Cricket flour has already started to be sold in Romania, by a company specializing in the sale of BIO products, and the price is as shocking as the idea of eating insects.
Cricket flour has started to be sold in Romania Photo Shutterstock
According to the description, cricket flour is made from large wingless crickets. An exoskeleton is not yet formed, so insects are easier to digest. Cricket protein meal has a slight nutty umami flavor and is rich in protein, the traders write.
Cricket meal is additive-free, chemical-free and antibiotic-free “unlike animal farming, insects pose no risk to bacteria”.
The flour is made from 100% crickets and contains the same quality protein as beef (70% protein), has more omega-3 and omega-6 than salmon (20% fatty acids).
Marketers like to point out that people are “genetically different from crickets and there is no danger that we can get any diseases from them”, so that by ingestion we cannot get infected with Covid, swine flu or mad cow disease.
As for obtaining the cricket meal and using it, the trader says that before drying, the crickets are first thoroughly washed, then heat treated and slowly dried to maximize all the beneficial properties of the edible insect. Only then is it turned into protein-rich cricket meal.
Cricket flour is used in combination with another type of flour or can be added as is in other recipes. “Cricket protein powder can be added to any recipe for added protein, vitamin B12 and iron. You can try it with: smoothies, pancakes, cookies, muffins, nachos, bread, omelettes, soups, biscuits, puddings, etc.writes the trader, whose headquarters is in Baia Mare.
100 grams of cricket flour (Acheta domesticus) costs 96.25 lei, i.e. 962.5 lei/kg
In February, the European Commission authorized the marketing of house crickets – Acheta domesticus – as a new food in the European Union, thus becoming the third insect to receive approval for consumption and following the previous authorizations issued in July last year for the desiccated larva of Tenebrio molitor and in November for Locusta migratoria. Homemade crickets will be available whole, frozen, dried or powdered.
Daea: I fight cockroaches, I don’t eat them
Last summer, the Minister of Agriculture, Petre Daea, urged Romanians not to consume this productespecially since Romanians have a particularly tasty traditional food.
„Do not eat cricket flour! What are you looking for with crickets? Let them sing where they are! We eat what we have to eat. We eat sarmales, we eat sausages, we eat chicken eggs. Don’t replace chicken eggs with any worm now. There is no point in making such an effort”said the Minister of Agriculture, Petre Daea.
„And we must be consistent and at the same time persistent in keeping our traditions and consistent in doing what is right“, said the Minister of Agriculture.
He had a similar reaction when it came to locusts.
„As an agronomic engineer, I usually fight bugs, I don’t eat them. These things do not hold, because they come against nature. Ask anyone. We must not deviate from the known path, because we have found that when we do we are wrong”.
„I have also heard as support for the justification that we have a new protein. I told them that grasshoppers still live on the ground, they eat vegetation. That is, it is not a reliable source. There is no point in discussing any more. Let’s go to our pole“, added Daea.
As for the dung beetle larva, recently declared edible by the European Commission, the minister said that “approval does not mean food”.
„Leave them in approvals, but don’t put them in the food, don’t put them on the plate, because we know what we produce, we know what we eat, we know what is useful to us. From this point of view I am not worried, approval does not mean food either, because we know how to produce in Romania and we have, thank God, where, with whom and what to do (…). Leave the insects in the insect box“, answered, on Friday, the Minister of Agriculture, Petre Daea, when asked about the new food approved by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).
