Sustainable is big buzzword with the brightest minds of today looking for ways to feed an ever growing population in the face of an increasingly unstable and degrading Earth. People ignoring the environmental factor of the sustainable equation claim that GMOs are the answer to feeding the world’s people, but if you believe where people live is as important as what they live on, there has to be another answer.

Those bright minds have to be good for something; they are presenting some unusual, innovative, thought-provoking solutions. There’s evidence that conventionally icky stuff like bugs, pond scum, and strange fish offer a new notion of edible while also opening up a potentially bountiful source of needed nutrients.

Edible Creepy Crawlers

The idea of eating bugs is not unusual. Bugs are popular street snacks in Asia, and bugs like crickets have long been an important protein source for farmers in Africa. In North America and Europe, the idea of eating bugs remains squirm-inducing. But can we see past the ick factor to the nutritional and sustainable possibilities?

Grasshoppers and crickets are a commonly eaten in many parts of the world thanks to their ability to live everywhere, their ease of capture, and their neutral taste. Mealworms are also very popular, and in some countries eating ants and cockroaches isn’t uncommoin. As the gateway bugs of choice in the U.S., crickets are showing up as protein powders, supplemental flours, and at an adventurous fast food chain that is introducing milkshakes with cricket powder. Crickets and grasshoppers are a great source of protein (including essential amino acids lysine and tryptophan that are hard to find in conventional protein sources) and are recognized by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization as a good source of heart-healthy unsaturated fats. While chicken, pork, and beef might have more protein, they also require more space to grow and are responsible for egregious environmental degradation through increased methane gases, deforestation, and massive amounts of toxic animal waste.

In contrast, growing edible insects are far more efficient. To raise one kilogram of beef, you need eight kilograms of food, and you usually only eat about 40% of the cow. Crickets are 80% edible and only need 1.7 kilograms of feed to arrive at one kilogram of food. If you consider that someone somewhere is going to come up with the idea feeding bugs the 40% of food we waste in the U.S., it’s a sustainable slam dunk.

Strange Seafood

Our oceans are in crisis mode as more and more species die off. Soon the yellowfin tuna and the king crab we’re accustomed to seeing on our plate at seafood restaurants will be gone due to overfishing, fluctuating water temperatures, and increasing pollution. We’ll have to learn to adapt… and eat the food that already have adapted.

While the fish populations we’ve become accustomed to eating are dwindling, other invasive yet edible creatures are thriving in spite of the environment changes. Asian shore crabs, Asian carp, blue catfish, and lionfish are all experiencing growth as they displace native species.

In an effort to focus on managing an unbalanced fish population, some restaurants are adding these invasive fish to their menu. Even grocery giant Whole Foods is getting in on the action, announcing plans to make lionfish available to their customers over the next six months. With its venomous spines, lionfish doesn’t look too appealing, though it is popular in other regions of the world like the Caribbean. But with female lionfish laying 30,000 eggs every four days and a population so voracious it’s eating itself, this fish is a prime example of a new, sustainable seafood.

Starting at the Bottom of the Food Chain

Algae is a huge group of organisms that, odds are, are already available at your nearest grocery store. Sheets of dried seaweed abound in the ethnic aisles of the grocery store and at sushi restaurants, kelp is aking off amongst the health enthusiasts, and nearly every green nutritional powder has spirulina and/or chlorella in it. The health benefits of those two particular algae are impressive. Not only do they detox heavy metals and toxins from the body, and they contain omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids,antioxidants, and all of the essential amino acids which makes them complete proteins.

Seaweed is also a fantastically sustainable food. It can grow at a rate of almost six inches a day, and it doesn’t require any other resources other than the ones readily available to it. It also leaves the environment cleaner than it was before the it grew. People who understand the benefits of crop rotation will also appreciate the idea of farming seaweed opposite of shellfish season, which pairs two of the only farmed products that leave their environment cleaner than they found it. With its rapid growth, abundant nutrients, and cleaning habits, seaweed is a uniquely sustainable food.

It Will Become The Norm

Bugs are gross. Most people would sooner smash them under their foot than put them in a skillet. The green sludge found in ponds or the weird spiny fish that looks like a zebra pincushion don’t seem any better. But in the next fifteen years, we’ll have an estimated 8.5 billion people living on a planet that virtually everyone agrees we’re in the process of destroying. The “weird” and the “gross” are just foods we’re not used to yet, and these foods can provide for so many while slowing our negative impact on the environment. It’s time to get creative and do what we can to present sustainable options for everyone that might be little out of the ordinary. Here’s a good start, check out Total Nutrition – Make your own Homemade Multivitamin and Mineral Formula and How To Grow Spirulina at Home.

