Bugs on your Plate
Tortillas with sautéed grasshoppers and ant guacamole. This is what customers can find on the menu of The Black Ant, a Mexican restaurant in New York. For the Western world, the idea of eating insects can sound repulsing. Yet, already 2 billion people around the world include bugs in their daily diet more especially in Africa, South America, and Asia. But it’s just a question of time before entomophagy, the act of eating insect, enters the human food chain in North America. Aware that the rate of adaptation of this new practice would be slow, entrepreneurs have started to create insect by-products such as chips and protein bars. This way, people can benefit from proteins found in insects while easily overcoming their mental barriers and prejudices towards bugs.
Of course, for this trend to pick up, there is a great need for consumer education. There are two main arguments why we should start eating insects. First, because they’re nutritious and second, because they are less costly to the environment to produce. Insects are composed of protein, fat, fatty acids, fibre, minerals, and vitamins which makes them as nutritious as meat. For instance, an egg contains approximately 7 grams of protein while 100 grams of cricket would contain 12,9 grams of protein. Compared to meat, 100 grams of dried cricket would contain 69% of protein compared to 43% in 100 grams of red meat and 31% of poultry. Plus, insects are less harmful to the environment to farm because they need less space and food, hence less resources, and they also emit less greenhouse gases than livestock.
Some restaurants in the United-States and in Ontario have bet on the gourmet aspect and avant-gardist movement to include insects on their menu. In Québec, the future of insects in the food chain is slowly taking place but no restaurant has open its door to serve insects as a dish. Nevertheless, we can find cricket flour produced in Vaudreuil by uKaProtéine or buy protein bars from Tarzan Nutrition situated in Sherbrooke. In parallel, BugBites uses more sustainable practices to produce insect meals for cats and dogs. No matter how it’s served, or to whom, the nutritional benefits of insects can’t be denied!
The province of Québec has the reputation of being open-minded, and Montreal is a multi-cultural city where innovative and unconventional trends are more tolerated and appreciated. There is a clear opportunity that lies in entomophagy; By 2050, there will be 9 billion mouths to feed, which represents a need for 70% more food than today. We will need to find new sources of proteins to fill the demand. Entrepreneurship and innovation will play a great role to determine where this industry will head in the upcoming years and its success will probably depend on the image start-ups give to the products. If insects can be positioned as trendy and fancy, they will be more likely to be appreciated by the foodies in the future. Many people are turning to plant proteins either for health reasons or for the sake of the environment, but is the world ready to turn to proteins coming from insects? What do you think?
Visit uKa Protéine Facebook page here, Tarzan Nutrition Facebook page here, and BugBites Facebook page here for more information about these insect-based food companies.
