Food is Not What You Think
And quantum computers have existed for billions of years.

Dr. Syed Haider
Why meals are movie magic: The best food scenes in film history | Salon.com
1. “You know, I know this steak doesn't exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you know what I realize? Ignorance is bliss.” 2. Ignorance is only bliss until it gets you killed.
People think they need food for energy, but they don’t.

You may have heard of “Breatharians”, a movement that believes humans can live on air and sunlight, or prana, and either very little food or water, or even none at all. Nicolas Pilartz, a prominent breatharian, claims he only needs sunlight, water, and one meal per week. Other breatharians, like Akahi Ricardo and Camila Castello, believe that food and water are not necessary at all and that humans can be sustained solely by the energy of the universe.

Story of a Breatharian- Elitom El-Amin
This may sound like a flight of fancy, but sometimes reality turns out to be stranger than any fiction.

We now know for a scientific fact that humans can make energy from just light and water (I’ll explain how shortly so hang in there).


Admittedly food is still necessary (as far as we know!) for building materials like amino acids and carbon. But you don’t need nearly as much of these building blocks as you think you do (our bodies are masterful at maintenance and recycling).

This is not to say you can’t use food for energy. You can, and do, especially if you don’t get enough sunlight. But when you do get enough sunlight your body appropriately inhibits your appetite to the point where you’re using food as it’s meant to be used. Not so much as energy, but as information and raw material.

To best harness as much energy as you can from sunlight and water you need a tan, i.e. you need melanin in your skin.

Cute Tan Babies For Sale OFF 62%, 51% OFF
Now an important caveat. Every locale provides what humans need for optimal health. If you live in Northern Europe you don’t need as much sun as someone who lives in Africa. It’s not complicated, you just need to get yourself outside as often as possible, expose yourself to the seasonal variations in temperature, e.g. get cold adapted in the winters and heat adapted in the summers, eat local and seasonal, wake and sleep with the sun. But if you’re of Northern European descent in the tropics, you’re not going to be optimally healthy without getting yourself a tan.

Safely Getting Tan

I know some people think they can’t get tan. They’re wrong. They just aren’t doing it right. Even for Fitzpatrick I skin types who have been told from the time they were toddlers that they had to lather on three layers of sunscreen every time they stepped outside.

How to Grow and Care for Easter Lilies
White Lilies of course
First of all if you’re lily white and burn when you even think of the sun, you will have to work up to it. Second of all you can’t just get UV-B midday. What you’ve been told ad nauseum has an element of truth in it. UV-B will burn you. What they don’t tell you is that the other “photobiomodulating” anti-inflammatory wavelengths of light (UV-A, NIR and IR) that are more concentrated in the early morning and late afternoon sun will both protect from damage and heal any that occurs.

Exposing skin and unshielded eyes (no glasses or contacts) to morning sunlight, which is rich in UV-A, IR, and NIR and lacks significant amounts of UV-B light, helps build what’s been termed a “solar callus” that helps the skin resist the harm of tanning UV-B rays later in the day (don’t worry it does not resemble an actual callus, it’s an invisible change).

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Aside from non specific anti-inflammatory effects, the IR-A light also stimulates the production of filaggrin, a protein in the skin that enhances its protective barrier and ability to handle subsequent UV exposure. Filaggrin breakdown products, such as urocanic acid, also play a role in protecting the skin from UV damage by acting as a natural sunscreen by absorbing UV radiation and reducing harmful ROS (reactive oxygen species) formation.

Any time you get sunlight it’s important to expose not just the non-visual photoreceptors in your skin to the full spectrum, but also the visual and non-visual photoreceptors in your eyes too (no sunglasses, or contacts, and if there are intra-ocular lens implants that block UV, I would replace them with ones that don’t block anything if possible). That’s because your brain may be involved in the feedback loops that protect your skin from burning.

Midday, during high UV-B times, when you get to the point where you need to go inside your skin will release histidine and create some redness and flushing as a warning that you’re exceeding your threshold of resistance to the damaging effects of UV-B. Theoretically this warning sign may not occur if there are micmatching signals on your skin and in your brain, because the brain detects it has not yet received sufficient UV-B to stimulate it’s own critical processes that depend on that wavelength including wakefulness, mood regulation, emotional processing, and memory consolidation.

Nutritional Support for White Lilies

Avoid high PUFA (polyunsaturated fat) vegetable seed oils completely. You need saturated fat. PUFAs from seed oils are already oxidized (essentially rancid) to begin with due to their heavy processing. This makes them highly inflammatory and they will make you less resilient to UV-B exposure than if you have a good amount of saturated fats in your cell walls and the right amount of safe PUFAs from eating fatty fish that make it into your body undamaged (fish oils can also be damaged and become inflammatory during extraction).

Chitin, Iodine, and Carotenoids: The exoskeleton of shellfish is rich in chitin, iodine, and carotenoids. These compounds help build a solar callus by improving the skin’s ability to assimilate light and protect against blue light and UV damage. Carotenoids, such as astaxanthin, lutein, and zeaxanthin, are particularly important for their antioxidant properties and ability to quench inflammatory ROS.

Astaxanthin: This carotenoid acts as an "edible sunscreen" not only for the skin but also for the eyes (which are also protected by UV-A, IR and NIR) because of its antioxidant properties and ability to penetrate the blood-retinal barrier.

Even before you’ve got your nutrition squared away you can begin getting early morning and late afternoon sun. Aim for 30 minutes each. Then you can start slowly working on your midday sun exposure and a healthy tan.

Ditch the Sunscreen and Sunglasses

tanned-and-blonde | Future baby, Kids, Cute kids
Get the photop then toss those glasses back in the junk drawer
Finally in case you’re wondering, sunglasses and sunscreen that block UV-B are not safe. The underlying assumption behind the belief that they are necessary is that either evolution did a poor job, or God did. Without that basic assumption of error, scientists and doctors would look at fatally flawed research suggesting UV-B is harmful with a much more critical eye.

