• 0 Posts
  • 10 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 12th, 2023

help-circle

  • According to this study a mealworm farm uses more energy per kg of protein produced compared to chicken, but much less energy than any other meat. However, mealworm farms rank lowest in CO₂-equivalent emissions per kg of protein and lowest in land use compared to all meat products, including chicken.

    Apparently soy beans produce 6.82 kg of CO₂-equivalent per kg of protein isolate (which is 90% protein, therefore 7,5 kg of CO₂-equivalent per kg of protein), while mealworm farms produce 14 kg of CO₂-equivalent per kg of protein (and around 30 kg for chicken, the next best option). Worse, but less than double.

    As for land use, the first study calculates that to produce 1kg of protein from mealworms it is necessary to use 18 square meters of land per year (including the land to grow food for the worms) while according to this other study vegetable proteins need up to 25 square meters of land per year for each kg of protein.

    I admit it’s not as big a difference in land use as I thought (it’s different studies, they might have slightly different metrics) , but I think there are other factors that make it a much more complicated issue: mass use of fertilizers, monocultures, deforestation, soil impoverishment… An advantage of mealworms might be that you can give them a variety of foods that are easier on the soil (the first study mentioned carrots, grains and other stuff) in order for them to produce protein, while protein-heavy plants require rich soil and tend to drain it fast.


  • I really don’t think it’s a matter of “haters”. It might be more logical and consistent if you have no other frames of reference, but most Plasma users come over from other OSs who all use double click (Windows, Mac, even Gnome). If a new user blindly tries KDE and keeps accidentally opening everything while trying to select it’s just an immediate and big annoyance. It’s not even clear that it isn’t a bug because there is no clear explanation of how to select and how to open.

    Edit: we are of course all used to single clicking on touch screens, but there it is contrasted with the long press to see options and some “select mode” for file management. There is no system that works exactly like Plasma single-click, which makes it disorienting.