Arachnophobia Is Coming To Your Kitchen

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 Omega3s 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 onNewHope.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.