Nature isn’t so error prone. In fact it doesn’t make mistakes at all. Everything that’s there is there for good reason. What this means is that far from being harmful the sun and all of it’s wavelengths are necessary nutrients, signals and energies, both on your eyes and your skin.

POMC is an absolutely crucial precursor for the production of 12 hormones that regulate human immunity, metabolism, light seeking behavior, stress responses, pain tolerance, and melanocyte functions. Production of POMC requires the very same UV-B radiation from sunlight that dermatologists and PCPs love to hate.

So How Do You Make Energy From Water?


Fraud and conspiracy theory or something more sinister? Be careful what you discover, you may not live to tell the tale.
Once you have a tan, sunlight hits the melanin and the melanin, just like the chlorophyll in a plant, can separate water into hydrogen, oxygen and electrons. These are the essential fuels used by your mitochondria to produce the chemical energy in your body called ATP. You can get just the hydrogen and electrons from food, the electrons alone from grounding, and the oxygen alone from air, or you can get all 3 at once from sun and water by using the not so simple pigment melanin.

Sunlight also adds energy and efficiencies in other ways by structuring water and giving it quantum coherent domains, which store electromagnetic energy like biological batteries and allow quantum effects to persist at biological temperatures.

Both “4th-phase” structuring and quantum coherent domains (water molecules vibrating in unison) are necessary for ATP synthesis, protein synthesis and conformation, metabolic processes and enzyme activity, as well as blood flow, which happens spontaneously within the natural electromagnetic field of the planet due to these effects on water, even without the pumping activity of the heart (as shown in embryos with blood circulation before the heart begins pumping).

The Second Law of thermodynamics isn’t broken by anyone except those who assume the only calories you need are the ones you eat.

In fact you can’t eat enough calories to replace light.

The Unrealistic Energy Requirements of Life

“The energy provided by ATP hydrolysis is far less than what is required to maintain the myriad of cellular activities. This discrepancy suggests that there must be another source of energy or an overlooked mechanism that facilitates cellular functions” (Ling, G.N. A Revolution in the Physiology of the Living Cell).

If you don’t get enough light you just slowly start to whither away, things that should happen just don’t happen because there is not the energy or information or structure necessary to make them happen.

Seven of the Deadliest Infrastructure Failures Throughout History - The New York Times
Trying to live without sunlight is like trying to live in a country that doesn’t invest in rehabbing its roads, bridges and other public infrastructure. Things don’t grind to a halt on day one, but I wouldn’t want to be using those bridges 50 years later.

To explain why we have to explore just a tiny bit more about quantum mechanics, light and water.

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Light is Life

Quantum tunneling of protons is an effect used by your mitochondria to produce the chemical energy molecule ATP. Quantum tunneling means the proton can pass through an otherwise impenetrable barrier. It’s like throwing a ball at a solid brick wall and somehow the ball magically passes through it without breaking the wall.

Quantum effects like this are only seen in life at normal temperatures, they are not present at everyday temperatures in any inanimate object. They can be induced in non-living materials at extremely low temperatures and otherwise very highly controlled environments. Living systems have been shown to somehow maintain a highly controlled and coherent environment conducive to maintaining these miraculous-seeming quantum effects and utilizing them to do things that would otherwise be energetically and physically impossible.

Living systems are unbelievably advanced quantum biological information processors that take instructions from the internal and external environment and produce the appropriate effects to sustain life.

One crucial way living systems maintain coherent structure is by the effect of natural light on water. Light energy structures water and therefore all tissues, which are 50-70% water depending on age, in such a way as to allow quantum effects to occur.

The Unsolved Travelling salesmen problem | by Harinath Selvaraj | coding&stuff | Medium
Another truly incredible example of this in biology relates in a way to the traveling salesman problem of computer science: what is the most efficient route for a salesman to take between multiple stops? As the number of stops increases the problem becomes exponentially more difficult as the square of the number of cities, eventually becoming too difficult to be certain of the solution using normal methods. The best way to solve it rigorously would be with some kind of quantum computer that can travel all possible paths simultaneously and report back the best answer in one go.

Incredibly such a computer exists and it has existed for a couple billion years now. It’s called chlorophyll. The chlorophyll molecule is almost exactly the same as our own hemoglobin (which also absorbs light), the primary difference being the atom at it’s core is magnesium and our hemoglobin holds iron.

Hemoglobin vs Chlorophyll | Cascade, GA Patch
What chlorophyll does with electrons is more like solving a constantly changing maze than solving the traveling salesman problem, but the way in which it solves the maze on the first try every time would be capable of solving the traveling salesman problem if we could generalize the process.

Chlorophyll (quantum) magically allows light to travel every possible path simultaneously during photosynthesis, and then the one that goes fastest is what actually happens. It sounds bizarre and it is. Quantum effects don’t make sense to us, but they form the foundation of life. Meaning life itself is utterly miraculous at it’s very core compared to the way we conceive of reality.

The Miracle of Photosynthesis

What is photosynthesis?
The details of photosynthesis are worth briefly exploring. Chlorophyll molecules in plants absorb photons (light particles), which excite electrons to higher energy states. This energy needs to be transferred to a reaction center where it can be used to convert carbon dioxide and water into glucose (the plant starches we eat) and oxygen that we breathe.

Quantum coherence here refers to the phenomenon where particles such as electrons or photons exist in a superposition of states, allowing them to take multiple paths simultaneously. In the context of photosynthesis, it means that the excited electrons can explore all possible pathways through the chlorophyll network at once. This means that the energy transfer process can dynamically find the most efficient route at any given moment.

