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Add to Lightbox DownloadMay 5, 2017 - inconnu - Snack lovers can now get their teeth into a new brand of corn chips - made with insects.Triangular-shaped Chirps, which come in three flavours, are made using flour milled from cricketsThe all-female team behind the brand hope serving up bugs this way will male eating insects more socially acceptable.The advantage is that insects can be bred with almost zero impact on the environment yet produce more protein per calorie than beef.It takes one cricket to make each chip.The three flavour varieties are cheddar cheese, BBQ, and sea salt.The company was set up by American graduates Rose Wang and Laura D’Asaro.Wang was a Harvard student when she travelled to China where she ate her first bug—a scorpion.It had been fried and skewered on a stick like a kebab. Wang’s fellow travel mates dared her to try it.She took the challenge and to her surprise, declared it delicious.When she returned to the USA she and her roommate D’Asaro started cooking with crickets they bought from a local pet shop. They were soon joined in their culinary experiments by another Harvard student, Meryl Natow, and the trio formed Six Foods.The company is now manufacturing Chirps and hope the product will be the first in a long line of bug-based snacks.They said although most Westerners shudder at the prospect of eating an insect, around two billion people regularly eat bugs as part of their diet.Many insects, crickets included, contain all nine essential amino acids and more magnesium than beef. Insect protein is also sustainable, especially in comparison to traditional meat sources. It takes one gallon of water to produce one pound of insect protein. Almost two thousand gallons of water, by contrast, are needed to produced a half kilo of beef The girls discovered there is a booming cricket farming industry in the US crickets for fish and reptile feed. Scaling up to human consumption was no problem because crickets have a six-week life cycleNot all in
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- Daily Round Up 4 May 2017

