An epidemic of insects… my office is full of them. I’ve immersed myself in samples of various products made from crickets: cricket crackers, tortilla chips, protein bars, even all-purpose flour, which is said to have a nutty flavor perfect for banana bread. I’m curious and a little weird, but most of all I want to know this: Are insects in food just a passing fad in the Western world, a nostalgic nod to more primitive peoples who ate insects for centuries? Or could it become as much a part of the American palate as sushi was in the 1970s? I decide to investigate.
How do insects get into our food? Although edible insects are common in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, it wasn’t until last May that the Western world (and, of course, a slew of startups) began to take them seriously. Then, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations released a report saying that by 2050, with population growth, the world will need to feed an additional 2 billion people. One solution: eat more protein-rich insects, which would have a huge impact on the environment if they became part of the world’s staple diet. Crickets emit 100 times less greenhouse gases than cattle, and it takes 1 gallon of water and 2 pounds of feed to raise a pound of crickets, compared to 2,000 gallons of water and 25 pounds of feed to raise a pound of beef.
Cheap food is cool. But how do you make insects mainstream in America, where we’re more likely to spray them with poison than fry them in a pan? That’s where creative startups come in. Earlier this year, a woman named Megan Miller co-founded Bitty Foods in San Francisco, which sells grain-free cookies made from cricket flour in flavors including orange ginger and chocolate cardamom. She says the cookies are a “gateway product,” meaning their sweet form can help disguise the fact that you’re eating insects (and the gateway apparently works, because I’ve now been eating them since I started writing this post, my third cookie). “The key is to turn crickets into something familiar,” Miller said. “So we slow-roast them and grind them into a powder that you can add to almost anything.”
Familiarity seems to be the key word. Susie Badaracco, president of the food-trend forecasting company Culinary Tides, predicts that the edible insect business will definitely grow, but the most likely growth will come from insect-meal products like protein bars, chips, cookies, and cereals—foods in which the insect’s body parts aren’t visible. The timing is right, Badaracco added, as U.S. consumers become increasingly interested in sustainability and nutrition, especially when it comes to high-protein foods. She seems to be right. Shortly after I spoke with Badalacco, JetBlue announced that it would offer Exo protein bars made from cricket flour to passengers flying from JFK to Los Angeles starting in 2015. Then again, whole insect consumption has no historical roots in the United States, so it has a long way to go before it can make deep inroads into the retail and restaurant worlds.
The only places we can find cricket sticks are at trendy markets and Whole Foods. Will that change? Bitty Foods’ sales are skyrocketing, tripling in the past three weeks after receiving rave reviews. Plus, celebrity chef Tyler Florence has joined the company as culinary director to help develop “a line of products that will be sold directly across the country within a year,” Miller said. She couldn’t comment on specific products, but she did say items like bread and pasta have potential. “What would normally be a carb bomb can be turned into something that’s really nutritious,” she notes. For the health-conscious, the bugs are actually good for you: Dried crickets contain 60 to 70 percent protein (cup for cup, the equivalent of beef), and also contain omega-3 fatty acids, B vitamins, iron, and calcium.
All this potential growth begs the question: Where exactly are these insects coming from? There aren’t enough suppliers to meet demand right now — only about five farms in North America produce food-grade insects — meaning insect-based products will remain expensive. For reference, a bag of baking flour from Bitty Foods costs $20. But interest in insect farming is growing, and thanks to agtech companies like Tiny Farms, people now have the support to get started. “I get emails almost every day from people who want to get into farming,” said Daniel Imrie-Situnayake, CEO of Tiny Farms, whose company is creating a model for a modern, efficient insect farm. The goal: to build a network of such farms, purchase the insects, ensure their quality, and then sell them to growers. “With the system we’re developing, production will go up and prices will go down,” he said. “So if you want to replace expensive beef or chicken with insects, it will be very cost-effective over the next few years.”
Oh, and it’s not just us who might be eating more insects – we might even one day be buying insect-fed beef, too. What does that mean? The FAO’s Paul Fantom believes insects have the greatest potential as animal feed. “Right now, the main sources of protein in animal feed are soybeans and fishmeal, so we’re essentially feeding cattle products that humans can eat, which isn’t very efficient,” he said. “With insects, we can feed them organic waste that doesn’t compete with human needs.” Not to mention that insects require very little space and water to raise compared to, say, soybeans. But Fantom warned that it could be several years before there’s enough production to make insect meal cost-competitive with current animal feed sources, and the regulations needed to use insects in our feed chains are in place.
So, no matter how we explain it, insects end up in food. Can eating a chocolate chip cricket cookie save the planet? No, but in the long run, the cumulative effect of lots of people eating small amounts of insect food could provide more meat and resources for the planet’s growing population – and help you meet your protein quota in the process.
Post time: Dec-19-2024