Cricket Bread
Last November Finland updated the regulations covering food preparation to allow for insects also, a few days later at our lunch restaurant a bowl of cricket popcorn was served. It actually tasted really good, though I might have had my eyes closed to eat it! There are plenty of reasons why societies that otherwise have social taboos about eating bugs might want to start to change. The moral questions around animal husbandry and slaughter, the environmental effort for the same amount of protein, about 12 times less, makes it attractive as a foodstuff, it’s easy to see why the UN recommended it.
Meanwhile Fazers, Finlands largest Bakery group came out with a bread that had powdered crickets added. Crickets in Finnish is Sirkkä, and so Sirkkäleippä was born. Although the breads rollout is limited to major urban centers in Finland right now due to cricket supply I bought the bread last week and I can say we all tried it and it tasted just like bread! There are about 70 crickets per loaf it just tastes like normal, good quality bread. Crickets as a food is of course not a new thing but powdering it and adding it in a hidden way is a clever idea to get around our western squeamishness and adding a lot of protein to an otherwise normal product.
Further Reading:
- Read Nicola Twilley’s article in the New Yorker about the USA’s first cricket farm for Human consumption. She is also one of the presenters of Gastropod.