Eating Snakes Can Help Save The World
In recent years, nutrition scientists have made it a point to highlight the fact that eating copious amounts of meat is bad for your body and for the environment at large. This has led to a number of fad diets and low-meat options popping up all over the world, though some researchers believe they may have stumbled onto a compromise. According to a recently published journal, an international team of scientists has determined that humans should be eating snakes as part of their regular diet.
Eating Snakes Is Efficient
The results of the study seem to focus on several parameters, including the expeditious growth rate of pythons, the amount of meat the creatures yield compared to the amount of food they consume, and the cost of housing and raising the snakes when compared to traditional meat sources such as pigs, cows, and chickens. In fact, scientists discovered an additional health benefit to eating snakes while engaged in this line of research, which suggests consuming python meat may regulate metabolic processes within the human body.
Popular Around The World
Scarfing down a nice rattlesnake ribeye may not sound quite as appetizing as the existing alternative, though many cultures have been eating snakes for years. Snake meat is a staple item in a number of regions across China, Cambodia, and Vietnam, and certain locations in the American Southwest even serve fried snake dishes as a novelty. Pythons and other slithering reptiles exist in massive numbers across the Earth, making them a sustainably sourced food item that could help to lessen the burden of global food insecurity.
A Year-Long Study
The scientists behind this study specifically looked at the health benefits of eating two species of snakes, both raised in farms across Vietnam and Thailand over the course of one year. The species were the Malayopython reticulatus and Python bivittatus, which each consume significantly fewer resources than salmon, cows, pigs, and other common livestock. This is due to a number of factors, including common snake dietary habits, which see the creatures fasting, sometimes for months at a time.
Snake Nuggets
While many Americans tend not to think too critically about the conditions of their local livestock, eating snakes could be a major step for regions facing food and water insecurity. Still, the team responsible for this research has acknowledged that getting people to switch from chicken to a plate of snake nuggets may be a hard sell, though it likely sounds preferable to other recent studies that suggest eating things like cricket protein.
Eat To Save The Planet
Eating snake meat appears to be a reliable, eco-friendly, and sustainable method for saving the planet, all while cutting down on the labor of raising livestock, as far as this new research can tell. If this outcome sounds like a sketch too far for you, there are also a number of meat substitutes that don’t rely on animal products at all, such as impossible burgers, walnut chorizo, and sofritas.
Planning For The Future
As humankind continues marching onward in the face of complex supply chain and ecological issues, many unexpected solutions are bound to arise. While eating snakes may sound absurd today, you may find yourself slurping up a sidewinder spaghetti in 50 years, thinking, “It’s good, but it needs more scales.”
Source: Nature.com