Solving Biology's Mysteries Using Quantum Mechanics | Discover Magazine
The cellular environment is subject to constant fluctuations in temperature, pH, and other factors. These changes can influence the most efficient pathway that energy takes through the chlorophyll network (think of a traveling salesman faced with constantly varying traffic, breakdowns, and road closures complicating the situation).

Because of the dynamic nature of the environment, the most efficient pathway for energy transfer is constantly changing. The quantum computing chlorophyll system continuously adapts to find the most efficient route in response to these changes.

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Food is Information

A digital, stylized image of an array of foods (fruits, vegetables, meats, seafood) outlined in green code, similar to the visual style of 'The Matrix.' The foods should appear as though they are part of a computer simulation, with green code symbols cascading over and around them. The entire scene should be predominantly green, with the foods and background blending seamlessly into the iconic digital aesthetic of 'The Matrix.'
Neo’s feeling hungry
Food is also information. It helps tell your body what to do (along with day/night and seasonal temperature cycles) and gives it the appropriate building blocks it needs to do it.

If it grows in the summer it contains information and molecules help you store more energy for the lean winter months, work harder during the longer days and sleep less during the short summer nights.

If it grows in the winter it helps you burn more energy to create more heat and sleep longer during the long winter nights.

Free: Calendar of seasonal vegetables and fruits Free Vector - nohat.cc
Summer Foods: Foods that grow in summer, such as fruits and vegetables, are typically high in carbohydrates and water content. These foods provide quick energy and hydration, supporting higher activity levels and longer days. The increased carbohydrate intake can lead to increased insulin production, promoting the storage of energy in the forms of glycogen and fat. This storage is essential for preparing the body for the leaner winter months (in a natural context).

Winter Foods: Winter foods, like root vegetables and animal products, are often higher in fats and proteins. These nutrients support a higher metabolic rate necessary for generating body heat. They also promote longer sleep cycles, aligning with the longer nights of winter. The increased fat intake can enhance thermogenesis, helping the body maintain its temperature in colder climates.

Natural systems work optimally when they aren’t perturbed. Follow the rhythms of mother nature and you’l be healthy. Another way of looking at it if you believe God created the universe and everything in it is that He creates signs for you to tell you what to do.

Some of the signs are so obvious no one could miss them, and yet they do. For example a truly gigantic flaming ball of fire rising in the morning and filling the entire world with bright light is a pretty unmistakable sign that it’s time to rise and shine.

Other signs are more subtle at least for modern people who are so thoroughly disconnected from their natural environments. These include seasonal variations in foods.

But it pays to seek out the signs in Nature, because they tell you what you need to do if you want to survive and thrive.

https://blog.mygotodoc.com/p/food-is-not-what-you-think

‘Sign of Things to Come’: Singapore Approves 16 Insects for Human Food

Singapore has approved 16 insects as food for humans — becoming the latest country to authorize insect products for human consumption, in what The Guardian described as a move that “paves the way for plates to become wrigglier, leggier and more sustainable” and as “a sign of things to come.”

In a July 8 announcement, the Singapore Food Agency (SFA) approved the 16 insects, which include silkworm pupa and mealworm, “With immediate effect.”

“These insects and insect products can be used for human consumption or as animal feed for food producing animals,” the SFA stated.

Countries and entities such as the United Kingdom (U.K.), Australia and the European Union (EU) have already approved some insects for human consumption. However, in the U.S. existing regulations contain few references specifically addressing insects.

This regulatory gap has enabled an ecosystem of “alternative protein” startups to enter the insect food market — with the backing of figures such as Bill Gates and government agencies including the United Nations (U.N.) and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the National Science Foundation.

“The United Nations Food And Agricultural Organisation (FAO) continues to promote insect consumption as an environmentally friendly way to get protein in your diet — for both humans and their livestock,” The Guardian reported.

Proponents of insects as food for humans, including the FAO, argue this will help combat climate change, as insects produce a smaller carbon footprint than traditional livestock. But critics challenge this view.

“The justification for insects is to produce protein using fewer inputs: to save the planet by reducing climate change, methane from cows, less pollution,” internist Dr. Meryl Nass, founder of Door to Freedom, told The Defender. “But just because it is protein doesn’t mean it’s good for us.”

Nass cited parasites that could be spread by insects, difficulties in digesting insects, and common allergies to chitin — commonly found on the exoskeleton of insects.

According to Nass, lax U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations, under which many insects can be classified as “Generally Regarded as Safe” (GRAS), “means they don’t require testing” and enables the FDA to “look the other way.” This has opened the door for insect foods to reach consumers.

“How long will it take before we learn whether these foods are safe? It could take generations,” Nass said.

“Advocates for mass consumption of insect-based foods would like you to believe that bugs have been a reliable source of protein for thousands of years,” said Seamus Bruner, author of “Controligarchs: Exposing the Billionaire Class, their Secret Deals, and the Globalist Plot to Dominate Your Life.”

Bruner, who also is director of research at the Government Accountability Institute, told The Defender:

“While that is true, malnutrition and disease were also endemic and life expectancies were dramatically lower than they are today. The truth is that beef, pork, poultry and other animal-based foods are the most efficient and healthy sources of protein. These climate fanatics pushing insect-based foods are scaring people into adopting less healthy diets.”

Dutch journalist Elze van Hamelen told The Defender that using insect ingredients for pet food also poses a risk to public health, citing a 2019 study that found parasites in 244 of 300 insect farms and pet stores that were investigated.

“Feeding pets with parasite-infested insects, especially pets that do not have the physiology to digest bugs, may not be such a good idea,” van Hamelen said.

