How does eating crickets sound to you? You might be surprised to find out how good they are.
I went to the Food Matters Live conference in the autumn, and tried out the Crobar cricket flour brownies made by Gathr.
As a longtime demi-vegetarian (I eat fish but not meat), I was slightly concerned about eating insects. However, I’m aware that insects are said to be the food of the future (the way we’re going to feed billions of humans in years to come) and decided that in the interests of research I’d go for it—and, actually, the brownie just tasted like brownie. There was no way of telling that it was made from cricket flour.
I was particularly interested in the cricket flour because my reason for giving up eating meat some 35 years ago was to do with the inefficiency of feeding animals in order to eat their meat. Eating insects, as is done across the world—though rarely in western Europe or the US—is extremely efficient from this point of view: most of a cricket is digestible; there’s less food waste, less water usage and less air and water pollution than rearing cattle; and a lower risk of inter-species disease transmission.
To see what I mean about efficiency, take the figures from Gathr about what is needed to make 1lb of meat to feed humans:
- crickets need 100lbs of feed, while the cow needs 1250lbs of feed
- crickets need 4litres of water, while the cow needs 9000litres of water.
Crickets are also very good for you: high in good quality protein, iron, vitamin b and omega oils but low in fat. And protein intake is a big topic in our house at the moment, as the gym takes up ever more of our spare time…
The Crobar site describes the proportion of protein in 100 calories for each of crickets and cows (a slightly unusual way of displaying the numbers):
- if you ate 100 calories of crickets, you’d have eaten 15g of protein and 4g of fat
- if you ate 100 calories of beef, you’d have eaten 11g of protein, and 8g of fat.
Eating crickets begins to sound really sensible, doesn’t it? So if you’re looking for a healthy snack, the Crobar options seem to be a good idea.
The Crobars are gluten free, dairy free, grain free, soy free and GMO free. However, the FAQ on the Crobar site do warn that if you are allergic to shellfish/crustaceans, it is safer not to eat insects either.
Crobars come in two flavours: cacao or peanut. You can also buy cricket flour so you can do your own baking – that’s what the brownies were made of – and it is gluten free. Note, though, that the recipes on the Crobar website are not necessarily all gluten free (remember to check all the ingredients).
So what do you think? Tempted?
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