Photo: Jair Cabrera/picture alliance via Getty Images
Traveling through New York Time’ homepage this morning, I spotted the headline “Cooking in the Time of Climate Change”, which was accompanied by a GIF showing prep bowls and oil being poured into a hot pan. I clicked, thinking it was a recipe video – a seemingly safe guess, as it appeared inches below a similar GIF and the title “24 Brilliant Baking Recipes to Change Your Cooking Game” .
But the title of the article itself quickly revealed that it was not Time Content “Kitchen”. “The Joy of Cooking (Insects)” reads the text hovering above rotating close-up images of fried insects. Subhed: “Cooking with the climate in mind is being creative.” (A few hours later, the homepage image was changed to a GIF of what appear to be crickets bouncing on a piece of bread, so maybe I wasn’t the only confused reader at first sight.)
The article, which serves as an introduction to an “Opinion” video, explains that the human population is increasing, which is increasing the demand for food. But “agriculture, especially meat production, is a big contributor to environmental damage.” It continues,
Scientists have warned that unless we make major adjustments to the types of food we eat and how we produce them, we have no chance of meeting our climate goals. A change in dietary habits, in particular a reduction in the demand for meat, would contribute to alleviating the pressure on the environment and mitigating global warming.
This is where insects come into play.
Okay, but couldn’t that also be where the beans come in?
With more context, it’s a little clearer why plant-based protein sources are overlooked here. The accompanying 15-minute video on nascent efforts to incorporate more insects into a Western diet is part of a series on how our ‘broken food system’ is contributing to climate change and the ‘three chances that you get to help fix it – and save the planet – every day.” It involves “major adjustments to the food we eat and how we produce it.”
Should we, as in the human species, study the use of insects as an alternative source of protein? Sure, that sounds smart, and supposedly 2 billion people around the world already eat crickets and the like on a regular basis (although that number might be exaggerated). But do we – as with the individuals who read the Schedule – do we really need to overcome our distaste for eating insects, lest we personally condemn the planet? No, and framing the discussion this way could backfire by making climate change efforts seem marginal and too strenuous for the average person to even attempt.
the Time is not the only medium to offer a bug squashing program. Coins like this have been circulating for quite some time; in the past year alone, a story in The Guardian asserted, “If we want to save the planet, the future of food is insects”; Wired said, “The cicadas are coming. Let’s eat them! » ; and WBUR said, simply, “Why we should all eat bugs.”
I’m sure no one is won over by these arguments, because they don’t work on me — and I’m their prime target. I was brought up with the idea that a meal without meat was no meal at all, but eventually my coastal elite identity working in the media got the better of me. In a move that couldn’t have been more cliché, I started trying a “flexitarian” diet (i.e. trying to eat more plant-based meals) in recent years after reading the diet “Vegan Before 6:00” by Mark Bittman and listened to a series of podcasts by Ezra Klein on the moral, health and environmental issues related to meat consumption.
There were two factors that made Bittman and Klein’s arguments more palatable, both literally and metaphorically, than the calls to go vegetarian that I had been rolling my eyes at for years. First, I had eaten Beyond and Impossible meat and found both really tasty, unlike the fake gym mat meat I had encountered before. Second, they weren’t suggesting that my failure to become 100% vegan was some kind of moral failure. Overcoming my aversion to vegetables as a main course wasn’t something I “had to” do to “save the planet”, it was an easy thing I could try. I continued it mainly because I found a good bean-centric chili; the thought that my dinner may have contributed less to climate change was just a bonus.
Clearly, I am not a scientist or an expert on climate change; I’m just a woman who loves Beyond burgers and thinks shaming consumers for their individual choices (or a cultural distaste for bugs) is a dubious strategy to fight climate change. There’s a 2018 Vox piece that I think of every time I start berating myself for forgetting to put a can in the recycling bin or my lack of interest in trying mealworms. He argues that climate change does not fit well within the framework of individual choices and gives this example:
If a serious Gen X climate activist cancels the family vacation to see the carbon-guilty grandparents, the Earth won’t care. What will matter is whether a business executive decides to travel back and forth between New York and London once a week instead of twice, or once a month instead of once a week. And it will only matter if all wealthy travelers make the same decision, consistently, over time.
I respect the efforts of Time “Opinion” page to get people to collectively open their minds to bug eating and anyone who decides to give cricket succotash a shot. But I reject the suggestion that I personally have to get over not wanting to eat bugs if I care about the planet. Right now that’s too big a leap for me, and I bet that’s true for most people. Let’s invite more Americans to “Meatless Mondays,” Impossible Whoppers, and Imperfect Veganism first, and we’ll see where things go from there.
