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there seem willing to buy and eat it. Bugfoundation has even had
a diffi cult time supplying stores because its production cannot
keep up with the demand. That situation seems to indicate that
people can overcome any feelings that insects are too gross to
eat. The company says that its insect burgers are delicious and
have a rich, nutty fl avor.
Another way to overcome resistance to eating insects might
be to turn them into a fl our or powder. This is what the company
Chirps has done. It makes cookie mix and protein chips out of
milled cricket powder. Journalist Kendrick Foster sat down with
his family at the dinner table one day with a bag of cricket chips
for everyone to try. His mother agreed to try one. His father ate
a few and thought they were not too bad. His brother refused
to try them at all because the idea was disgusting to him. Fos-
ter reports, “Meanwhile, I chomp away at the remaining chips,
having looked forward to this admittedly unusual snack for a
while.” Perhaps cricket chips are not for everyone, but this
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kind of snack may become more acceptable to more people in
the future. Aly Moore, a public health educator and enthusiastic
advocate of insect eating, suggests, “We’re trying to rebrand
[the ick factor] to the wow factor, in a similar way to a roller
coaster. You’re terrifi ed of it, and it’s scary, but after you do it,
it’s super fun and really cool.” 24

Real Meat from the Lab
If people are unwilling to give up meat in favor of plants or in-
sects, perhaps the sustainable alternative is lab-grown meat,
made from the cells of living animals. Also known as synthetic
meat or cultured meat, lab-grown meat is not yet ready for
commercial sale, but a few companies are working diligently to
produce an affordable and tasty product. The meat is produced
by harvesting a small sample of muscle tissue from a living ani-
mal. The procedure is painless and harmless to the animal. In
the laboratory, stem cells are extracted from the tissue sample.
Stem cells are the special cells in all bodies from which other

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