Michael Rectenwald, Ph.D., author of “The Great Reset and the Struggle for Liberty: Unraveling the Global Agenda,” told The Defender, “The insect craze is intimately connected to the U.N.’s Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).”

Rectenwald cited two SDGs: SDG 2, “End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture” and SDG 12, “Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns.”

“’Sustainability’ is code language for coerced reductions in consumption and forced behavioral modifications,” Rectenwald said.

Nass said the U.N., along with the World Economic Forum (WEF), “promote the so-called SDGs, which can supposedly be met if we change our diet.” Yet, “We don’t see the WEF or U.N. attendees eating insects at their meetings.”

Nass suggested that one reason behind the shift to insects as food is “to cause emotional harm: to degrade, debase, downgrade human beings” and that beef is “being demonized,” potentially to “weaken the species.”

“The idea seems to be to get rid of small producers and create a fully industrialized system of food production that Cargill, ConAgra, PepsiCo will profit from,” she added.

“Bill Gates claims his investments in alternative proteins are to save the planet,” Bruner said. “What he does not say is that they are part of a strategy to monopolize the protein industry — for profit — as he lobbies to ban animal-based competition.”

Insect Firms in Singapore ‘Educating’ Children About Insects as a Food Source

The 16 insects Singapore’s SFA has approved include “various species of crickets, grasshoppers, locusts, mealworms and silkworms,” The Straits Times reported. According to The Guardian, foods containing insects must clearly label this on the packaging, “to indicate the true nature of the product.”

The Straits Times reported that local restaurant chain House of Seafood is already “cooking up a menu of 30 insect-infused dishes to give customers more choice,” while other firms have begun “educating consumers” — including children — about insects as a food source for humans.

The report cited the example of Altimate Nutrition which, “While waiting for SFA’s regulatory approval … conducted workshops and educational sessions at almost a hundred schools, from pre-schools to institutes of higher learning.”

Surveys conducted after the program found that about 80% of students would be willing to try the insects after they are approved, The Straits Times reported.

But Bruner said other factors are likely at play in Singapore.

“The WEF — perhaps the largest driving force behind so-called ‘alternative proteins’ — frequently touts Singapore’s compliance with Agenda 2030, so the decision to prioritize insect-based foods is not surprising,” he said.

EU, U.K., Australia and Other Countries Approve Insects for Consumption

Authorities in the EU, U.K. and Australia, among other countries, have also approved certain insects for human consumption.

Brussels Signal cited Ermolaos Ververis, scientific officer for the European Food Safety Authority Novel Foods Team, who said the EU has authorized six insects: “Alphitobius diaperinus larvae products, dried mealworms, whole and ground yellow mealworms, whole and ground Grasshoppers, whole and ground crickets, and partially defatted Whole Cricket Powder.”

Eight applications are still pending in the EU, where according to EU regulations, foods containing insects must be clearly labeled.

Brussels Signal reported that under Horizon Europe, a European Commission — the executive branch of the EU funding program for research and innovation — “insect-based proteins are considered one of the key areas of research.”

U.K. authorities have approved four insects for human consumption — yellow mealworm, house cricket, banded cricket and black soldier fly, as “novel foods,” while Australia has approved three species: two varieties of mealworm and a cricket.

According to the FAO, there are more than 1,900 “edible insect species.” However, insects don’t appear to be included in the FAO’s Codex Alimentarius — its international food safety guidelines.

‘Nudging’ the Public Toward Acceptance

Several studies, including a 2020 report by the European Consumer Organisation, a 2021 YouGov poll and a 2022 report by UBA, Germany’s environmental agency, suggest low demand among the public for consuming foods containing insects.

Other studies in 2020 and 2022 suggested people would be more willing to shift their attitudes after being told about the “environmental benefits” of eating insects.

The 2020 study suggested that “nudging” — a behavioral science concept supported by the National Science Foundation — could be used to this end. “As humans are a particularly social species, leveraging the social nature may prove particularly useful,” the study said.

In a 2021 European Food Safety Authority report, Giovanni Sogari, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Food and Drug at the University of Parma in Italy, suggested, “There are cognitive reasons derived from our social and cultural experiences, the so-called ‘yuck factor’, that make the thought of eating insects repellent to many Europeans. With time and exposure such attitudes can change.”

And Lies Hackelbracht, the owner of TOR Royal, an insect production company in Belgium, told Euronews in 2021, “When we are 9 billion people, it won’t be possible to let everybody eat meat, so we have to search for other possibilities with a lot of protein and it can be in plants, but it can also be in insects.”

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Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”

Featured image is from CHD

https://www.globalresearch.ca/singapore-approves-16-insects-human-food/5863915

https://donshafi911sars-cov-2.blogspot.com/2024/07/sign-of-things-to-come-singapore_29.html

Commentary: Crickets on chicken rice? Eating insects can go from novel to normal in Singapore
SINGAPORE: The first time I chomped on a crispy cricket, it was in Thailand, at a night market in Krabi with American friends. This was 2007 and pre-social media, so I wasn’t doing it for the ‘Gram – I did it to say: “Welcome to Southeast Asia, where we eat everything.”

Perhaps not everything, or at least not yet. Earlier in July, Singapore approved 16 species of insects as food, from house crickets and silkworms to honey bees and the Giant Rhino beetle grub. That scorpion-tarantula-grasshopper skewer I had in Cambodia might have to wait.

My second time was in a Siem Reap restaurant that specialised in bugs. My mum and I sampled the most conspicuously arthropodite dishes on the menu, dreamed up by an ex-Sofitel hotel chef and a French restaurateur. These went onto Facebook with captions like: “SpiderTempura: With great flavour comes great responsibility to eat” and the shocked reactions flowed in.

The next few times, it was usually for a lark while strolling street markets across the region, to show off how unfazed I was by ingesting insects.

