Interesting. I wonder how bugs stack up for heme-iron and the other nutrients (aside from protein) that one gets from red meat. It's diversity of nutrients, and the body's efficiency at absorbing them, that for me make the strongest case for an omnivorous diet. It's the environmental cost of raising animal protein that for me is the strongest argument for vegetarianism.
Diversity is often overlooked when people think about diet. The longest lived populations also tend to have preserved a tremendous amount of diversity in their diet. Folks living in the hills of Sicily can sometimes incorporate material from several dozen different kinds of plants in a single meal. In contrast, it's not unusual for a North American to make a meal with corn, peas, potatoes, and some form of meat. That's between one or two orders of magnitude less diversity.
I've tried purposely maximizing dietary diversity, and it seems to make a difference for me.
