This article originally appeared on m o d e r n i t y and was republished with permission.
Guest post by @ModernityNews
A UK government-backed group is exploring how to use “nudge” tactics (psychological propaganda) to convince the population to start eating insects.
The National Alternative Protein Innovation Centre (NAPIC), which is funded by UK Research and Innovation, a government quango, is trying to sell the public on “meat alternatives” in the name of reducing carbon emissions as part of the UK’s net zero agenda.
Prof Anwesha Sarkar, from the University of Leeds, where the research centre will be based, told the Telegraph: “We want to make alternative proteins mainstream for a more sustainable planet.”
That diet includes “mince created from crickets” and various insects ground up into something that “looks like a burger.”
Allied with government funding the group will also receive “£23 million in funding from multinationals and other businesses hoping to cash in on an industry that could be worth nearly £7 billion a year.”
Knowing that the public has an innate revulsion to eating insects, added to studies that show consuming bugs can be toxic because they contain parasites, the group effectively admits it will have to brainwash people to buy them.
That will take the form of the government and industry using “nudging techniques, or public information campaigns” in order “to persuade people to swap their steak for a plant-based or lab-grown alternative, such as nudging techniques, or public information campaigns.”
The UK government’s infamous ‘nudge unit’ was previously used to inflate fear amongst the public during the COVID pandemic to force them into compliance, a process that was deemed “grossly unethical” by psychologists.
This propaganda included using macabre footage of people in hospital intensive care units as well as daily running death totals and slogans such as, “If you go out you can spread it, people will die.”
Farmers have argued that coercing people to eat insects as a replacement for meat will harm the industry, while many also see it as another deliberate attempt to reduce people’s living standards as part of the unhinged drive towards net zero.
As we previously highlighted, ‘The Economist’ magazine, which is read by the global elite, published an article encouraging people to live on a diet of bugs like citizens in the conflict-torn Congo in order to save the planet.
