I actually think it's one of the most delicious of the insects.
I've tried all kinds of insects: professionally and recreationally.
I like to say my life's mission is to breed a bug that tastes like bacon.
I think these guys are as close as you can get directly.
Mealworms – it's only been a couple decades that we've had them being
produced at any kind of scale. Think about all the things that
we do with corn or soy or one of these base ingredients. We've found ways to
take that ingredient and turn it into thousands of different types of products.
Protein, in general, is the big challenge in food because people
want more protein in their diets, protein is expensive,
and so insects are a really important missing piece of the food system.
I mean, we don't talk enough about how much these guys are a superfood,
but I would say insects are definitely a superfood.
Super nutrient-dense, just a whole lot of nutrition, in a really small package.
We're in the middle of a biodiversity
mass extinction, and we're in the middle of a climate crisis,
and yet we somehow need to feed a growing population at the same time.
We have to make change and we have to make big change.
Insects have been a traditional food source in Southeast Asian countries,
African countries, and Central American countries for centuries,
for millennia. So, for them, insects are a traditional delicacy.
And, of course, there will also be some areas where it's more like
one of the only protein sources. So it's more for necessity,
but it's rare, in the sense that, we can find some markets
in Thailand where insects are more expensive than meat.
Eating insects isn't a new thing, and it's all over the world, and currently
even though we're still trying to push for the normalisation of insects more
broadly as ingredients, they are a part of a lot of culture's dishes.
So, in Cambodia there's ants, and you'll have things like spiced
grasshoppers in Japan. You'll have the mopane or sago grub in South America,
which is such a staple macro and micronutrient source.
I've always loved anything with black ants because
they have such a unique lemon pepper zest flavour.
Insects have been a part of human diets since the beginning of time,
but we've just never had a good infrastructure. It's mostly been like
wild harvested insects, or insects that are cultivated on a small scale.
We feel that insects are just one part of the answer because
basically they're very very efficient in converting their feed
into food for us. So, 12 to 25 times more efficient than cattle, say,
to produce the same amount of protein.
They're a natural part of animal diets.
It makes sense that they would be part of the food system, we just
haven't developed the technology to grow them yet, and so that's what we've
been doing is figuring out how to do this at scale for the food system.
There's a lot of interest in insects – as an ingredient.
We're at the very beginning of an exciting phase of growth for the insect industry.
When we started a few years ago to investigate
Western consumers in the global north – for us insects are not food.
I mean, we associate insects with everything but food.
I mean with: Dirt, danger, with something disgusting,
with something that makes us feel sick. This is one of the main reasons
why we don't eat insects. I mean, we do not consider them as food.
Looking at it from a chef's point of view, it's all about getting a
good idea but making it taste good – because at the end of the day,
you might have the healthiest, most nutritional, most sustainable
product, but unless it tastes nice and people are willing to accept it,
it may be a lot more difficult to get that across to people.
So immediately I started to use insects as an ingredient.
So rather than sprinkling whole insects on a salad, which you can
still do, there's nothing wrong with that. But, I thought if we're going to really
get it accepted into mainstream food culture, the best way is to
incorporate it as a percentage of the overall whole product.
From our research what we can say is that processed insect foods – that's
more feasible than consuming insects rather than peanuts, as a snack.
Kids are amazing, and they are the future of bugs because they're not
as inundated with the social norms and the cultural conditioning.
Insects are a really good conversation starter.
It's not just about the fact that they're healthy, or they taste good,
or they're a completely new innovative type of food,
it's that they can really engage our food culture and our diets and that's
something we really encourage people to do is to think about the amount of
meat we're eating, but not just meat, where does it come from?
And to think, you know, we can't eat meat for every meal every day,
but still enjoy it, don't feel guilty, but just to help
reduce that reliance on everyday meat eating.