[JoachimS]

Calling people idiots (as OP did) is unnecessary, but do we really need whataboutism?

The point here is that insects are proposed as a new, high volume source of proteins, as a way to reduce meat consumption.

Humans have fairly good understanding of parastites, bacteria etc related to meat. And have established routines for raising animals and preparing meat to minimize the problems.

As far as I know, humans have not the same level of knowledge, nor processes related to mass production and consumption of insects.

The paper shows that there are substantial parasitical risks with eating insects. Something, at least as far as I am aware, is not generally known or talked about. Importantly things like applying heat (cooking), which generally works to reduce problems with meat, according to the artible, seems NOT to be effective against parasites in insects.

Let's focus on that discussion.

[mrpopo]

> seems NOT to be effective against parasites in insects.

I don't see this in the article. They explain in a paragraph that cooking and/or freezing are effective, and that simple drying was "considered promising". With a little drop of caution.

> However, there is a need of thorough evaluation of insect processing methods, including temperatures and time of cooking / freezing to prevent possible parasitic infections

[pessimizer]

> Calling people idiots (as OP did) is unnecessary, but do we really need whataboutism?

Let's say I propose cars as an alternative to motorcycles, and you respond by citing the enormous numbers of deaths from car accidents. Am I doing a whataboutism if I mention that motorcycles have accidents too?

edit: "whataboutism" is an anticommunist propaganda term meant to defend segregation, but to the extent that it has a meaning, that meaning is: When I mention thing A that you do, it's a distraction when you mention totally unrelated thing B that I do. It's not when I criticize you over doing thing A, and you mention that I also do thing A.

[smcl]

Your edit contains a really nice concise definition of what is and what isn't whataboutism. Sadly I find that it's often deployed as a defense like "you can't accuse me of X, I accused you of X first!" and it's tiresome

[smcl]

This isn't whataboutism at all. The topic at hand is parasitic diseases coming from eating insects. Someone is saying this is a reason not to eat any insects and to stick to meat. Hence my comment about meat, in fact it is not only relevant but is one of the reasons two of the major religions to shun certain types of meat.