Harold Hutchison
Fox News host Tucker Carlson said Tuesday that the federal government “probably” will force Americans to eat insects in the name of sustainability.
“Let’s say you’re eating packaged food and you happen to have your reading glasses in reach and you decide to look at that’s on the label. What’s in this stuff you wonder. It says sustainable. What does that mean?” Carlson, an honorary board member of the Daily Caller News Foundation, asked. “Well, you can see on the screen, it turns out a lot of companies use the term ‘sustainable’ to suggest crickets. Crickets as in chirping insects. So why are crickets winding up in your snack foods? Is that a good idea? Should you eat crickets without your knowledge?”
Over the years, media outlets, companies and leaders have pushed the idea of shifting people away from eating meat by substituting insects to address climate change, including former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan.
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“This is actually very serious. Now, first of all, eating insects is legal in the United States, per the FDA. And yes, crickets are in flour, crickets are in cotton candy, snacks, and insects are high in protein, low in fat, low in carbohydrates. They eat them in Africa, they eat them in Asia, they eat them in Mexico. Not a lot of people are eating them here yet and I can understand why. I’m certainly not eating insects,” Dr. Marc Siegel, a medical contributor to Fox News said, before outlining that the FDA allows for a certain amount of insect parts to be in various types of food.
The Food and Drug Administration has a handbook listing what constitutes an acceptable level of insect parts in food ranging from oregano to peanut butter, in some cases allowing over a thousand insect parts to be in some food products.
“As a physician people are allergic to this stuff because insects are a lot like shellfish, so if you have a shell fish allergy you can itchy from any of this stuff,” Siegel continued. “You could end up in the emergency room having problems breathing, you could get asthma, you could get a rash.”
Siegel moved on to discuss skyrocketing food prices, notably an increase in egg and meat prices.
“Tucker, I would not be surprised if we end up with a bug mandate, that you and I have to eat insects,” Siegel said. “What do you think, is that the next mandate coming down the pike at us Tucker?”
“Probably,” Carlson said.
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