It is not a question of whether it is a good idea. There are many very good reasons to eat insects. But that doesn’t mean insects will ever become a staple of the American diet, right?
Megan Miller, co-founder of Bitty Foods, isn’t at all deterred by naysayers. Her company’s mission is to popularize cricket foods in the West. Her company manufactures familiar foods, like chocolate chip cookies and snack chips, made with cricket flour to show Americans the versatility of the insect.
Miller said in a recent telephone interview that she was inspired to start Bitty Foods after a visit to Southeast Asia, where insects are part of the regional diet. Preparations like fried grasshoppers, bamboo worms, or spiders, and tree ants with beef are commonly found in public markets there and serve as a valuable protein source.
Insects have enough high-quality protein, good fats, calcium, iron, and zinc to serve as a good (or better) substitute for beef, pork, and chicken. The cricket exoskeleton, or chitin, which is not removed when crickets are ground into flour, is full of fiber, the kind that feeds the beneficial microbes in our gut. Regular meat is not considered a source of fiber.
Miller, who was formerly a trend forecaster and consumer researcher in the media and technology industries, said in a TED talk posted online that she took the leap to eat bugs because she “cannot think of another food source that can have this kind of impact on the environment and the global economy.”
The profile of insect food as a viable food source in the Western world got a considerable boost in 2013, when the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) released a 200-page report titled “Edible insects: future prospects for food and feed security.”
With the world’s population expected to double by 2050, and with the environmental concerns associated with animal agriculture, it suggested that we seriously consider expanding insects as an alternative food source. “Insects provide food at low environmental cost,” stated the report.
