Are Insects the New Energy Food?

Before you recoil in disgust, you need to read this. As reported in the September issue of Best Health magazine, crickets, mealworms and other creepy crawlies really could become a common food ingredient in the future. (The topic is to be the focus at an upcoming conference in Montreal, August 26-28, called Eating Innovation: the Art, Science, Culture and Business of Entomophagy.)

As Melissa Greer writes in Best Health, while the idea may be tough to get your head around, it’s not that far-fetched: At least two billion people worldwide eat insects regularly, according to a 2013 United Nations report. Insects could one day be a staple food, given an ever-growing population plus a projected future shortage of the water needed for crops and livestock.

Many edible insects’beetles, caterpillars, ants, grasshoppers and crickets, to name a few’are rich in protein and good fats, and high in iron. You could call them the perfect nutrition bar’and in fact, we found two examples: Chapul and Exo. Both of these U.S.-based companies promote their cricket bars as earth-friendly, since crickets can be grown using far less water compared to, say, beef cattle.

And Exo notes that crickets have more than double the percentage of protein as chicken. Chapul’s are made from baked crickets ground into a powder and mixed with ingredients such as dates, cocoa, honey and oats. Exo’s, also made with cricket flour, are free of gluten, grains, soy and dairy.

Do you dare to try them? Has it really come to this?