“Bill Gates wants to get rid of the cattle industry, and have people eat his FAKE MEAT,” writes one commenter, adding, “Bill Gates wants us to eat bugs as well.” It’s a conspiracy theory that has picked up substantial steam in certain corners of the internet. But where did the Bill Gates bug-eating conspiracy come from, and how has the media been used to perpetuate it? In this explainer, we go back to the origins of the story that one of the world’s most famous billionaires wants to feed you insects.
Growing concerns about population growth and climate change, coupled with general fears of the new and unknown, all paved the way for cell-based meat and insect protein — and Gates’s involvement in both — to become perpetually intertwined.
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[Pratt Institute political science professor Jan] Dutkiewicz tells Sentient Media that he doesn’t think anyone “seriously thinks insect protein can be made a major part of the human diet globally.” It’s just that “bugs are easy to frame as disgusting,” he says, “so this lets the culture warriors suggest ‘elites’ are trying to degrade them by doing this disgusting thing, which just happens to be a non-starter in the first place.”Ultimately, bug-eating is used as a rhetorical and political tool, and Bill Gates is the straw man.
