Thanksgiving! It is not by accident that our national holiday centers around food. The original 102 Pilgrims, who arrived on the Mayflower in 1620, suffered malnutrition and disease their first winter in Plymouth. If not for the Wapanoag tribe of native Americans indigenous to the area, surely all the Pilgrims may have perished. As things turned out, the Wapanoag saved them by supplying food to the Pilgrims, including corn which was a new food to the English. The Pilgrims had to try a lot of new foods out of necessity. Well, the future we are facing seems to have a few people very dedicated to ‘saving us!’ They plan to change our diets to what they consider sustainable fare to save us and our planet. It’s kind of a drastic change. This bugs me. (hint) The United Nations Environmental Program We are living in a time of tremendous disruptions. Changes are coming fast and furiously. Diet transformations are on the agenda for those seeking a sustainable source of protein to feed the expanding world population. According to the United Nations Environmental Program, “our use of animals as a food-production technology has taken a heavy toll on the environment and raised some serious concerns about the future of food production.� “Common prejudice against eating insects is not justified from a nutritional point of view,� write the authors of a report released by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization entitled “Edible insects: Future Prospects.� The report postulates that eating insects could help boost nutrition and reduce pollution. “World population is slated to top nine billion by 2050, and seeing as how arable land is being rapidly swallowed by towns and cities, oceans are increasingly overfished, and climate change is disrupting traditional farming, a new United Nations study proposes a twist on Marie Antoinette’s dietary advice: let them eat bugs.� Sustainable Farming Why eat bugs, worms and microbes? It comes down to protein, greenhouse gas emissions and water. Apparently, bugs are nutritious and raising insects and mealworms is a lot easier on the environment. According to Earth.org, “Insect production on a large scale requires a fraction of the land, water, or energy, as other ways of producing farmed protein. Black Soldier Fly Larvae and many other farmed insect species can be fed using organic food waste or bi-products from agricultural, food processing, or manufacturing processes (in other words, garbage). In addition to lowering emissions and generating value from waste – the product, insect protein meal, displaces unsustainable sources of protein still widely used, such as fishmeal made from pelagic or ocean caught fish.� Well….that’s good for the fish!