Cricket Pasta

Cricket Pasta is a fusilli pasta containing wheat flour and cricket flour (also known as cricket powder). Cricket pasta can be made by using a combination of baking flours and cricket flour or cricket powder mixed together. Cricket pasta can be made from recipes at home or purchased online by a few different companies online. One such company is Bugsolutely Ltd., a company based in Bangkok, Thailand using locally sourced cricket flour and imported wheat flour.
History
Cricket Pasta is part of the emerging market of edible insect-based food products developed by companies like Bitty (US), Bugsolutely (TH), Chapul (US), Cricket Flours LLC (US), Crobar (UK), Escobar (AU), Jimini’s (FR), EXO (US), Live Longer (NZ). These and other similar companies were founded between 2014 and 2016, when insects as food started emerging as a potential solution to the rising cost of animal protein, food insecurity, and environmental cost of animal factory farming, following researches from organizations including Wageningen University in The Netherlands and Khon Kaen University in Thailand, and especially reports from United Nation’s FAO. The majority of these new food products are made with crickets, especially because they are easy to farm. With 7,500 tons per year and 20,000 farmers, Thailand is one of the biggest producer of human grade crickets. For this reason the founders of Bugsolutely have chosen Bangkok, despite the target markets being Europe and the USA.

Ingredients
Cricket Pasta is made of 80% wheat flour and 20% cricket flour (acheta domestica). Compared to a pasta containing only wheat flour, Cricket Pasta has higher levels of protein, calcium, vitamin B12 and omega fatty acid. The protein content is 12 g per serving size (55 g), which is 24% of the Daily Reference Values indicated by the USDA. It also contains 3 g of dietary fiber per serving size, corresponding to 12% of the Dietary Reference Values, and 0.62 mcg of Vitamin B12 per serving size.
Entomophagy and regulations
Entomophagy, the human consumption of insects as food, is common to cultures in most parts of South America, Africa and Asia, but it a taboo for most of the people in the West. For this reason, the majority of the European and North American countries do not have a regulation regarding rearing, selling and importing insects as food. In order to facilitate the introduction of edible insects, on 28 October 2015, the European Parliament voted a modification to the Novel Food regulation, to allow a simplified procedure for approval from 1 January 2018. The US FDA admits edible insects if they are farmed specifically for human consumption. In Canada, Entomo Farm (formerly Next Millennium Farms) has accumulated ten years of experience rearing crickets, and is one of the biggest cricket farm in North America, with a 65.000 square feet farm.

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