I'm not bothered at all by the thought of insect larvae burgers. Are you?

For reasons I can't figure out, Swiss law allows use of only mealworm larvae, house crickets and migratory locusts. But apparently they taste fine:

The burger itself has little white specks of rice inside with traces of carrot, paprika, chili powder and pepper. After a hesitant bite, the main flavors that come out are the spices. The texture is curious, a bit like a meaty falafel with a crunch. An aftertaste lingered — but maybe that was just my subconscious playing tricks.

Sales are apparently brisk in a very limited release so far.

See also: Chapul cricket bars, which are delicious, and the Impossible Burger.

Marion Nestle points out what we already know about the PURE Study (that's Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology): Fruits, veggies, and legumes are good for us.

And refined carbohydrates and sugar are bad. The study's "high fat" diet didn't even approach the amount of fat that most of us eat (18-30% versus 35% in the US), so it's impossible to really say what the study proved in regards to fat intake.

On death row, food rivals porn as an obsession for inmates.

Text below, in case you want to avoid reading the grisly details of a murdered family:

The second-most-prevalent obsession is food. Longo says he actually has two photo collections: nude women and gourmet cuisine. His letters to me are filled with food cravings: "a salt bagel with a full plain cream cheese schmeer from Einstein or Brueggers — toasted, of course"; "a cinnabon with a good cup of coffee"; "a pizza"; "honey-dripping baklava." To make the institutional meals more palatable, the men sometimes hold death-row dinner parties. Several inmates will pass their trays down the row to one cell — frequently, to Longo's. He'll combine all the food together, add commissary-bought items like hot sauce, peppers, and shredded cheese, then rebuild the plates "Cadillac style," as it's called, and send the trays back.

How all this plays into the choice of a last meal, I don't know.

94% of US tap water is contaminated by plastic fibers

I cannot find data on bottled water, but considering that most of it is packaged in plastic, I suspect it's no better. Why does this matter? Well, besides the ick factor, plastics have a notorious reputation in the endocrinology world as "endocrine disruptors," meaning that they exert a hormone-like effect on tissues. The most notorious chemical within plastics with this effect is bisphenol A, which among other effects acts as an estrogen mimic.

America once seriously considered importing hippopotamuses as livestock.

"The idea was to import hippopotamuses from Africa, set them in the swamplands along the Gulf Coast, and raise them for food. The idea was to turn America into a nation of hippo ranchers."

The fact that we don't have hippos living in the Mississippi River eating water hyacinths and being harvested for meat is no tragedy; introduced species have a rough history in America, as anyone in Hawaii can tell you. But as author John Mooallem notes, the fact that we no longer live in an America where kinda-sorta crazy ideas like this can be debated non-ironically is kind of sad. (link from longform.org)

When London took cars off the road for Ride London, the air quality got better. As in, shockingly better.

"Air pollution is believed to be a contributing factor in some 9,000 deaths in the UK capital alone annually.

According to a story published in The Times today £383,000 of taxpayers’ money has been spent by Government ministers on fighting efforts to clean up the UK’s air. Despite this, Britain recently announced plans to ban the sale of petrol and diesel cars by 2040 following a similar commitment in France."

Mark Twain's "taming the bicycle" is one of the best pieces of cycling writing ever.

This essay makes me so happy. It's a joyful, self-deprecating account of learning to ride a pennyfarthing, complete with copious use of Pond's Extract. But this essay makes me so sad. It's better than anything I'll ever write, and Mark Twain didn't even try to publish it. Sigh. Link from bikesnobnyc.blogspot.com.

Adorable piglets modified via CRISPR eventually may be organ donors for humans. Or delicious, non-carcinogenic bacon. One of those.

That's where my mind went when I read this. The immediate application for CRISPR technology in animals may be to reduce their production of greenhouse gases, or decrease their carcinogenicity. But for now, organ transplantation seems to be where it's at, for obvious reasons:

Doctors won’t have to do much persuasion, however, to get patients to accept organs from another species. “There is so much desperation among people on transplant lists, and 20 a day are dying as they wait,” said Dr. Adam Griesemer, a xenotransplantation researcher and transplant surgeon at Columbia University Medical Center. “This could be a path to a transplant for them. Colleagues keep asking me when we’re going to do it.”

Justin Moore, MD, has thoughts.