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Terrestrial bugs feel gross to many people. Water bugs, such as shrimp, are commonly accepted by most Western and South Asian population. I bet on that.

Beef should remain, the way truffles remain: as a delicious feast food, not as everyday staple. At least until growing bovine muscle tissue in vats becomes mainstream, I mean.



Sure, shrimp and "land bugs" look similar if you squint at them. There is an obvious, massive difference though: crustaceans have meat.

Most people don't just eat a crustacean whole like you would have to with "land bugs". They harvest the meat from the shrimp / crab / lobster and eat the meat.


The key part here that both groups are cold-blooded herbivores, so can be fed much more efficiently than both warm-blooded cattle and cold-blooded fish.

You can extract some meat from large beetles, locusts, etc, much like you can from crabs. But even locusts are much smaller than crabs, which makes that onerous.

You can eat larvae which are mostly meat, and some grow large enough, comparable to shrimps. Actually, some people in Africa already eat them for a long time. Would be a harder sell for Europeans, though.


Shrimp are crustaceans, not bugs (not insects).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crustacean


"Bug" commonly refers to terrestrial arthropods in general (e.g. spiders, centipedes, and other non-insects) and can sometimes even extend to earthworms and other small invertebrates. It is not a synonym for insect.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bug


Crustaceans fill a similar niche in marine environments to insects on land. It is common to call crustaceans sea bugs in jest. We don't need to always be taxanomically correct. Have some fun with your words.




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