Anyone for crickets? Finnish bakery sells bread made from insects
Anyone for crickets? Finnish bakery sells bread made from insects
By Reuters in Helsinki, November 23 2017
Fazer in Helsinki claims to be first store in world to offer insect bread, which contains about 70 crickets ground up into flour
A poster promoting bread made from insects. Photograph: STAFF/Reuters
A Finnish bakery has launched what it claims to be the world’s first insect-based bread to be offered to consumers in stores.
The bread, made using flour ground from dried crickets as well as wheat flour and seeds, has more protein than normal wheat bread. Each loaf contains about 70 crickets and costs €3.99 (£3.55), compared with €2-3 for a regular wheat loaf.
“It offers consumers a good protein source and also gives them an easy way to familiarise themselves with insect based food,” said Juhani Sibakov, the head of innovation at the bakery firm Fazer.
Flour ground from dried crickets, left, alongside crickets, at the Fazer bakery, Helsinki. Photograph: Staff/Reuters
The demand to find more food sources and a desire to treat animals more humanely have raised interest in using insects as a protein source in western countries.
The worm has turned: how British insect farms could spawn a food revolution
Finland, in November, joined five other European countries – Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria and Denmark – in allowing insects to be raised and marketed for food use.
Sibakov said Fazer developed the bread last summer and waited for legislation to be passed in Finland for the launch.
“I don’t taste the difference ... It tastes like bread,” said Sara Koivisto, a student from Helsinki, after trying the product.
Due to a limited supply of crickets, the bread will initially be sold in 11 Fazer bakery stores in Helsinki hypermarkets, but the company plans to offer it in all its 47 stores by next year.
The company buys its cricket flour from the Netherlands, but said it was looking for local suppliers. Fazer, a family business with sales of about €1.6bn last year, did not give a sales target for the product.
Insect eating, or entomophagy, is common in much of the world. The UN estimated last year that at least 2 billion people eat insects, and more than 1,900 species have been used for food.
Edible bugs are gaining traction in niche markets in western countries, particularly among those seeking a gluten-free diet or wanting to protect the environment because farming insects uses less land, water and feed than other animal husbandry.
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And I had thought the Chinese were the only civilized people who ate insects. They eat cooked cicadas (the noisy ones in the trees). I've been offered a taste but I can't bring myself to do it.
Would YOU eat insects?
Well, insects certainly are abundant and, (with planning & proper preparation), could serve a useful place in our food chain but I think it'll take several generations of reprogramming before we knowingly chose to eat them here in America.
But the true answer to your, " Would YOU eat insects?", is a YES because we already do.
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Here's How Much Mouse Poop, Maggots, and Cigarette Butts the FDA ...
This is one thing I do not wish to know about any of my food, I find it gross enough without any real facts getting in the way.
It is kind of upsetting to see it in print isn't. (smile)
Let's just hope that this current administration doesn't screw up the FDA as badly as they have so many of our other important agencies.
I mean, who would want more Cigarette Butts in their food just because one of Trump's minions rolled back our food safety rules because they went into effect during the Obama administration? lol
My brother gives me gag gifts at Christmas, which usually include some kind of edible bug concoction from an ethnic food store. At the last place I worked, we had a table where we could put anything intended for public consumption, so I brought in some chocolate covered crickets. I warned everyone what it was, but the secretary hadn’t arrived yet so she didn’t get the message. Nobody would touch them, but later in the morning I see her over there munching on them. It then occurred to me that she didn’t know what it was. I told her, expecting her to violently spit them out and slap me. To my surprise she grabbed another handful and said they were really good. Then everyone else dug in, except me. I just can’t bring myself to eat bugs. You could clearly see the legs on these things poking out of the chocolate. They were gone by lunch.
Maybe I should try eating a roasted Cicada.