alt Hacker NewsIt's not even more economical than raising chickens. Just because raising relatively small batches of crickets uses less water per unit of protein (which isn't even necessarily a problem) doesn't mean that it's manageable at scale.
Moreover, as you said, bugs have to taste good for people to want to eat them. I was into entomophagy way before it became this sort of thing in the 2020s. As much as I appreciate it from a curiosity standpoint, the truth is most bugs don't taste very good. I think there's maybe one insect that I thought was truly worth eating again (sphinx moth caterpillars). Supposedly bee drone larvae taste good but I've not had them. Neither of those can be scaled for mass food production. The rest of the bugs I've had either taste extremely earthy or like nothing.
Civilization should just scale with how much food it can produce. The idea that food production should infinitely scale with civilization is backwards.
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A civilization increasing food production to feed itself is civilization scaling with food production. There is no extrinsic food production with which civilization can scale. All food production is intrinsic to the civilization.
All food must be produced by the civilization, either by gathering or farming or any other means.
What I don’t understand is why not push bug based foods on people who already eat bugs?
Why push it on a population that hasn’t traditionally had overtly bug based diets?
Populations that are used to some bugs would definitely be more receptive to having a heavier bug based diet.
When I looked at this a decade ago, I concluded that if bugs can't get popular as a source of protein powder, they aren't getting popular in the US and Canada. Since then, not a single gym rat I've mentioned this to has liked my concept product, Pretty Fly for a White Powder.