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Finland Bakery Makes Bread From Crushed Crickets

Crickets Dreamstime
Elizabeth Licata|

Insects may be the food of the future. They're a sustainable source of protein that experts say could help fight hunger across the world. Insects are eaten across much of the world. The UN estimates that at least 2 billion people eat insects. Still, there are difficulties with getting insects to catch on as a food source in places where eating insects is not common. A lot of people who are not used to the idea of eating insects think it's unappetizing. Now one Finnish bakery has taken a big step towards getting over that hurdle by creating bread made from crickets.

According to Reuters, the crickets are ground up into flour before being mixed with wheat flour and seeds. Each loaf contains about 70 crickets, but they look like normal loaves of seed bread. The cricket bread has more protein than regular bread, and at the moment it is more expensive. One loaf costs 3.99 euros, or about $4.72. Regular wheat bread costs 2 or 3 euros, or $2.39 to $3.58.

"It offers consumers with a good protein source and also gives them an easy way to familiarize themselves with insect-based food," Juhani Sibakov, head of innovation at Fazer Bakeries, told Reuters.

 

The bread has been in development at Fazer since last summer. This month Finland officially got rid of a ban on selling insects for food, and now the loaves can be sold in stores. It will roll out this month in Helsinki, then expand across Finland.

Swiss supermarkets already sell meatballs and burgers made of insects, but this is the first commercially available bread from crickets in Europe.

The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization has been encouraging the use of insects as food, because insects are a sustainable source of protein. Eating insects is not actually all that uncommon in the world, here are 9 countries brave enough to eat insects without a chocolate coating.

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