Rollins’ claim that prices for other protein sources were “coming down” is inaccurate. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the cost of eggs, while lower than in 2025, has increased in recent months, increasing by 4.3% from May to June, falling by 0.5% from June to July, and then increasing again by 2.9% from July to August. Pork and chicken costs both increased by 0.4% from July to August.
Meanwhile, prices for ground beef hit a new record after reaching an average price of around $7.16 per pound as of August, an increase of 0.6% from July and 7.9% when compared with the previous year.
“If Joe Biden said anything close to this, MAGA would’ve had a total meltdown,” argued Democratic influencer Harry Sisson in a social media post on X to his more than 400,000 followers. “Now this is just part of Trump’s messaging. Hypocrisy at its finest.”
Others, like the progressive media organization MeidasTouch, jokingly argued that Rollins was “about two weeks away from telling people they can always eat bugs.”
“You will eat the bugs, you will live in the pod,” quipped Damin Toell, a New York-based attorney, in a social media post on X.
A multi-millionaire telling people to eat other protein that they also cannot afford is about as close to a “let them eat cake” moment as we’ll probably get.
“If Joe Biden said anything close to this, MAGA would’ve had a total meltdown,” argued Democratic influencer Harry Sisson in a social media post on X to his more than 400,000 followers. “Now this is just part of Trump’s messaging. Hypocrisy at its finest.”
Republicans have been melting down about ‘being forced to eat the bugs’ for over a fucking decade without anyone saying it. I still remember when I used to listen to a conservative shithead podcast (wanted to follow the shithead right and know their awful arguments, but eventually it wasn’t worth the brainrot) and they constantly talked about that and even had the most asinine jingles about it.
Looking back, I’m amazed at how much time I wasted subjecting myself to that…
During the covid years, I had to laugh that your basic con believed all of these things and spent so much time online and IRL trying to convince others of them. Most basic cons probably still believe them:
- That “TechBros” (hate that term - I’m a “tech bro” and have been for virtually all of my life, but not one of these oligarchs) are pushing a progressive agenda and “censoring conservatives” and “cancelling conservatives” because cons’ posts don’t go viral or whatever.
- That is was all Democrats in on a pedo ring and affiliated with Epstein.
- That things like the WEF represents progressives.
This last one is relevant because the cons took WEF talks as something the “elites” (in conservative head canon, another word for progressives. lol, yeah, it makes zero sense, but nothing in their cinematic universe does) were pushing and the likes of Alex Jones just fucking ran with this…any and all calls for changing your diet (veganism/vegetarianism) or addressing climate change or having walkable cities almost always had a certain type pop up to quote this stuff, saying “you will own nothing and be happy” and “THEY want us to eat bugs” or “OMG! It’s the Great Reset!!!111”
The plan, of course, is to force us all into working poverty or death. And they’re going to succeed, because there’s no meaningful pushback of any kind.
Oh there’s pushback alright. Against anyone attempting to make even the slightest opposition to them. Usually for not being ‘good enough’
Does America need to ween itself off of its addiction to beef specifically, and over-consumption of protein (especially animal protein) in general? Yes, absolutely.
Does this particular person saying this as a member of this particular administration, for these poor particular reasons have the exact tenor of “Let them cake”? Also, yes, 100%.
Very good points. Protein as a marketing juggernaut in this country is beyond stupid.
But also, yeah, this administration is so fucking tone-deaf.
In addition, remember all the fainting spells the right had over Michelle suggesting eating more vegetables and moving around more? The way they acted, you’d think Michelle was going to castrate every single MAGA male in the country…
eating more vegetables and moving around more?
Oddly enough, the same sort of stuff that would have fixed the so-called ‘flabby military’ that Diapers and Kegsbreath keep whining about…
All the more ironic since donnie doesn’t even believe in exercise[1], eats some of the worst shit ever [2] and washes it down with diet soda (12 diet cokes per day!), and Petey seemingly cannot do even one proper rep when he’s doing one of his absurd photo-ops showing how manly masculine macho he-men need to sack up and do some lifting, bro.
I bet both of them think vegetables are for “soy boys”, too.
[1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trumps-exercise-and-energy-belief_l_6930cc7ae4b0cee4438247cf
He does not get regular exercise, in part because he has a long-held theory that people are born with a finite amount of energy and that vigorous activity can deplete that reserve, like a battery.
[2]
he’s apparently a red meat guy and eats “McDonald’s by the sackful”
The entire developed world needs to ween itself off of so much animal protein.
Absolutely true, no argument there, but North America has a particular problem with animal protein as a cultural thing. It’s just basic stuff like portioning. You look at the amount of meat that goes on a plate for one person in an American family restaurant and compare it to what would go into an average stir fry, for example, and the difference is ridiculous. Even without getting into alternative protein sources we can start by just addressing the fact that at a basic level we eat a totally unnecessary amount of meat up here.
If we could trim the population down to the hundred million this world can handle we’d be in a much better position.
Genuinely insane to just spout fascist bulllshit in public like this.
You think being realistic about the earth’s carrying capacity is fascist?
I don’t debate fascists. But for the benefit of anyone else who happens to read this far, overpopulation is a fascist myth propagated by people who, for some reason, never want to talk about exactly which people need to die in order for the rest of us to live.
The reality is that a) human population is already on a trajectory towards a stable equilibrium, and b) the Earth provides more than enough resources for all of humanity. We’ve never had a problem with sufficiency, we have only ever had a problem with distribution and waste. If we built our societies around the idea of giving people what they need, instead of on the notion of how hoarding and controlling resources can enrich a few, no one would ever go hungry or without shelter or medicine or anything else they require.
I’m on mobile right now, but I’ll try to provide some links later for anyone who is interested in learning more about this.
Next you’ll try to prove vaccines cause genocides.
