A factory in northeastern France is drawing a lot of customers for its insect pasta. The orders have been increasing to the point where its owner is expanding the staff to meet the demand.
Pasta is usually present at the dining table because it's easy to prepare with different flavors and ingredients. The filling dish has a longer shelf life, too, which is why it's practical to store a batch of it in the fridge. However, pasta might not be healthy for everyone since it's carbo-loaded and contains gluten. French food manufacturer Stephanie Richard is putting a healthy spin on this by coming up with a pasta made with insects, specifically crickets and grasshoppers.
"The insect is the protein of the future," she said. "It's protein of high quality that is well digested by the body."
Richard had the idea to use the insects for athletes needing a high-protein diet, and with the help of one staff, Alain Limon, they make fusilli, penne and spaghetti out of the insect ingredients.
"The name of the ingredient may be a turnoff, but it's really delicious, especially with game meat," Limon said.
The insects are already pulverized by Richard's supplier and then combined with whole eggs and 93 percent organic spelt wheat flour. Sometimes, ground cepe mushrooms is also added to the mix to lend a nutty flavor to the pasta.
One December holiday, Richard tried marketing 500 packages of insect pasta in stores, and it immediately sold out for £4.70, or about $6.50, per 250 grams. "The product piqued the curiosity and had great success," Richard said. Since then, the orders have doubled from a weekly demand of 400 kilograms, so Richard is hiring more help.
Experts say that there are plenty of health benefits to eating insects and the ingredient could be superior to chicken or beef meat. Aside from protein, it's also rich in magnesium and iron and there are economic implications to using this, as well.
"Insects as a commodity have many non-health-related positive benefits compared with livestock in terms of both financial and environmental cost, particularly in developing countries where under-nutrition is a key problem," the expert cited in a study.
So, perhaps Richard was right to say that this is the food of the future.