DRIED SEA WORMS IN LAKSA?

But I’d like to report that these critters are actually great at conveying flavour.

Flash fried like most street snacks are, their delicate exoskeletons, legs and wings become crispy convoys of seasonings and spices.

The idea of eating insects isn’t completely new to the Singapore food scene. As local foodie folklore goes, hawkers used to enrich laksa gravy with dried sea worms for a powerful punch of umami.

In 2016, the vaunted Native Bar set tongues lapping with its ANTZ elixir: Weaver ants distilled into a concoction of lemongrass gin, coconut yogurt, calamansi and basil, then topped with freeze-dried ants. The drink has since thrilled local and international cocktail connoisseurs, drawing them to the bar for a curious tipple.

NOT SO CREEPY-CRAWLY ON OUR MENUS

Try them once as a fad, they’re this season’s new avocado toast or fried chicken and waffles. Come back because there’ll be more gastronomic creations to delight in as chefs experiment with a new food.

Restaurants are already planning menus to make it deliciously easy to take that first bite.

The House of Seafood restaurant already has about 30 offerings in the works, such as salted egg crab adorned with superworms and cricket-topped sushi. Owner Francis Ng also told local media that he receives five to six calls daily asking about these dishes and expects a 30 per cent revenue increase once they’re on the menu. Insectyumz will launch cricket and mealworm snacks in original and tom yum flavours, and a cricket protein powder.

In our arcadia of haute cuisine and cutting-edge dining institutions, acclaimed and daring chefs can get their Noma on by experimenting with a whole slew of new forms and textures. The (in)famously innovative Copenhagen restaurant was an early pioneer in featuring insects as ultra-modern European gastronomy, introducing fermented cricket paste and crème fraiche with dried ants in 2012.

Some of us may not mind eating insects – say, to nourish both body and eco-conscience – but cannot get over the imagery of creepy crawlies. Some palates clam up, involuntarily clumping these 16 approved insects with undesirable cohorts like cockroaches.

Instead of whole spindly crickets or squishy-looking grub, intrepid chefs are also using them in flour and powder form.

In Europe, the edible insect renaissance has surged consumption of bug-based cereal bars, granola and flour – even creeping into sacred Italian culinary traditions to produce pasta with cricket powder. Just think of how oysters – a decadent status symbol today – used to be scoffed at as ugly, slimy polluted food of the poor in 19th century Britain and America.

Stop thinking reality TV Fear Factor tarantula chomping challenges, lean into the Parts Unknown spirit of the late iconic chef and globe-trotting food lover Anthony Bourdain.

AS LONG AS FOOD IS DELICIOUS AND WALLET-FRIENDLY

Ultimately, people in Singapore will eat most things so long as they’re delicious and wallet-friendly.

Edible insects flit seamlessly into the hearty company of chicken and duck feet, pig’s trotters, fish heads and offal that an outsider might find as gut-churning as insects.

The growing conscious eating movement will also raise the high-protein profile of this antioxidant-packed, more sustainable meat alternative that emits lower greenhouse gases when farmed.

The wellness community will enjoy exploring more gluten-free, low-carb and keto options. According to Brooklyn Bugs founder and chef Joseph Yoon, the cacao taste of mealworms elevates brownies and the nuttiness of cricket powder makes perfect cheesecake sense, so sceptical eaters can let their guards down when insects are disguised into better tasting desserts.

Related:


In the style of food fad frenzies that constantly grip our collective appetites, adventurous eaters and gourmand influencers will tuck in with gusto, and social media chronicles will set off waves of curious epicurean explorations. Perhaps the comforting auras of mala and truffle oil can ease the experience for the slightly-but-not-too-adventurous.

Insect-infused dishes can easily go from novelty to normal. Underground no more, they’ll soar into our food tourism vernacular, whether uplifting hawker favorites or headlining fine dining. Then they’ll settle down, just like Basque burnt cheesecakes and salted egg yolk anything have, and linger on the periphery of menus.

Cricket rice will never knock chicken rice off its throne, but crunchily laced with garlic, a sprinkle of insects would be an aromatic topping to complement that fragrant rice, and give that off-white splay a splash of colour for a picture-perfect platter. Tasty to the palate and tasteful on social media – now, that’s the recipe for a buzzy food fad.

Desiree Koh is a freelance writer based in Singapore.

Source: CNA/yh(ch)


https://www.channelnewsasia.com/commentary/insects-food-singapore-alternative-meat-laksa-cricket-powder-4490986

SFA approves 16 insect species for food; companies gear up to offer new dishes and products
Cheryl Tan

House of Seafood is cooking up a menu of 30 insect-infused dishes to give customers more choice. ST PHOTOS: BRIAN TEO
SINGAPORE – Fancy some lychee balls with crispy chilli crickets or sushi with superworms?

The Singapore Food Agency (SFA) said on July 8 that it has approved 16 species of insects for consumption.

The insects include various species of crickets, grasshoppers, locusts, mealworms and silkworms.

For industry players in Singapore, who have been gearing up for this moment by experimenting with and developing new insect-based recipes and products, the approval is a long-awaited one.

SFA began public consultations on the possibility of allowing 16 species of insects for consumption in 2022, The Straits Times reported then.

Insects have been touted by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation as a more sustainable alternative to meat, as they have high protein content and produce lower greenhouse gas emissions when farmed.

In April 2023, SFA said it would give the green light for these species to be consumed in the second half of 2023. This deadline was later pushed to the first half of 2024.

Already, at least two industry players – Singapore-based Future Protein Solutions and Asia Insect Farm Solutions – have decided to call it quits, as the long wait had thrown their business viability into question.

But other firms are persisting with their insect offerings.

Altimate Nutrition and House of Seafood, for instance, hope to roll their products out to the mass market.

