As strange as it may sound to most of us, but a growing number of “entopreneurs” are initiating businesses to feed an increasing appetite for mealworms, crickets, and other edible insects.
The idea is to convince Americans to eat bugs, which are much inexpensive to produce, with less land, food and water compared to other sources of animal protein.
The UN has been encouraging the diet of edible insects as a way of improving nutrition as well as cutting down green-house gas emissions and generating jobs in the insect production sector. According to a report by the UN Food and Agricultural Organization in 2013, no less than 2 billion people in the world already eats insects as a part of their diet.
Daniella Martin, an author of a book on eating insects and the “Girl Meets Bug” blogger said, “Insects are viewed as what ruins food - a roach in your soup, a fly in your salad. That’s the biggest obstacle - the ick factor,” referring to the sentiment of distaste that people consuming it feels.
Monica Martinez puts live mealworms into a container while clearing out the dead ones before sliding them into an oven, in San Francisco’s La Cocina, a commercial kitchen for food entrepreneurs. She started Bugito PreHispanic Snackeria for enticing Americans with treats which has been inspired by snacks that are popular in her native Mexico. She has spicy superworms and chocolate-covered, salted crickets as her specialties amongst other varieties in her menu.
In a kitchen in Berkeley, across San Francisco Bay, Megan Miller makes orange-ginger cookie dough with the key ingredient being flour made from ground-up crickets.
Miller says that insects face a “branding issue” therefore she is trying to mix it with familiar foods in attractive packaging to change people’s mind about it.
Big Cricket Farms is under pressure to meet the rapid growing demand for the chirping insects, said CEO Kevin Bachhuber. Bachhuber’s startup presently produces about 3,600 kilograms of crickets on a monthly basis and he is optimistic about increasing the capacity to 11,300kg a month.
Bachhuber said, “The speed at which people have been willing to eat bugs is crazy.”
