then leaving it to cook for ages without needing supervision. Sounds yum.

I’d love to hear your ideas for meals that can be made with common pantry items, and don’t need me to pay much attention while making them. They don’t have to actually be healthy, since part of the takeaway lure is the fat and salt. I’m guessing it’ll be easier to give that up if I feel like I’m getting some kind of comfort food instead.

Mmm, I’d love a cuppa right now

I’ve been trying to drink less soft-drink lately. Partly for the sake of the environment, because of all the plastic and waste that each bottle or can of sugar water involves. And partly for the sake of my waistline – I just don’t burn off the kilojoules the way I used to So I’ve been drinking more tea and coffee as well as plain water.

Not that tea and coffee don’t have an impact of their own, but on the whole I think it’s less of an eco-mess to produce and ship a bulk item wrapped in glass or cardboard, than it is to do the same amount of single-servings wrapped in plastic or aluminium the way soft-drink is. Naturally, I go for Fair-Trade and organic wherever possible.

G Magazine says that of the two types of drinks, tea has less environmental impact than coffee. But although I learned to love coffee years ago, until lately tea… well, it hasn’t been my cup of tea.

But I got tired of drinking so much coffee and plain water, and I wanted more variety. Tea comes in so many different flavours I’ve always got something new to try. Plus, I like the little break you get as you wait for it to steep: very nice when I’m at work!

And as it turns out, the tea I didn’t like drinking is the mass-produced, bland type. Once I got into the organic, Fair Trade, loose-leaf types I found it really tasty and enjoyable. I’ve now got 3 or 4 different types given to me as gifts by tea-drinking friends: an organic Earl Grey from Wild Walnut is my favourite so far.

I’ve also got a lovely ceramic mug I keep just for brewing a cuppa, and a couple of those little doohickies that replace tea-bags when you go for the loose-leaf. I can see why the Japanese have tea ceremonies – it’s very easy and stress-relieving to turn your cuppa into a little ritual.

So having done something for the sake of the environment, I’ve now discovered a simple pleasure in life that I didn’t know about before. If you’re a tea drinker with a favourite type, let me know in the comments, I’m keen to try new flavours!

Vegetarian week

Grilled chili mushrooms with squash, beans and potatoes

It’s Vegetarian Week again! If you’ve been meaning to help the environment out a bit more, why not Pledge to Try Veg? Every person who signs the pledge means that a dollar will be donated to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation to help protect it from climate change.

I’m giving it a go this week, with the “eat vegetarian for the week” option. Other choices include trying a vegetarian meal (if you don’t normally do that) or having a vegetarian meal with a non-vegetarian friend (if you’re already meat-free).

We’ve talked before about the environmental destruction caused by cattle and sheep farming . And unless you’re getting your meat source from small, sustainable farms, there’s a good chance the animals aren’t being treated humanely.

The thing that’s made going part-time vego easier for me has been getting a few really good vegetarian cook books. Having new and exciting recipes to try is fun and much more satisfying than cooking your usual “meat & 3 veg” meals but leaving out the meat.

This weekend I picked up a copy of How To Cook Everything Vegetarian by Mark Bittman. Bittman is a food writer for the New York Times, and believes that although the majority of people probably won’t become fully vegetarian, the days of “all meat, all the time” are over. So he’s come up with simple, great recipes that anyone can use to get the hang of vegetarian cooking.

Overall, the book is most similar to Stephanie Alexander’s encyclopedic The Cook’s Companion, sorted by ingredient with lots of suggestions for variations. The recipes I want to try are the Tuscan-style white beans, the corn fritters, and maybe the grilled watermelon when the weather’s a bit warmer here.

If you’re not in the market for a new cookbook, I can thoroughly recommend Taste.com.au’s vegetarian recipes. Over 66 pages of stuff to try, you’re bound to find something you like!