A Leg up on the Competition

"The Chinese eat anything with four legs except tables" -- as the old saying indicates, eating insects is but a small case out of all sorts of unusual things that Chinese eat.
With traditional heritage in my blood, I am willing to try the multiple legged Arthropoda like centipede, scolopendrid, scorpion, not to mention the six legged family of insects to be the enriched food sources, and assess them having the ‘irreplaceable’ value in our diet.
It is no doubt that the insects once were the supplements for nutrition. However, encourage taking insects for the necessary protein? I can’t help recalling the conversation with the president of the Vancouver Orchid Society that I suggested using eggshells as calcium provider for the plants. He replied, "Won’t it be a lot more condensed if we used Plant Foods rather than eggshells?" Why I haven’t ever thought about how many insects should we eat for the proteins or Vitamins and minerals our bodies require?
Even though we do take a huge quantity of insects, and even create cooking recipes for them, another talk comes to me -- the celebrity chef Jose Andres, who was profiled on news program 60 Minutes, mentioned during the TV interview, "For the first 5 seconds of the bite of beef, it tastes wonderful, but for the rest of 20 seconds before swallowing, the mouthful is just chewing."
Insects are some alternative for us to chew on if we couldn't afford fillet mignon? Even though, for something to chew on, potato chips actually taste much better than the deep fried grasshoppers, and may be not less a healthy food if it contained lower sodium.
The new fashion of diet has mixed the confusing messages to consumers from junk foods to much vitamin supplement; not to mention all kinds of foods and fruits can be purchased in grocery stores. Nevertheless, people are still likely to pick a few wild berries when field tripping. It is not only for a taste of the natural resources, but also human nature to try something new – Could it be the similar reason to try insects when foods are not in a serious shortage?
If I have any objection of trying insects - out of curiosity, necessity or style – it is the insects could have been made into a fancy plate, like the snail is a fashionable entree in a high-end French restaurant.
It is not fair game after all putting insects into a competition with snails if insects could speak up for themselves: “How humiliating! How do those no-legs compare with us?” Despite the fact that the greatest predator in the survival game to insects, reviewing from the history of diet, is the two-legged human beings.
Like Adrian Forsyth describes in his informative article "Creepy Cuisine", I don't doubt that “insect-eating will make resurgence as human populations peak”; as well as when global climate change and causes a shortage of natural materials.
It's only that once we start eating insects and viewing them as reasonable food resource, following up could be an alerting message: “Protecting Endangered species – Insects!”