Do you want to eat cricket chips, cinnamon flour? Startups in Europe focus on the insect-based Biz

Tiziana Di Costanzo makes pizza dough from scratch by mixing flour, yeast, a pinch of salt, a pinch of olive oil and something a little more unusual – ground acheta domesticus, better known as cricket powder.

Di Costanzo is an edible insect entrepreneur who runs cricket and groundworm cooking classes in his home in West London, where he also raises takers in the backyard with his husband Tom.

His launch, Horizon Insects, is part of Europe’s emerging edible insect field, with dozens of bug-based companies offering cricket chips in the Czech Republic, burgers in Germany and Belgian beetle beer. The European Union headquarters in Brussels also supports insect-based protein research as part of a wider sustainable food strategy.

As the world’s growing population puts more pressure on global food production, insects are increasingly seen as a viable food source. According to experts, they are high in protein, but can be grown much more sustainably than beef or pork.

Around the world, 2 billion people in 130 countries regularly eat insects. According to investment bank Barclay’s, the global edible insect market is on the rise and suggests data from a careful study that it is projected to grow from less than $ 1 billion in 2019 to $ 8 billion by 2030.

But despite all the European startups trying to make insects appetite, don’t expect them to start appearing still in mainstream restaurants or dining tables. One big reason is the strong cultural yuck factor in the West, which tropical entomologist Professor Arnold van Huis of Wageningen University in the Netherlands says is difficult to change.

Turning people’s minds is very difficult, but insects are completely safe to eat, perhaps even more nutritious than meat products, and the only risk is allergies because insects are closely related to shellfish such as shrimp, van Huis said.

Instead, people may end up eating more insects indirectly because the most promising market is for animal feed. The insect protein was approved as fish feed by the EU in 2017. It was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration as chicken feed in 2018, while EU approval for poultry and pigs is scheduled for later this year.

The change in legislation has also eased the position of European companies wishing to market insects directly to consumers. In the past, the EU did not control edible insects because they were not considered food, allowing individual countries to set their own rules. In order to harmonize the rules in different countries, the EU introduced a directive in 2018 that covers insects, but requires the approval of individual species and paves the way for a wave of permits.

Insect food production in Europe is projected to increase from 500 tonnes to 260,000 tonnes by 2030, according to the International Platform of Insects for Food and Feed in the lobby group in Brussels.

Insects need a tenth of the country, make up a fraction of greenhouse gas or ammonia emissions, and need much less water than cattle or pigs, van Huis said.

The first approval came earlier this year for Tenebrio Molitor larvae or dried yellow flour worm following an application from the French Micronutris insect farm. The EU Commission’s food safety regulators said in a scientific opinion that the flour is safe to eat, even though it warned of possible reactions from people allergic to crustaceans or dust mites.

The regulators issued a second favorable opinion for locusts this month, based on an application from the Dutch insect breeding company Protix.

Our vision is for insects to move from narrow to normal, “said Kees Aarts, CEO of Protix, who predicted an explosion of food applications for EU regulators.

In Protix’s state-of-the-art vertical space in Bergen op Zoom, the green plastic boxes stacked on towering poles are full of writhing black military fly larvae.

The high-tech facility converts the larvae into protein flour and oil for use in fish feed and pet food. The company also has a number of bug-based snacks and ingredients, such as cinnamon flour and cricket protein falafel mixture, and after final approval, plans to market frozen, dried or ground locusts as an ingredient in breakfast cereals, pasta, pastries, sauces and meat imitations.

In London, Di Costanzon Horizon Insects is developing an insect-based cooking agent after discovering that there wasn’t much of a local market for the carpets of fresh edible flour they sold.

Di Costanzo says that the cricket powder he uses in his pizza gives it a very nice, fatty, healthy taste and at the same time increases the nutritional content with proteins, macronutrients and omega acids. Mealworm burgers, on the other hand, are tasty and very easy to prepare, and powdered rugs have a mild flavor that allows them to be incorporated into cakes, bread and pasta.

I definitely think the future is for products made with insects rather than actual insects, said Di Costanzo, who also mourned the post-Brexit government bureaucracy, which leaves small edible insect entrepreneurs in the UK unclear.

Antoine Hubert, CEO of France’s Ynsect, says the most profitable opportunity comes from the sports and health food market for its worm-based protein powder. The company also produces insect protein for fish feed, which, according to Hubert, grows larger and faster farmed salmon while reducing the need for fishmeal – small, huge amounts of fish caught – which improves marine biodiversity.

Investors, including Hollywood star Robert Downey Jr.’s FootPrint Coalition, were on Ynsect’s latest $ 224 million round of funding. The money will fund a vertical farm north of Paris, said to be one of the largest in the world when it is completed next year, capable of producing 100,000 tonnes of commercial flour products a year and expanding North America, where it plans to build another farm in the US and seek FDA approval for its food.

Downey Jr. has promoted the benefits of meal atom powder by delivering it to Bath talk show host Stephen Colbert.

Could I put this on a smoothie or something? “Colbert asked.

You do all sorts of stuff about it, Downey Jr. replied.