Arachnophobia Is Coming To Your Kitchen

Here’s what’s happening this week in Food News!

Here’s what’s happening this week in Food News. We’ve all seen and heard how eating insects is good for the planet, a good source of protein and good for our wallets; but for most of us we can’t get past the ick factor of taking a handful of bugs, even deep fried with cinnamon on top, and eating them instead of M&Ms.

One brand thinks they can solve the problem. One Hop Kitchen is launching its Mealworm and Cricket Bolognese sauces made with vine-ripened tomatoes, extra virgin olive oil, onions, garlic, carrots and celery, and replaces the ground beef with either mealworms or crickets – call it texturized insect protein. Eli Cadesky, the founder of the company along with his brother, told FoodNavigator-USA: “When you taste the sauce, you will find that the crickets are very mild and the mealworms, as crazy as it’s going to sound, have a parmesan cheese flavor to them.” He added farming 5 pounds of insects takes the same resources as needed to produce just 1 pound of beef, and livestock rearing is responsible for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions and each jar of his sauce saves about 1,900 liters of water as compared to a beef pasta sauce.

If you are still not convinced, One Hop Kitchen’s sauces have 100 mg of omega-3s per serving, no added sugar half the saturated fat, one-third of the cholesterol, and three times the amount of vitamin B12.

Not a believer yet? Maybe doctoral student Daylan Tzompa Sosa, the lead author of a new study at Wageningen University in the Netherlands can convince you. His team according to a report on NewHope.com, explored a range of fatty acids, omega-3s that were byproducts of extracting protein from different insects - mealworms, beetle larvae, crickets, cockroaches, grasshoppers and soldier flies. Sosa did add one non-scientific comment: "All the oils smell differently, some nicer than others.” Jeff Daniels would be proud.