Posted on 05/25/2014 2:04:25 PM PDT by upbeat5
A TWITCHING mass of European house crickets clings to a maze of meshed cardboard in a tent about the size of a minivan. They are inside their new home, an abandoned warehouse in Youngstown, Ohio, where they will prosper until being killed, ground into "flour" and baked into cookies and tortilla chips.
These are the first insects in the US to be farmed for human consumption. Big Cricket Farms, the company running the warehouse, is working with insect food start-up Six Foods in Boston, who will make the cricket chips (pictured right) which they call "chirps" and cookies. They are among many adventurous eaters hoping to carve out a niche for a protein-rich, environmentally friendly food source that could transform the modern diet.
Laura D'Asaro and Rose Wang, who founded Six Foods, plan to get around the yuck factor with insect-based foods that don't look like the creepy-crawlies they come from. Their cricket flour is about 70 per cent protein by weight the idea is to blend it into recipes for chips and cookies alongside the other typical ingredients. The foods come out looking and tasting like things people are already used to eating, only with a boost in nutritional value.
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
If My only choices were roasted bugs or KFC I think I would go for the bugs, at least you would know what you were eating.
***where they will prosper until being killed, ground into “flour” ***
They tried this with fish about 45 years ago. It was called “fish flour” Fresh caught fish was ground up not cleaned, dried and processed into “flour”.
The FDA shut them down by requiring the fish to be cleaned before processing.
And in two generations, they will be as fat as we are.
Peter Graves knew how to grow great big bugs. You could feed an entire town with one of his grasshoppers.
Too bad he couldn’t get FDA approval because they detected a little background radiation.
they ought to be deported along with anyone that eats the things!
Now I have to ask what’s in the cookies before I can say ‘pass the cookies, please’?...Geez...I did not sign up for this.
I like the Thai roasted chicken but the kids go for KFC.
They are fortunate in not being able to usually afford KFC but I’ve seen more heavyweights in the last few years.
It’s highly unlikely, BTW, that an operation for insects intended for human consumption would be cost-effective. Think costs per 25 lbs. or so—a week’s worth of food for one at the most. That’s a lot of bugs that take much space and consume much. Imagine enough bugs and space for them to feed many people year ‘round.
They only want as many people as possible to eat some very small portions of bugs in bug meal. The question is, “Why?” Well, what might go through bugs and affect many at some selected point in time?
“They tried this with fish about 45 years ago. It was called fish flour Fresh caught fish was ground up not cleaned, dried and processed into flour.
The FDA shut them down by requiring the fish to be cleaned before processing.”
That’s what I was thinking. Bugs’ bodies and surroundings are full of bug waste. That doesn’t sound very good. Tell Moochelle, “You first”.
There is a grass to protein ration and for cows it is 10 pounds of grass produces 1 pound of protein and for insects it is 1.1 pounds of grass to 1 pound of protein.
Efficient creation of protein.
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