Other firms are taking it slow, hoping to introduce insects into consumer diets gradually, such as by incorporating insect powder as an ingredient in protein bars.

A bevy of options

Mr Francis Ng, House of Seafood restaurant’s chief executive, is cooking up a menu of 30 insect-infused dishes to give customers more choice.

Of the 16 approved species, the restaurant will add superworms, crickets and silkworm pupae to some of its seafood dishes, such as salted egg crab.

Prior to the approval, the restaurant had been getting five to six calls daily inquiring about its insect-based dishes, Mr Ng said.

“Many of our customers, especially young people who are under 30 years old, are very daring. They want to be able to see the whole insect in the dish,” he added.

He anticipates that sales from insect-based dishes will increase his revenue by around 30 per cent.

Mr Javier Yip, founder of logistics company Declarators, has set up another business and secured a licence to import insects from farms in China, Thailand and Vietnam for sale in Singapore.

He will sell a range of bug snacks under the brand name InsectYumz. Several types of insect snacks will be available for a start, including original and tom yum-flavoured crickets and mealworms. There will also be cricket powder, which is a protein powder.

These items will soon be listed on his website and other e-commerce sites, as well as supermarkets and restaurants, he added.

Asked why he decided to venture into importing insects, Mr Yip said: “I enjoy eating them; in fact, the first time I tried an insect was at a shop in Tampines in the 1990s.”

As he runs a logistics company, Mr Yip feels he has the know-how and ability to import these insects into Singapore. He hopes to provide such snacks to those who might enjoy them, particularly young people.

Altimate Nutrition, which creates insect food products for humans, has sought to garner interest among younger people by educating consumers over the years.

Its main product offerings are cricket-infused protein bars, which come in a range of flavours, from strawberry to banana chocolate.

While waiting for SFA’s regulatory approval, the company conducted workshops and educational sessions at almost a hundred schools, from pre-schools to institutes of higher learning, said its co-founder, Mr Hiew Yuen Sheng.

“During our workshops, we targeted mostly young people who may be more adventurous when it comes to trying insects, and we educated them on the benefits of insects as a more sustainable protein source,” he said.

Surveys conducted after the programme found that around 80 per cent of students polled would be willing to try the insects after they are approved, he added.

Altimate Nutrition is hoping to launch its cricket protein bars at eco-friendly store Green Collective as soon as possible, to be the “first movers”, Mr Hiew said.

It is collaborating with various food and beverage players – for instance, it supplies House of Seafood with some of its bugs, and is working with Origin Bar to launch a cricket-based cocktail.

To carry out more research and development, Altimate Nutrition has formed a joint venture named ProteinInnovation with its supplier, Thai insect farm Global Bugs.

ProteinInnovation will look into growing crickets in the most productive, cost-effective way, and the collaboration will help Global Bugs to better tap the Singapore market, said Global Bugs co-founder and chief executive Kanitsanan Thanthitiwat.

“While there are many cricket farms in the Thai market, the challenge lies in determining who can produce the largest volume of crickets and in the most cost-effective way,” she said.

ProteinInnovation will be raising funds to build another high-tech cricket farm in Thailand, which is capable of growing around 200 tonnes of crickets a year – 20 times more than its current capacity.

The crickets will be bred, using automation, in little “boxes”, to alleviate manpower costs, and being modular, these can easily be scaled up, she added.

Other companies are waiting to test consumer reception before deciding on their launch plans.

Mr Aaron Chen, the chief executive of Werms, which currently sells insects such as crickets and mealworms as pet food, is waiting to see if there is any consumer demand for his insects, before deciding to offer them for human consumption.

While these insects are grown in a similar way – whether for humans or for pets – greater biosecurity measures will be needed if they are to be sold for human consumption. A new farm will also have to be set up to prevent cross-contamination, for example, and a new licence will be needed.

“While we can scale up rather quickly, there might be quite a bit of costs involved for us to venture into the edible insect market, so we’ll wait and see what happens,” he told ST.

Japanese start-up Morus is looking to launch a range of silkworm-based products here, targeting high-end restaurants and consumers, as they are high-income and health conscious, said Mr Ryo Sato, its chief executive.

Its products include a pure silkworm powder – which can be used as a food ingredient – along with matcha powder, protein powder and protein bars.

Given that Singaporean consumers do not have a history of consuming insects, Morus will also conduct more pop-up events and consumer workshops, Mr Sato said.

Once it is able to scale up and reduce costs of production, Morus will start focusing on the mass market, he added.

Currently, each 500g bottle of protein powder will cost $248, and can last for a month if consumed daily.

But its matcha powder will be priced more affordably, Mr Sato said, without specifying a price.

The company is also hoping to work with high-end restaurants, both in Singapore and other parts of South-east Asia and Europe, to integrate Morus’ silkworm-based products into their dishes, before targeting the mass market.

Food safety and labelling requirements

SFA said on July 8 that those intending to import or farm insects for human consumption or livestock feed must meet its guidelines, which include providing documentary proof that the imported insects are farmed in regulated establishments with food safety controls and are not harvested from the wild.

Insects not on SFA’s list of 16 will have to be evaluated to ensure that the species are safe for consumption, the agency said.

Companies selling pre-packed food containing insects will also have to label their packaging as such, so that consumers can make informed decisions on whether to purchase the product.

Insect products will also be subject to food safety testing. Those that do not meet SFA’s standards will not be allowed for sale.

More On This Topic


Crispy chilli crickets or salted egg crab with superworms, anyone? SFA has approved 16 species of insects to be sold as food here. Find out what's on the menu: https://str.sg/j6oV

The Lion Diet Reset for Jumpstarting Your Healing Journey
Just red meat, salt and mineral water to wash it down.

