Well, hell has officially frozen over- I agree with mudede. Bugs are good! I don't understand your dislike of crickets, they taste like sunflower seeds. I will have to draw the line at American cockroaches, though.

I'd bet my life savings that if Americans are regularly eating bugs on a mass scale by 2050 it's going to be due to the nuclear apocalypse or uprising of AI - not the increase in world population. If the rest of the world needs to eat more bugs or starve so that Americans can continue to have steak at every meal, then that's what will happen.

Also the whole "x gallons of water per lb of.." argument is tired, and wrong. Everything we do takes hundreds of gallons of water. Do you drive a car? 40,000 gallons of water to produce a car! Good thing our water gets recycled!

I am willing to go without meat/poultry/seafood for the rest of my life as long as I don't have to include bugs in my diet. I'd rather eat lentils and kale for every meal than ingest a cockroach.

No thanks, I'd rather drive one. Beep beep!

Holy crap, mark down this day!! I agree with Charles!!!!

I would like to ask Charles if insects are a regular part of his daily diet.

Cultural norms can be a real hindrance to survival sometimes.

The difference between a pessimist and an optimist is that the former sees us grubbing like apes for ants, cockroaches and caterpillars in 2050, while the optimist sees the terrible inefficiencies and inequities in the way we currently produce meat and finds a better way - go Elon.

In fact, entrepreneurs all over the world are experimenting with and actually growing slabs of genetically engineered meat right now, which will no doubt replace the current sources in very few years to come. And be far more resource and environmentally friendly. It may not be Kobe beef, but you never know. We do know that it'll drive the anti-GMO crusaders crazy (although they've pretty much run their course), although I'm pretty sure most people will opt for the engineered filet or pork chop special over the caterpillar and cockroach soufflé just about every time.

Sign me up for the space orgasm please.

Seriously, Charles and insect fans. Worms?!? Cockroaches?!? You've got to be kidding. Ewwwww.

Oh----I see. By 2050. I'd be 86 by then. Never mind. Chow down, post-apocalypse insect fans. You have my condolences.

You eat 'em. Not me.

@14: Agreed.

This country doesn't eat even one kind of insect,
I think this statement is inaccurate. Americans don't eat land insects... Crabs, shrimp & prawns, lobsters... are all arthropods... insects. Just sea insects.

Y'all have already eaten bugs, you just don't think of them as such.

I have American friends that have lived in Nigeria for short times and learned to enjoy the large fried caterpillars served like peanuts in the bars. I've enjoyed fried crickets (with chili seasoning) at mescal bars (thought they tasted like cardboard though). There is already cricket powder available in local stores in Seattle that you can cook with.

Eating bugs will work it's way in through innocuous channels, like the cricket powder, or those cricket-based power bars you can buy some places.

@2,4 - Climate change is the great unknown. Between population stress, and the increasing damages wrought by climate change, things might shift faster that you'd think. But who knows!

I also have a friend who went hiking in South America. One day was an enormous 20+ mile trek overland. By the time they made camp & started cooking (over an open fire) the sun was going down and the bugs were out. As they cooked the stew, she could hear bugs attracted to the flames falling into the stew. They all ate it anyway, they were so hungry.

Enough hunger and your limits will change.

@15 treacle: "Enough hunger and your limits will change."
That sounds like pretty grim food for thought in the future world's big picture, and leaves me wondering what my great nephew's adult years will be like.

@16 treacle: I meant your comment @16.

@13 I'll be 70 then. Wanna team up and hunt Death Claws in the radioactive wastes?

@19 msanonymous: I dunno. Death Claws in the radioactive wastes don't sound very appealing to me, either.

Will there no longer be chocolate or red wine by 2050? Sad!
Then I must quote John Entwhistle, Roger Daltrey, Pete Townsend, and Keith Moon of The Who: "Hope I die before I get old".