Edible Insect Experts on… Research and Development
Brooklyn Bugs 2017 featured fifteen edible insect experts and proponents speaking on a range of relevant topics. They represent a diversity of backgrounds, expertise, and involvement with the field. The following is the fouth in a series of topic-specific articles woven from the threads that ran through their individual talks. The Edible Insect Experts on… research and development.
“The stone age didn’t end for lack of stone… They needed better tools for better societies for better situations.”
Paul Miller, better known as DJ Spooky, encouraged a proactive approach to our future. Don’t settle for the familiar when we can be greater. In particular, he pointed out, when it comes to the world of food, “we have to reevaluate the tools that we have access to.”
The need to improve our culinary toolkit is clear: a growing global population, an already strained food system, and the inefficiency and environmental concerns of the current livestock industry. Edible insects, the focus of the premier Brooklyn Bugs event, present a particularly promising tool for the future.
Admittedly, the stone age didn’t end overnight. Time, energy, thought, and innovation went into advancing society to better solutions. The same is true of the global food system.
Gabe Mott, co-founder of Aspire Food Group, was quick to call this out as one of the main challenges facing the edible insect industry. “We know a lot about chickens. We know a lot about cows. We know a lot about pigs. We don’t really know a whole lot about the biology of the cricket.”
Traditional livestock farming has been going on for hundreds — if not thousands — of years. Up until very recently, the motivation to raise larger animals more efficiently and quickly has been simple: survival. In contrast, insect research in the West has been comparatively minimal and almost entirely academic in nature.
This has had a very clear consequence for those trying to grow insects for human consumption. “If you go out and look at actual scientific literature, it’s bad,” Mott lamented. “It just does not reflect the experience that we actually have on our farm.”
An additional complication facing traditional insect research is one of scale. “If a researcher has a hundred crickets in a box, you’re going to tell me that somehow they can develop an insight that [the largest edible insect farm in North America] Entomo Farms can’t? I don’t believe that.”
Just as quickly as Mott presented the challenges posed by a lack of information, he presented a solution. He called on the academic community to “build a relationship with a cricket farm. Go and do the experiments at the cricket farm.” Simultaneously, he encouraged “farmers to invite researchers in.” Working together, researchers and farmers can start to build a knowledge base. And Mott made it clear what should happen to that information.
Aspire Food Group was founded using money that Mott and his team received from winning the prestigious Hult Prize for social entrepreneurship. He acknowledged that not every start-up is coming from the same place and spoke openly about sharing information and technology with smaller start-ups.
“[Research is] not cheap. It’s quite expensive. There is hardship. Which is why I’m not encouraging every farm to take the approach we’re taking. I hope that over time we can provide the gains that we identify to farms at either no cost — I’d like to go open-source — or at very, very low costs so that they don’t have to burden themselves with the development cost. And the blind alley cost… If we can save other farmers that, I’d love to do that.”
Ryan Goldin, co-founder of the previously-mentioned Entomo Farms, shared the results of one recent avenue of their research. “Cricket powder is extremely stable.” Though Entomo Farms has been labeling their cricket powder with a one-year expiration date, Goldin has confirmed that they could easily double, if not triple that.
Cricket powder is currently the most widespread form of insect cuisine in the West. It is used as the base ingredient in protein bars, chips, pasta, bread, snack balls, cookies, and more. The confirmation of shelf stability will help solidify its role as a staple ingredient. On top of that, it is promising news for cricket powder’s implications as a tool in the fight against hunger.
The industry has come far through creativity and research. A decade ago, whole insects were the only option. But the industry is still young, as Lee Cadesky pointed out. Looking around the current edible insect offerings, “almost all these products (are) working with one of two ingredients. They’re mostly crickets and they’re either whole and dry, or they’re whole, dry, and ground up into powder.”
To a food scientist like Cadesky, this limits the promise of edible insects. His company, C-Fu Foods, is working to create new tools to expand the role that insects can play in our diets.
“We work on creating functional ingredients out of insect protein to mimic meat, dairy, and eggs in a wide variety of contexts.” C-Fu’s flagship product is a tofu-like product called textured insect protein — or TIP — that opens new doors for how insects can be used in cuisine. It has found its way into a line of bolognese sauces presented by One Hop Kitchen, C-Fu’s sister company. They are working on sausages (which they had available for sampling at the Brooklyn Bugs market) and burger patties as well. From the way Cadesky spoke — in future tense and with large gestures — these seem like just the beginning.
The farming and scalability research that Aspire and Entomo Farms are conducting and the new horizons that C-Fu are expanding are just a glimpse of the innovation, thought, and creativity abounding in the edible insect industry. The work being done today is helping to create the culinary tools we will be using tomorrow.
Previous: Edible Insect Experts on… Growing and Harvesting Insects
Next: Edible Insect Experts on… the Reasons to Eat Insects (part 1)
