I personally do not advocate anyone to eat plant-based meats because of the harmful effects on health (this coming anecdotally from myself after eating them for 2+ years). The phytates in almost all grains / legumes / beans bind to almost all free zinc copper and iron which has a very negative effect on health.
Insects (similar to ruminants) are able to naturally assimilate the high protein foods and filter out the phytates. Eating a half-pound per day of insects helped me to greatly recover my health after following a vegan diet for almost three years.
It will even vary from culture to culture; for example, cows are revered in much of India, and in much of the west we seem to place more value on values we perceive as "cute", such as dolphins, or "magnificent", such as whales.
> Entomophagy (eating insects for food) is sometimes proposed as an alternative to factory farming because it has lower environmental impact. But entomophagy is not necessarily more humane than factory farming of livestock all things considered, and along some dimensions it's actually worse, because it involves killing vastly more animals per unit of protein. Rather than promoting insect consumption, let's focus on plant-based meat substitutes.
https://reducing-suffering.org/why-i-dont-support-eating-ins...