Our pasta is a combination of rice, tapioca, and cricket powder. It’s healthy, sustainable, and delicious. Help us spread the word and market it to the world!
Welcome to Earth, the insect planet. Did you know that 80% of the world eats bugs? It’s only westerners that have stopped and forgotten that they are the best sources of protein.
Thailand, the land of smiles, beautiful beaches, and edible insects. Where fried scorpions, meal worms, and crickets are sold as street food. Thailand is where edible insects are a solid, serious business: there are over 20,000 farmers breeding crickets, registered with the Ministry of Agriculture, and supervised by the University of Khon Kaen. The tropical location is also a key advantage: crickets need very warm weather to grow. That’s why producing insect-based food makes more sense here than in the west.
OK, we’ve got the crickets now, but why eat them?
Food quality. Crickets are made up of mostly protein, up to 70% of their weight in fact. That’s more than double the amount that a cow has. They also contain as much calcium as milk, are rich in Omega-3, and a have as much vitamin B12 as salmon.
Sustainability. They need very little food and water (1,000 time less than a cow) and they grow fast. Crickets only require 2 kg of feed to make 1 kg of protein (while a cow needs 10 kg). There is a looooong list of reasons why insects are the green way to proteins, see this article, for example.
Food to feed the world. United Nations’ FAO agency has been promoting edible insects for years, as they might help undeveloped countries now, and the entire world in 15 years, when the population is expected to be more than 9 billion. See the FAO document here.
Gluten free, antibiotics free. Our pasta is made in a gluten free factory and is certified gluten free. The pasta is also packed with added benefits, such as no cholesterol and zero antibiotics.
You can find more details on our website, including a blog that we update weekly.
Great, we like crickets. But why pasta?
It would be hard to convince people to start a new nutritional behavior by eating whole crickets. Westerners eat oysters, cow tongue, frogs but not crickets – even if they are closely related to shrimps, which we love. It’s a cultural obstacle, but pasta containing cricket flour is a great first step. No whole insects involved and no discerning insect shape. It is mixed with other flours, boiled, and eaten with sauce.
It’s simply the world’s favorite food (see link at the bottom). This is a fast, easy, road map towards edible insects. Oh, and our pasta is tasty too. Here are some photos of our first production run.
Some insect-based food are already available in the US and some European countries (i.e. energy bars, cookies, burgers, crackers). Surprisingly, we did not find any pasta based on cricket flour, apart from a local project available only in a few shops in Belgium (and with mealworms instead of crickets).
Pasta is a product suitable for restaurants, too. Chefs are at the top of our target market. Signature dishes with insects or insect flavors are fashionable.
Production cost in Thailand are much lower than in the west. Crickets are as cheap as $4/kg, given the number of farmers breeding them, while very high costs in the US (up to ten times higher) are slowing down this revolution.
Edible insects are gaining popularity, thanks to the work of the pioneers and to positive press coverage. According to a recent US survey, roughly one-third of respondents rate themselves likely to buy an insect-based product.
Developing expertise in this field is a savvy investment: the United Nations, the European Union and, a number of large companies are exploring the possibilities of farming edible insects, producing flour from them, and of course creating and producing foods.