In case you are wondering, I am referring to the new high protein diet, recommended food for the starving millions of “slum dwellers around the world by providing them with insect-infused flour.”
A team at McGill University in Canada received the latest rendition of the $1 million Hult Prize, a social entrepreneurship award by the Hult International Business School and the Clinton Global Initiative, for its project to produce nutritious insect-enhanced food products that will be accessible year-round to some of the world’s poorest city dwellers.
Culinary Preferences
“Protein and iron, the students noted, are nutrients in short supply in the diets of many people in developing nations, but found in high amounts in insects” and “crickets have a higher protein content per weight than beef.”
The type of insect would be chosen based on local culinary preferences. “For example, in Mexico, we’d go with the grasshopper. In Ghana, we’d go with the palm weevil,” one of the team leaders said. Moreover, they have already done some field testing with corn flour containing between 10 and 30% of “cricket flour” and getting rave reviews in regard to the taste.
However, if you rather prefer deep-fried (whole) crickets, they are available at farmers markets and deli-shops in various countries. When you are getting tired of eating cricket flour, you may try Iowa State University recipes like “chocolate covered grasshoppers” or “banana worm bread” for desert instead. I am sure they are all delicious. (Bon appétite!)
Cricket Nutrition
While fried or crunched crickets and the like may indeed be tasty and a culinary delight, at least to some people (I skipped this test), I think the cricket flour may be coming short of nutritional expectations. Taste and nutritional value are not the same. Crickets are said to contain about 13% of body weight in protein, weevils about 7% and grasshoppers 20%. In comparison the protein content of beef (14%), pork (22%) and chicken meat (21%) is not much different from the grasshoppers.
Obviously the crickets have nutritional value, however, in terms of the amount of protein you get buying them, you’d be much better served by buying beef, pork or chicken, at least on this continent. One thousand adult size crickets weigh in the order of one pound and are widely available in pet food stores for about $25. But let’s forget such details and look at cricket farming.
Cricket Farming
The crickets’ habits are among the main reasons they don’t really appeal to me as food. For example, as Wikipedia claims, “crickets are omnivorous scavengers who feed on organic materials, including decaying plant material, fungi, and some seedling plants. Crickets eat their own dead when there are no other sources of food available, and exhibit predatorial behavior upon weakened, crippled crickets.”
Because of such habits, farming crickets is not that easy either. Their food habits make them prone to carry bacteria, viruses and other diseases. Of course, if you are a professional cricket grower, you are well aware of such problems and will take proper precautions, using antibiotics, quality feed and clean conditions to rear your crickets.
Slum dwellers will have neither the resources nor the knowledge to do that. How are they supposed to rear and feed the crickets in their dwellings? Obviously, more research grants are needed to answer such vital questions. It also means that the slum dwellers will have to rely on the cricket trade in one form or another.
Cricket Trade
The live cricket trade is a thriving business. A friend of a friend of mine is said to make a good living with the import and wholesale of crickets from overseas. Pet food stores have large requirements for live crickets as food for various terrestrial pets like frogs, lizards, tortoises and salamanders. The stores sell them in various sizes, alive and dead, but you can also grow them yourself. You can find advice on how to set up a commercial cricket farm on the internet and if you don’t like the chirping of the commonly found cricket (Acheta domestica) don’t worry; there are noiseless varieties available too.
In Summary
Crickets are widely used as pet food. However, crickets as a protein source and sound way to feed millions of slum dwellers in urban areas around the world are nothing but a “pet project” of the Clinton Global Initiative.
