We are living in a sick world and it might be a good time to go vegan and definitely read labels. I just read and article in the newspaper that blew my mind. It was entitled,
Bugs in your food? Might be on purpose!
The article was written by Sean Rossman of USA TODAY and it dealt with CRICKETS and other edible insects pegged as the new food trend. Check it out.
“At Linger restaurant in Denver, a chef tosses black ants with white rice and tops a wok-fried heap of vegetables with diced crickets and grasshoppers.
The result – a dish called Sweet and Sour Crickets – stands out on the restaurant’s menu of craps, (oops, I meant crepes), wraps, duck bao buns and pork belly.
There’s an entire industry that wants to see more dishes like this. The burgeoning edible insect industry churns out protein bars, pastas and chips made from insects, most notable crickets.
Eating insects has both ecological and health benefits. Raising insects produces fewer greenhouse gases and uses less water and space than beef, chicken and pork. Bugs are also good sources of protein, fiber and fatty acids.
It’s on these merits insects gained legitimacy and found themselves on 2019 food trends lists, part of a broader movement toward healthy (are you s**ting me?) and eco-conscious foods.
Innova Market Insights, which studies food trends using data on new products, placed insect protein among the various alternatives to meat expected to entice in the new year.
Benchmark, a global resort and conference center management group, pegged insects as one of its trends after consulting with chefs at hotel restaurants.
Insects join other forms of protein making a run at meat, including lentils and pea and rice protein (how come they never found that the vegetable source of protein is the same but cleaner than flesh protein, which is documented in my book, “A Sane Diet for an Insane World”?) said Lu Ann Williams, Director of Innovation at Innova Marketing Insights.
But unlike the others, insects face a bigger question: will Americans actually eat them?
Kara Nielsen the VP of trends and marketing at CCD Innovations, which tracks food trends, said that “right now, it still has a scary factor and there’s such a high ick factor when it comes to insects, but I think other cultures and younger people will be more open to it.”
Indeed, millennial-driven start-ups, family farms and investors have pounced on the opportunity to make food many preach has world-saving potential.
The North American Coalition for Insect Agriculture cites Research and Markets, a company that provides industry forecasts, which estimates the industry will reach $1.2 billion in market worth by 2023.
The insect hype can be traced to just a few years ago. Culinary trends start a variety of ways, often with inventive chef’s experimenting with flavors, Nielsen said. But, that’s not all that affects food popularity. Take the avocado, which found life after the U.S. lifted trade restrictions from Mexico in the 1990’s, enabling the toast-adorning, salad-staple ubiquity it enjoys today.
For insects, you could point to a report published in 2013. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s “Edible Insects” report is often cited within the industry of evidence of insects’ potential for the planet and human health.
With the world’s population growing, increased food demand is expected to require more production, which could lead to increases in greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation and environmental degradation, the report reads.
Livestock accounts for 70 percent of all agricultural land use as global demand for livestock products are expected to double from 2000 to 2050.
Raising insects, however, requires less water, food and space while emitting fewer greenhouse gases.
Mealworms, crickets and locusts produce just a tiny fraction of greenhouse gases compared to producing beef and pork. To create the same amount of protein, mealworms, for instance, require a tenth of the land of beef and about half the space to produce pork and chicken. Insects are also good sourced of protein, fat, fiber and fatty acids, the report said.
After reading the 2013 report, Jarrod Goldin teamed with his two brothers, who had been growing insects as pet food. Together, they started Entomo Farms on Ontario, Canada. They were further encouraged when Chapul, a company that makes cricket protein bars, appeared on the television show “Shark Tank” and drew an investment form billionaire Mark Cuban in 2014.
Since then, Entomo has raised millions of dollars in investments, including a minority stake from Maple Leaf Foods, a Canadian meat producer. Goldin estimates Entomo is now the largest cricket wholesaler in the world, producing thousands of pounds of crickets per month for clients all over the world, and Goldin hopes people reframe their view of “icky” foods.
His argument is that icky food is food that makes you obese, diabetic, have heart disease and all kinds of major health impacts, but crickets are cleaner than chickens and cows, carrying fewer diseases and infections.
At Enromo, crickets are raised from egg and are grown to maturity in six weeks in large bins. The crickets are killed, either using gas or ice, just days before the end of their lifespan. Then the crickets are rinsed in boiling water, baked and ground into a powder, and others are seasoned as snacks *(Yummy! Can’t wait).