Related Reading:

• Algae-Growing Nuns In Central African Grow Spirulina For Malnourished Children
• Health Benefits of Kelp

Sources

• The Nutrition Values of Edible Bugs and Insects – sfgate.com
• Why Should We Eat Insects? It’s the Future of Food – nature.com
• 7 Restaurants Where You Can Eat Invasive Seafood  – azula.com
• Whole Foods Will Sell an Invasive Fish Species in Six Months – grubstreet.com
• Top 5 Foods That Detox Heavy Metals and Toxins – With Protocol – organiclifestylemagazine.com
• Seaweed is Easy to Grow, Sustainable, and Nutritious. But It’ll Never Be Kale. – washingtonpost.com

Gardening has been largely a lost art form with plots drying up and being replaced in favour of lawns, parking lots, and other commercial endeavours. People have decided to completely forego the skill of gardening in favour of completely depending on large scale farming operations to produce their food. The implications of this trend are now starting to be seen, and they could be disastrous. It’s time to shift back to our agrarian roots. It’s time to understand how gardening can save us and the world.

Fresh and Organic Food

When one relies on the conventional food system, it is difficult to find food that is both fresh and organic. Organic food is becoming more mainstream in many parts of the world, but it is still a very small percentage of the overall food that is made available. Fresh is a near impossibility for most, as the elapsed time between harvest and consumer availability is often anywhere between 2-4 weeks.

The only way to help solve this problem is to either produce some of your own food, and/or rely on local organic farmers markets to get your food both fresh and organic. With good food management and preservation skills, this seasonal activity could help feed you and your family for several months, and even up to a year.

Once a person gets a taste of organic and fresh food, they will have little to no desire to go back to the conventional system. Not only that, fresh organic food is at the peak of its nutritional value and can deliver multiplied benefits that could literally save someone’s health.

Known Origin of Food

Another issue with the food on most people’s plates today is that they have no idea where that food originated and what has happened to it from the farmer to the fridge.

Is the food you are eating TRULY organic? What type of soil was it grown in? Where has it been stored, and how has it been transported? How long has it been from harvest to your plate? Has there been anything done to preserve it, and if so, what?

These are all questions that are easily answered when someone decides to grow their own food or puts their faith in a farmer that they personally know and trust, and can visit! Anything outside of these methods leaves the consumer in the dark and creates forced faith.

When one knows the origin of their food, they know its wholesomeness with little question, and that can be a game changer in optimizing one’s health.

Gardening is Therapeutic

Anyone who has spent a short time in a garden will quickly realize how therapeutic it can be to the mind, body, and soul. The fresh smells, sights, and sounds that can be picked up around a garden is something to envy.

Simply being at one with nature and its miracle, along with the act of physically connecting to the soil (also known as grounding), is very healing and can provide a gardener with multiple benefits that can never be obtained from picking up your food from the local supermarket.

Get in a garden, get grounded, and express gratitude. This is a simple process that can help you regain your health.

Gardening Develops Survival Skills

One thing that seems to be lacking in today’s society is survival skills. In the last 30 years, we have been taught survival skills such as clipping coupons, looking for sales, and refrigerating food.

Gardening is a core skill that should never be lost. The ability to produce food is something that should never be taken for granted, as it is a skill that may be required in times of financial hardship and supply disruptions. If one doesn’t know how to garden, either situation could be catastrophic.

Gardening is clearly an activity that could save a family, and many like them, should either scenario occur.

Gardening is Sustainable

Industrial farming practices have placed the burden on a very small percentage of people to produce food for the rest of the world. As a result, engineered seeds, chemicals, pollution, resource and soil depletion, as well as farmer burn out has occured.

There is no need to put that amount of pressure on such a small number of producers, and it can’t be continued. The best case scenario is that production doesn’t fall off, but the world ends up with food that is denatured, toxic, and completely malnourishing. This could take a terrible toll on the world and could spell the end of civilization as we know it.

Gardening is much more sustainable. Even the ability to produce up to 10% of our own food needs could dramatically reduce that burden and create more natural agricultural practices that are working with nature, not against it.

This may be one of the most important acts we can do in our lifetime, to save ourselves and the planet.