LONDON (AP) \u2014 Tiziana Di Costanzo makes pizza dough from scratch, mixing together flour, yeast, a pinch of salt, a dash of olive oil and something a bit more unusual \u2014 ground acheta domesticus, better known as cricket powder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Di Costanzo is an edible insect entrepreneur who holds cricket and mealworm cooking classes at her West London home, where she also raises the critters in a backyard shed with her husband, Tom Mohan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her startup, Horizon Insects, is part of Europe\u2019s nascent edible insect scene, which features\u00a0dozens of bug-based businesses\u00a0offering cricket chips in the Czech Republic, bug burgers in Germany and Belgian beetle beer. The European Union headquarters in Brussels is also backing research into insect-based proteins as part of a broader sustainable food strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As the Earth\u2019s growing population puts more pressure on global food production, insects are increasingly seen as a viable food source. Experts say they\u2019re rich in protein, yet can be raised much more sustainably than beef or pork.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Around the world, 2 billion people in 130 countries eat insects regularly. The global edible insect market is poised to boom, according to\u00a0investment bank Barclay\u2019s, citing data from Meticulous Research that forecasts it will grow from less than $1 billion in 2019 to $8 billion by 2030.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But despite all the European startups working to make insects appetizing, don\u2019t expect them to start appearing at mainstream restaurants or on dinner tables just yet. One big reason is a strong cultural \u201cyuck\u201d factor in Western countries that Arnold van Huis, a professor of tropical entomologist at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, says will be hard to change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very difficult to turn people\u2019s minds around but insects are absolutely safe to eat, maybe even more nutritious than meat products,\u201d with the only risk coming from allergies, because insects are closely related to crustaceans like shrimp, van Huis said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Instead, humans may end up eating more insects indirectly because the market that shows the most promise is for feeding animals. The EU approved insect protein as feed for fish farming in 2017. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved it for chicken feed in 2018, while EU approval for poultry and pigs is due later this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Regulatory change has also made things easier for European companies looking to market insects directly to consumers. The EU didn\u2019t previously govern edible insects because they weren\u2019t considered food, leaving individual countries to impose their own rules. To bring rules in line across countries, the EU in 2018 launched a directive that covers insects but requires approvals for individual species, paving the way for a wave of authorizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
European production of insect-based food products is forecast to mushroom from 500 metric tons currently to 260,000 metric tons by 2030, according to the International Platform of Insects for Food and Feed, a Brussels-based lobby group. Still, it\u2019s dwarfed by the 22.8 million metric tons of pork or 13.4 million tons of chicken that the EU produces annually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Insects require a tenth of the land, account for a fraction of greenhouse gas or ammonia emissions and need much less water than cattle or pigs, van Huis said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first approval came earlier this year for Tenebrio molitor larva, or dried yellow mealworm, after an application from French insect farm Micronutris. The EU Commission\u2019s food safety regulators\u00a0said in a scientific opinion\u00a0that mealworms are\u00a0safe to eat, though they warned of possible reactions in people allergic to crustaceans or dust mites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Regulators issued another positive opinion this month\u00a0for grasshoppers, based on an application from Protix, a Netherlands-based insect farming company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOur vision is that insects will go from niche to normal,\u201d said Protix CEO Kees Aarts, who predicted an \u201cexplosion of food applications\u201d to EU regulators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At Protix\u2019s state-of-the-art vertical farm in Bergen op Zoom, green plastic crates stacked in towering columns are filled with wriggling black soldier fly larvae.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The high-tech facility turns the larvae into protein meal and oil for use in fish feed and pet food. The company also has a line of bug-based snacks and ingredients like cinnamon mealworms and cricket protein falafel mix and, after getting final approval, plans to market frozen, dried or powdered grasshoppers as an ingredient for breakfast cereals, pasta, baked goods, sauces and imitation meat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In London, Di Costanzo\u2019s Horizon Insects is developing an insect-based cooking ingredient after discovering that there wasn\u2019t much of a local market for the fresh edible mealworms they were selling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Di Costanzo says the cricket powder she uses in her pizza gives it \u201ca very nice, meaty, healthy taste\u201d while boosting the nutritional content with protein, macronutrients and omega acids. Mealworm burgers, meanwhile, are \u201ctasty and very easy to make,\u201d and powdered mealworms have a mild taste that allows them to be incorporated into cakes, bread and pasta.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cDefinitely, I think the future is products made with insects rather than the actual insect,\u201d said Di Costanzo, who also bemoaned post-Brexit government red tape that\u2019s leaving small U.K. edible insect entrepreneurs in limbo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Antoine Hubert, CEO of France\u2019s Ynsect, says the most lucrative opportunity will come from the sports and health nutrition markets for its mealworm-based protein powder. The company also makes insect protein for fish feed that Hubert said helps farmed salmon grow bigger and faster while reducing the need for fishmeal \u2014 smaller fish caught in huge quantities \u2014 which helps improve the ocean\u2019s biodiversity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Investors including Hollywood star Robert Downey Jr.\u2019s FootPrint Coalition were among the backers contributing to Ynsect\u2019s latest round of funding worth $224 million. The money will fund a vertical farm north of Paris that it says will be one of the world\u2019s biggest when it\u2019s completed next year, capable of producing 100,000 tons year of commercial mealworm products, as well as expansion in North America, where it plans to build another farm in the U.S. and apply for FDA approval for its food products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Downey Jr. has been promoting\u00a0the benefits of mealworm powder, supplying a tub of it to talk show host Stephen Colbert.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI could put this in a smoothie or something?\u201d Colbert asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou\u2019ll be making all kinds of stuff out of it,\u201d Downey Jr. replied.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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