Roughly 60 percent of the business is cricket powder, a gray, dry substance that can be added to breads, soups and other baked goods. It’s the basis of many cricket products on the market, including Chapul’s cricket bars and a line of chips under the brand Chirps.
They say that cricket powder is the best was to introduce this because you can’t taste it. Yet, the health benefits you are getting for putting that cricket powder in there is remarkable. Two tablespoons have seven grams of protein”.
And there it is. I’m sure in the future, human doo doo will be used as a source of protein, but only in dark chocolate bars because of the color similarity.
May I put something in perspective: we all know that the large food companies, the bio-tech industry and Big Pharma want everyone to stay sick so they can continue to make a fortune off of our illnesses. But, what would happen if everyone adhered to what God said in Genesis, “Thou shall not kill”? Yes, to eat, we have to kill, be it plants, fruits, grains, or creatures. But, in the Vedic scriptures, that were there way, way before the Old Testament, God says that if we offer him plant-based foods with love and devotion, because we need food to live, he will take away the karmic reactions involved in the killing of the plant-based foods. That would mean that if that were our diets, the land and resources would be used to only grow plant-based foods and would never face depletion and extinction and that everyone would have connection to Him. But, unfortunately, we live in a godless world and that’s our major problem. Change can only happen one at a time. Can you be a part of that?
Why can’t our world be one of love, peace, friendship and a connection to God, instead of chaos, quarrel, confusion and hypocrisy?
Aloha!
Sources:
USA TODAY
www.asanediet.com
The Old Testament
Bhagavad Gita-As-It-is
Just to put things in perspective, after I graduated from Weequahic High School and before going to Seton Hall University, I had a part-time job working for a butcher. I was the delivery guy and occasionally had to go to the slaughterhouse to pick up products for the store. Needless to say, I had no consciousness nor awareness, as change never came then despite the horrors I witnessed on an almost daily basis.
After graduating with a degree in accounting from Seton Hall, I eventually got married and moved to a town called Livingston. Livingston was basically a yuppie community where everyone was judged by the neighborhood they lived in and their income. To say it was a "plastic" community would be an understatement.
Livingston and the shallowness finally got to me. I told my wife I was fed up and wanted to move. She made it clear she had to be near her friends and New York City. I finally got my act together and split for Colorado.
I was living with a lady in Aspen at the end of 1974, when one day she said, " let's become vegetarians". I have no idea what possessed me to say it, but I said, "okay"! At that point I went to the freezer and took out about $100 worth of frozen, dead body parts and gave them to a welfare mother who lived behind us. Well, everything was great for about a week or so, and then the chick split with another guy.
So here I was, a vegetarian for a couple weeks, not really knowing what to do, how to cook, or basically how to prepare anything. For about a month, I was getting by on carrot sticks, celery sticks, and yogurt. Fortunately, when I went vegan in 1990, it was a simple and natural progression. Anyway, as I walked around Aspen town, I noticed a little vegetarian restaurant called, "The Little Kitchen".
Let me back up just a little bit. It was April of 1975, the snow was melting and the runoff of Ajax Mountain filled the streets full of knee-deep mud. Now, Aspen was great to ski in, but was a bummer to walk in when the snow was melting.
I was ready to call it quits and I needed a warmer place. I'll elaborate on that in a minute.
But right now, back to "The Little Kitchen". Knowing that I was going to leave Aspen and basically a new vegetarian, I needed help. So, I cruised into the restaurant and told them my plight and asked them if they would teach me how to cook. I told them in return I would wash dishes and empty their trash. They then asked me what I did for a living and I told them I was an accountant.
The owner said to me, "Let's make a deal. You do our tax return and we'll feed you as well". So for the next couple of weeks I was doing their tax return, washing their dishes, emptying the trash, and learning as much as I could.
But, like I said, the mud was getting to me. So I picked up a travel book written by a guy named Foder. The name of the book was, "Hawaii". Looking through the book I noticed that in Lahaina, on Maui, there was a little vegetarian restaurant called," Mr. Natural's". I decided right then and there that I would go to Lahaina and work at "Mr. Natural's." To make a long story short, that's exactly what happened.
So, I'm working at "Mr. Natural's" and learning everything I can about my new dietary lifestyle - it was great. Every afternoon we would close for lunch at about 1 PM and go to the Sheraton Hotel in Ka'anapali and play volleyball, while somebody stayed behind to prepare dinner.
