Not_a_N_Korean_Spy

Thank you for doing the AMA. I understand the 1st part, but insects being more sustainable than soy doesn't make much sense to me intuitively. Do you have any sources/numbers to back it up?

I thought the reason soy was "bad for the environment", was because so much is used for animal feed.

EDIT : https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-per-protein-poore For instance, how would insects be below tofu in this graph?

Thank you so much for the work you do.

Do you know of or have any resources, in meme, diagram or video form that could offer some kind of checklist to help people spot the quality or manipulativeness of a news story, meme or video?

Thank you so much, that is the exact answer I was looking for. I'm quoting from an article cited in this article:

Of the resources involved in this industrial process [of poultry feed], soybean meal, which is a protein source for farmed animals, requires a large quantity of energy. In order to increase the sustainability of the poultry industry, it is necessary to find a more efficient alternative to this poultry feed. Through emergy assessment, this study proposes to evaluate the production and processing of Black Soldier Fly Larvae (BSFL) as an insect meal and to compare its use with soybean meal in a Brazilian poultry production system. The biological capacity of BSFL to convert the remaining energy from a previous process (grain residue) into a novel protein is demonstrated by emergetic indices, whose best values favor this new technology. Transformity (emergy per energy of the product) decreased 144.74% while renewability increased by 45.64%. The emergy yield ratio (EYR) reduced from 1.71 to 1.00 in insect meal production compared to soybean meal, the environmental loading ratio (ELR) improved from 1.99 to 1.04 and the emergy sustainable index (ESI) improved from 0.86 to 0.96. Gains were also observed in poultry production: the transformity of poultry meat decreased by 16.45% (156,104 sej/J), renewability increased by 25.03%, EYR increased from 1.33 to 1.41 and ELR reduced from 4.96 to 3.68, when insect meal was used in comparison to soybean meal. These results, based on an experimental model, imply that BSFL meal can improve sustainability in the Brazilian poultry production process. Challenges and possibilities regarding the use of insect meal by the Brazilian poultry industry are discussed.Allegretti et al., 2018

If I understood correctly, because it is more efficient for chicken to get protein efficiently from Larvae who got their proteins efficiently from grain residue than for chicken to get their proteins inefficiently from soybean meal, plus the impacts of obtaining grain residue vs soy, that's why it is more sustainable.

So I guess that, if insect meal is more sustainable for poultry than soybean meal, insect meal should really be also more sustainable for humans than soybean meal. So, insect protein would be a more sustainable source of protein for humans than tofu.

Thank you so much for your response Dr. Teun Veldkamp.

EDIT: I'm confused... From the article linked by Dr Teun Veldkamp "Produced at pilot scale, protein concentrate (insect meal) while being competitive against animal-derived (whey, egg protein, fishmeal) and microalgae, has higher environmental impacts than plant-based meals. Further scenarios illustrate strategies for more sustainable use of environmental resources providing guidance for producers and funding agencies to direct the industry to an impact profile that is lower, than many existing protein sources."

I'm confused for now... I will have to read the articles thoroughly.