Tag: Livin Farms

Entomophagy is the practice of eating insects that I will be telling you about in the upcoming series of posts called *cue drumroll* Mealworm Mondays! If a picture says a thousand words then a video must speak millions, so whenever I’m not in the mood to write out long explanations or you’re too lazy to read my babbling, I’ll be sharing humorous information-packed videos about one of my favorite topics!

If you’ve been following The Travel Bug Bite for a while now you might be asking yourself. “Wait, what? Eating insects is NOT vegan.” And frankly, you’re right, it’s not.

I’ve referred to myself as a vegan for a long time now, mainly due to the fact that I not only avoid all animal products (with the exception of insects) but I also only use cruelty free products and I’m attempting to convert to a 100% zero-waste lifestyle. Yes, I’m one of those people, get over it. As you might understand, calling myself a vegetarian felt like an understatement so I chose to call myself a vegan until people asked more questions and I’d explain that I’m actually an entovegan.

I discovered the term entovegan after weeks of struggling to find a label for what I was (not am… was, keep reading). I finally found the website www.entovegan.com where someone living on the other side of the world was dealing with the same issues. Josh decided to raise awareness about this unique, yet slightly contradictory, diet.

So once I received my Hive from Livin Farms, I ran around telling the world all about entoveganism. I didn’t just get the Hive (the worlds first edible insect desktop farm) to eat insects, as I felt the need to explain to my purely vegan friends. I got it to find a solution for my food waste (Chinese apartments are tiny, I can’t even fit an apartment-sized compost in here…) and I strongly believe in spreading the world about entomophagy to encourage meat eaters to replace some of their meat meals with insect protein – even though as a vegan, I can reassure you that you can get all the protein you need from plants. You see? Even supporting entomophagy makes me a bad vegan 😉

Sure, it’s an honorable mission and many vegans supported my decision with one complaint. You can’t call yourself a vegan if you eat anything that doesn’t consent to being eaten, it’s a contradiction. Well, I’m no longer an ento-anything, except an aspiring entomologist perhaps, because the Hive changed the way I look at mealworms.

While my husband is excited to munch on our mealworms once they mature, I’ve been watching them grow, feeding them and worrying about them from the minute they came to live with us. Although the reasons to eat insects are endless, I found it impossible to justify eating them myself. And that’s totally okay.

I’ll still keep calling myself a bug-biting blogger bitten by the travel bug because that’s incredibly catchy, but I won’t be doing any bug-biting personally. I’m still going to write about it and support the movement because I believe that it can literally change the world. So stay tuned for some crunchy (or should I say C-R-O-N-C-Hy) blog posts and videos!

Feel free to share any stories you have about trying edible insects or your opinions about the topic in the comments below!

*Disclaimer: If you are allergic to shellfish, please stay away from edible insects! There have been various cases of people who are allergic to shellfish to also react to edible insects. Read more about potential allergies here.