Since I was the new guy, and didn't really know how to cook, I never thought that I would be asked to stay behind to cook dinner. Well, one afternoon, that's exactly what happened; it was my turn. That posed a problem for me because I was at the point where I finally knew how to boil water.
I was desperate, clueless and basically up the creek without a paddle. Fortunately, there was a friend of mine sitting in the gazebo at the restaurant and I asked him if he knew how to cook. He said the only thing he knew how to cook was enchiladas. He said that his enchiladas were bean-less and dairy-less. I told him that I had no idea what an enchilada was or what he was talking about, but I needed him to show me because it was my turn to do the evening meal.
Well, the guys came back from playing volleyball and I'm asked what was for dinner. I told them enchiladas; the owner wasn't thrilled. I told him that mine were bean-less and dairy-less. When he tried the enchilada he said it was incredible. Being the humble guy that I was, I smiled and said, "You expected anything less"? It apparently was so good that it was the only item on the menu that we served twice a week. In fact, after about a week, we were selling five dozen every night we had them on the menu and people would walk around Lahaina broadcasting, 'enchilada's at "Natural's" tonight'. I never had to cook anything else.
A year later the restaurant closed, and somehow I gravitated to a little health food store in Wailuku. I never told anyone I was an accountant and basically relegated myself to being the truck driver. The guys who were running the health food store had friends in similar businesses and farms on many of the islands. I told them that if they could organize and form one company they could probably lock in the State. That's when they found out I was an accountant and "Down to Earth" was born. "Down to Earth" became the largest natural food store chain in the islands, and I was their Chief Financial Officer and co-manager of their biggest store for 13 years.
In 1981, I started to do a weekly radio show to try and expose people to a vegetarian diet and get them away from killing innocent creatures. I still do that show today. I pay for my own airtime and have no sponsors to not compromise my honesty. One bit of a hassle was the fact that I was forced to get a Masters Degree in Nutrition to shut up all the MD's that would call in asking for my credentials.
My doing this radio show enabled me, through endless research, to see the corruption that existed within the big food industries, the big pharmaceutical companies, the biotech industries and the government agencies. This information, unconscionable as it is, enabled me to realize how broken our health system is. This will be covered more in depth in the Introduction and throughout the book and when you finish the book you will see this clearly and it will hopefully inspire you to make changes.
I left Down to Earth in 1989, got nationally certified as a sports injury massage therapist and started traveling the world with a bunch of guys that were making a martial arts movie. After doing that for about four years I finally made it back to Honolulu and got a job as a massage therapist at the Honolulu Club, one of Hawaii's premier fitness clubs. It was there I met the love of my life who I have been with since 1998. She made me an offer I couldn't refuse. She said," If you want to be with me you've got to stop working on naked women". So, I went back into accounting and was the Chief Financial Officer of a large construction company for many years.
Going back to my Newark days when I was an infant, I had no idea what a "chicken" or "egg" or "fish" or "pig" or "cow" was. My dietary blueprint was thrust upon me by my parents as theirs was thrust upon them by their parents. It was by the grace of God that I was able to put things in their proper perspective and improve my health and elevate my consciousness.
The road that I started walking down in 1975 has finally led me to the point of writing my book, “A Sane Diet For An Insane World”. Hopefully, the information contained herein will be enlightening, motivating, and inspiring to encourage you to make different choices. Doing what we do out of conditioning is not always the best course to follow. I am hoping that by the grace of the many friends and personalities I have encountered along my path, you will have a better perspective of what road is the best road for you to travel on, not only for your health but your consciousness as well.
Last but not least: after being vaccinated as a kid I developed asthma, which plagued me all of my life. In 2007 I got exposed to the organic sulfur crystals, which got rid of my asthma in 3 days and has not come back in over 10 years. That, being the tip of the iceberg, has helped people reverse stage 4 cancers, autism, joint pain, blood pressure problems, migraine headaches, erectile dysfunction, gingivitis, and more. Also, because of the detoxification effects by the release of oxygen that permeates and heals all the cells in the body, it removes parasites, radiation, fluoride, free radicals, and all the other crap that is thrust upon us in the environment by Big Business.
For more, please view www.healthtalkhawaii.com and www.asanediet.com.
Namaste!