Dr. Syed Haider
What do Lions Eat? - Discovery UK
I gained about 40 - 50 pounds during the pandemic primarily due to stress, poor sleep and too much sugar, then I lost it all by eating whole foods, sleeping well and walking 10,000-15,000 steps a day, then I gained some of it back by eating sugar again and slacking on sleep hygiene, though I mostly kept up the walking, which had become a morning habit (I was actually pleasantly surprised to see that for over 18 months now I’ve always averaged close to 10,000 steps a day over any 6 month period (the health app in my phone)).

Meanwhile a friend of mine who had benefited greatly from the carnivore diet in the past, but fell off the wagon and had been trying to get back on for awhile had been encouraging me for some time to be his accountability partner on a diet change journey so finally I decided to take the plunge.

From personal experience I know very well that the hardest hill to climb is that initial decision to make a change for the better. After you’ve truly made a commitment to change, sustaining it is not nearly as hard.

You also find many complementary healthy changes suddenly become easier to implement. It feels like there is a “good boy” template in the subconscious and an opposing “bad boy” one, though that term carries other perhaps conflicting (perhaps not) connotations.

What I mean is that all the things I’ve collected throughout my life that I consider good healthy behaviors tend to creep back sooner or later once I decided to get healthier and take the first steps towards better health.

Similarly if I cheat unexpectedly, that single “bad” choice has usually led to most of the good I was doing falling apart and me going back to all the old bad ways.

In order to circumvent this tendency I’m planning to build in some flexibility in the form of “cheat” days, but I don’t think it’s helpful to think of them as cheat days, in fact I think it only serves to make it likely that your subconscious considers them a “bad” thing.

The key to success and sustainability is to consider them a good thing instead, think of them more as health/metabolic/recovery hormetic stress tests, that are preplanned and executed as a key part of a healthy lifestyle protocol (hormesis: low dose stressor is beneficial, high dose is harmful. Applies to exercise, sunlight, water, food, homeopathy, pharmacology, herbology, even many so called chemical toxins - the dose makes the poison and all).

The goal is not only to regain good health but to regain maximal resilience and ability to sustain that good health in the face of challenging situations where you can’t sleep properly, or eat properly or exercise the way you usually do, or you’re exposed to toxic blue light for prolonged periods, or someone close to you passes away, or you lose a job, etc.

Thank you for reading Dr. Syed Haider. This post is public so feel free to share it.

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I’m one of those people who can eat a dozen cupcakes if I’m feeling stressed out, but if I stop eating sugar entirely I don’t have any cravings for it. Moderation is impossible, but abstinence is easy. So maybe I’m addicted, or maybe I’m just populated by microbes that depend on sugar.

I did a 5 day carnivore reset before my initial weight loss journey started perhaps 18 months ago now, and I was amazed to see that I had no sugar cravings for a couple of months afterwards. Literally for the first time in my life sugar bombs survived in my house for over 48 hours. We had a tub of ice cream that was not finished for a month, which would have been as likely as a pig flying before that.

But after that period of a couple months I gradually lost my indifference to sweets and then eventually went back to full on sweet-tooth, cookie-monster mode, which was a big part of my eventual downfall later.

My weight loss also stalled out before I got really lean, I felt way better, looked away better, at least in clothes, but I was probably still carrying an extra 30 pounds of fat internally - the visceral fat - which, though invisible to the naked eye, is the worst kind for your health.

Carnivore seems to most people to be like an extreme overreaction to the vegan movement, and perhaps it is culturally an immune reaction of sorts, but it pays to consider what the proponents of the diet say.

One of the most telling arguments in favor is that plants are trying to kill you.

Losing my finger to a 'meat eating' plant? - YouTube
Plants like all living things, would prefer to stay alive, and are in a life or death struggle with those who would kill them.

Since they can’t run away or fight off their predators, they primarily rely on poisoning them, and animals have developed finely tuned senses that let them know if there is a poison present - it tastes bad, usually very bitter, and the usual reaction is to spit it out (and wash your mouth out), the way a baby will when you try to feed them broccoli or Brussel sprouts.

Most non-human mammals that are herbivores or omnivores are only evolutionarily optimized to digest a small selection of plants in their environment.

Human civilizations first of all domesticated and bred plants to make them more palatable, and then developed intricate methods of neutralizing and predigesting plants via soaking, sprouting, culturing and cooking plant foods to make them less toxic, though we can’t entirely eliminate all toxins even with these complicated traditional procedures (hormesis argues the remaining toxins are probably beneficial stressors, and there are other beneficial phytonutrients too).

Modern manufacturing eschews all that traditional wisdom for quick production methods that leave the lectins, oxalates, phtyates, tannins, hormone disruptors, and nutrient blockers intact.

But even if someone took appropriate care to use traditional methods of food preparation, and also made sure to use seasonal ingredients, and combined them in the traditional recipes that made use of various complementary ingredients, they would still be left with some degree of plant poisons in their diet.

I was shocked to learn that every plant in the grocery store has dozens of known carcinogens, and plants produce phytotoxins that total 10,000 times the amount of pesticides sprayed on them (the primary concern with meat is improper handling leading to microorganisms polluting it, and improper cooking methods leading to char - i.e. you don’t want to burn it).

As far as we know all human societies in every age throughout history ate as much meat as they could get their hands on, and supplemented with plants only when necessary to avert calorie restriction, treat/prevent illness, and as a garnish, or side dish to their meat. The farther back we go the less palatable the plants were and they required even more processing to make them edible.

Agrarian societies were always, and still are, less healthy than their hunter gatherer counterparts.

Now, to be clear, I’m not arguing for a forever meat diet.

The Lion diet refers to eating just ruminant red meat garnished with salt and washed down with mineral rich water.

The way I see it, this is an elimination diet, of which there are many.