“You will eat bugs.”
“Dude, we’ve killed off most of the bugs too.”
It’s weird when I see articles like this
Bugs Were Supposed to be the Future of Food. Now, the Industry is Collapsing.
Dutch entomologist Marcel Dicke pitched eating bugs in his 2010 TED talk as critical to sustainably feeding a growing human population, because insects have a much smaller carbon footprint than beef, pork, and chicken.
It seems like we are missing the obvious. People would really rather eat bugs rather than…simply cut down on meat? As weird as I sometimes find omnivores rationalizing some of their behaviors, that strikes me as a really wild turn, but…shrug?
Something tells me that eating things like rice and beans would be a helluva lot more sustainable than trying to scale up insect production for human consumption.
But things turn extremely irrational over food, I’ve found, and so when I saw the conspiracy theorists losing their fucking minds over eating bugs, it definitely tracks. This dumb conspiracy theory sometimes surfaces in the everyday - a few omnivores have told me (when they learn I’m vegetarian) that the don’t want to eat the bugs.
I did not and still don’t know how these two issues are in any way related other than that reactionary omnivores have this innate “you cannot tell ME what to do!” attitude about what they are eating whenever they are talking to a vegan or vegetarian and it often surfaces in really strange ways: they will tell you how much they don’t like salad (I don’t eat salad hardly at all) or tofu (tofu is not required for vegetarian or vegan diet), that they hate all vegetables and eat mostly meat (that’s a bad place to be for a lot of reasons, no matter who you are) that “carbs”, aka, vegetables or fruit are “bad for you” (what the actual fuck?) or sometimes, “they won’t eat bugs”. Not sure why they think vegans or vegetarians would have the least bit of interest in eating insects, but…
I think I read something once that a fair amount of people are allergic to eating insects in the same manner as people allergic to shellfish being a huge issue.
Maybe it’s the chitin.
Good. Dead Americans.
What an American conservative take you have there. Why don’t you like them? They’re just like you.
Why don’t I like Americans?
I’m guessing you voted for Trump. Because that’s the only thing that explains a dumb question like that.
Because you were one yourself and you ran away instead of doing the hard work of changing things for the better here.
You’re a real piece of shit.
You’re not wrong. But, you’re also probably a MAGAt who loves the US military and dead civilians
Damn, you can’t get anything right, can you?
Do you want to know what opened my third eye? Getting people to eat insects won’t do shit because it will actually cost just as much as raising actual meat. To actually raise insects you need to feed them. What do insects eat when they’re farmed? Primarily feed made from rice and beans, which, you know, could be used to actually feed people?
And beans provide protein, protein that doesn’t involve eating an animal of any type. So basically this whole eat the bugs thing is right-wing bullshit and future slop.
It’s so weird how people avoid the obvious choice. The idea that you’d have to process rice and beans through insects first, LOL.
As a vegetarian, I get to answer the “where do you get your protein?!!” question all too much. Before I switched, I used to think this was just a trope that never really happened, given I switched over 20 years ago, but even then, I figured most adults had at least some rudimentary grasp on nutrition. The answer to that is apparently: No, no they do not.
I’ve literally been in the process of eating something with beans in it, and was asked that question, LOL. Given that this question is frequently mocked in the veg-n world, I sometimes think these might be people in on the joke, but nope.
There is just tons of delusion around the notion of “protein” in this country.
Insects actually have a way better food to growth ratio than cattle or poultry. You can produce more insects with less feed.
And that feed is food that humans themselves can easily eat. You’re literally advocating eating insects that we fed with food we can eat ourselves rather than just eat the food we grew.
Insects will eat plant waste that was already going to livestock.
Crops are graded after harvest. The first few grades are for human use, like 1 goes to stores, 2 gets canned or frozen, 3 gets processed into ingredients.
The last few grades are for animal feed, because the quality is too low.
So, no. It’s not food that humans would be using.
lol, “I’d rather eat grasshoppers than rice and beans” is certainly a take.
I’d rather have a mix honestly
Came here to say this. I don’t even understand the desire to serve up insects, at scale, as a substitute for the carnist culture status quo, the omnivores swap to being fed insects?
I would think by the time that scaled up, scaling up cultured meat would hit first. Although lots of USian states are trying to preemptively ban it as a protection measure of the status quo, LOL.
As always, the conservatives are visionary as ever - killing solar and wind turbine projects, banning cultured meat, etc…
Why would uoubfeed then rice and beans. Eat grasshoppers or crickets.
Rice and beans is a complete protein btw.
The idea of a complete protein turned out to be not so solid btw but I support people eating more plant-based protein.
So we don’t need the 9 essential ameno acids? Or …
As I recall, there used to be an assumption that it was beneficial to eat and digest all 9 essential aminos together in one meal, and that’s where the idea of the complete protein came from. You do still need to get all 9 regularly, but in practice any normal, reasonably diverse diet should accomplish that.
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/do-i-need-to-worry-about-eating-complete-proteins
I found this and it more or less sums things up. Sorry if this seems nitpicky
Add in potatoes and you have a balanced diet.
And if you ate nothing but potatoes, you would meet your protein requirements.
I thought they had to be buttered for that to be true?
People will do anything to avoid eating plants
not me. I love plants. I want lettuce and tomatoes on my BLT :D
I can go veg for about 2-3 weeks… I can stay pescatarian for 4-5 months… but damn giving up bacon entirely just breaks me lol.
I am weak and old and should be culled from the herd.
Deceptive headline. This is a quote from someone lampooning her, not her.
FFS yes Republicants are hypocrites etc etc but Americans do not in fact need to eat a steak at every meal.
This should be higher. This is some kind of headline crime. Is Raw Story always like this?
“Let them eat bugs.”
Aaaaaand, no American kills them.