Some popular ones include AIP, Carnivore and Vegan.

AIP is the autoimmune paleo diet and advises removing grains, sugars, eggs, dairy, soy, and nightshade vegetables.

Carnivore allows all meat, fish, dairy and eggs.

Vegan allows only plant products.

The idea behind elimination diets, which were a mainstay of pre-modern medical systems, and still used heavily in functional and alternative medicine today, is that something you are eating is preventing your body from recovering from chronic illness, perhaps due to a “leaky gut”, i.e. your gut lining has become damaged and permeable by some toxic insult (like viral/vax entry into the bloodstream and subsequent transfection of key cells) to partially digested food particles which trigger immune reactions that can cross react with your own tissues or simply create inflammation that keeps you sick, and keeps the gut lining from healing.

Eliminate the foods and eliminate your symptoms, heal the gut, then reintroduce the foods one at a time, carefully watching for reactions.

It can get complicated because the reactions can take weeks to wear off, and days to recur upon reexposure. So the reintroduction phase is usually done by consuming the test food for 3 days then waiting another 4 days for a reaction.

Tracking gut permeability tests (lactulose-mannitol ratio, zonulin level, antibodies to zonulin, actin, and lipopolysaccharide) can help determine when to begin the reintroduction phase.

Given the inherent toxicity of plants, which has developed as an evolutionary defense mechanism against being eaten, and the relatively benign nature of animal meat the safest elimination diets either limit the most toxic plant foods, or eliminate plant foods altogether.

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In my case I know I have an autoimmune issue with mild psoriasis, which is likely related to leaky gut, I also have had chronic constipation, occasional reflux, occasional headaches, occasional stuffy nose, a tendency towards insomnia, and relatively rapid aging in the last few years with significant weight gain.

So my plan is to try to reverse all of these naturally and I’ll likely be checking micronutrient levels and genetics at some point to fine tune things using protocols developed by Chris Masterjohn.

Diet over the longer term will likely trend towards lower in carbs, higher in meat/seafood, dairy, and eggs, but this will depend on my carb tolerance in the future as evidenced by markers like body fat and fasting insulin levels. Will eat shortly after waking to help strengthen the circadian rhythm further.

Exercise will start with mobility drills, walks, sprints (because no other exercise naturally stimulates muscle gain and fat loss better - just look at an olympic sprinter - the message to your body is either: something’s about to kill us, or we’re about to starve and need to catch some food fast, so shape up ASAP and help me out here), body weight exercises, maybe kettlebell swings.

Skin and hair care will include traditional topical treatments like egg whites, egg yolks, tallow, and essential oils.

Sleep will be as much as needed and regular hours.

Light environment: aim to minimize blue light toxicity from sunlight filtered through window glass, and indoor bulbs by spending as much time outdoors as possible. Sun exposure in the mornings and around sunset especially with some midday sun.

Also need to work on emotional and spiritual growth and interpersonal relationships, but those are higher hanging fruit.

Anyway let me know if you’ve tried an elimination diet in the past and how it went for you.

https://blog.mygotodoc.com/p/the-lion-diet-reset-for-jumpstarting

Fish and seafood are an important part of a healthy #diet. Freshly cooked filets with your favorite side dishes are a great way to add dense #nutrition to your everyday meals. #health

A seafood soup! Today I woke up with a cold and the seafood soup is the best to heal quickly.

Went to go see our friends at Da SeaFood Cartel braaah so delicious! ????
#SoMee #Awesme #SupportLocal

Sri Lanka ????❤️????????

Honestly I didn’t plan my trip at all…as I told before, I couldn’t find my passport…so there was “0” planning????

Few hours before my flight I contacted @srilankatravellers to pick me up from the airport and take me around for a few days. We quickly agreed on estimated trip plan based on the places I wanted to visit.

Guess what, Hasi (my tour guide) met me with beautiful flowers ???? This is how our trip started…

Hasi took me to Kandy first, there I spent the day and I stayed overnight.

We discovered botanic garden, went to concert, walked around the city and had lunch and dinner, tried local cuisine and seafood ????, it was so delicious ????????????

‼️Sri Lankan cuisine is very yummy, but too spicy ????️.
However you can always ask to make it non spicy, like in my case, because I can’t eat spicy food.

Would you like to know about nice places with delicious food and amazing view in Kandy? ????

Ah…and the most amazing - the hotel where I stopped ????????????

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#contentcreator #contentmarketing #srilanka #kandysrilanka #srilankahotels #srilankarestaurant #reviews #srilankareview #travelblogsrilanka #travelbloggers #hotelreviews #restaurantreviews

What in the ocean is this!? Contemplating our next dish w/ @iamthejungle ... ????????
Wear our new shirt from @mahaloshoots
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#reactionvideos #seacreatures #seafood #weirdfood #somee #awesme

Vegetables and Seafood Sunday

Happy lunch and good appetite everyone, I'm eating what I like, lots of seafood and lots of lemon

Hunting Time! ????

Making the most of Easter weekend with a delicious brunch and hunting for Easter eggs is a good idea.

The Peninsula Bangkok is offering an Easter Brunch on Sunday, April 9, 2023, at River Café & Terrace, which overlooks the beautiful reflections of the Chaophraya River. The Easter Brunch is lined up with delicious selections from the kitchen, including roasted lamb, seafood on ice, blue crab legs, tiger prawns, oysters, a DIY pizza station, and a cookie station. Along with the unique and delicious creations to enjoy, there are also interactive activities, such as DIY pizza and cookies, balloon-making, face painting, and an Easter egg hunt at The Lawn.

Sunday Easter Brunch
From 12:00 noon until 3:00 pm

#somee.social

Fresh Fried Fish is Good For You, Here's Why! #seafood #SoMee #AweSME