June 1, 2021 was an important day: a new food was approved. Although we have been eating insects for millennia, that day the European Union gave insects the “safe food” label. In fact, insects are a common ingredient in many foods that we consume daily, and in 2019 a Japanese company dared to go all out, making cricket powder its main ingredient.
It just went bankrupt.
Insects > livestock. Actually, the EU was not doing anything new. We have been eating insects for thousands of years and it is totally normal in Asian, American and some African countries. The European Union considered that insects were the food of the future as they are rich in proteins and other nutrients, but the fundamental thing is that their carbon footprint is minimal compared to that of livestock.
It is estimated that a cow needs 8 kg of food to gain one kilo and, then, we use 40% of its meat. Producing 1 kg of cricket meat requires only 1.7 kg of food and 80% of the insect is used. Before the EU announcement, there were already European countries launching their regulation on insect-based foods, and something that stands out is that cricket was almost always on the menu.
Animal octopus. Crickets, which are extremely common and have been postulated as a feeding solution during the first years of the colonization of Mars, are the heart of Gryllus INC., a Japanese company that started in 2019 with the idea of making snacks. The key is that you should not think of these snacks as roasted crickets, retaining their insect form, but as just another ingredient.
Thus, the process consisted of reducing the crickets to powder and using it to create a ball-shaped snack that came in two flavors: salty ‘umami’ and ‘takoyaki’ (octopus balls). In the promotion, the company deployed a food truck in which it served chips seasoned with cricket powder and also launched cricket powder flour, cookies and other products.
Bichoburger. Things did not seem to be going badly, since in 2022 the Japanese airline Zipair Tokyo reached an agreement with them to distribute two dishes with cricket powder as an ingredient. One was a seafood pasta dish in which the cricket is part of the tomato sauce mixture. The other was a burger with cricket powder mixed in with the rest of the ingredients.
The Price of each of the dishes was 1,500 yen (about 11 euros) and, as we read in South China Morning Post, the airline reported 60 orders for the dishes during the first two months on the menu.
Gryllus expanded with other products under the C.TRIA brand
all bad. The company’s luck took a turn that same year when Gryllus had the idea of introducing the ingredient into a high school. Criticism did not take long to appear, spread across social networks with parents concerned about the nutritional contribution of school meals, arguing that they were incompatible with dietary restrictions and alluding to possible allergies.
The company stated that it was a campaign driven by misinformation. Takahito Watanabe, the company’s founder, commented that it was “possible that the false reports and conspiracy theories that spread on social media were accepted by those who read them.” The damage was already done.
The bankruptcy. As SCMP points out, the company’s sales plummeted and they found themselves with excess inventory that they could not handle. They tried to ask for government subsidies to turn the business around and focus on the production of crickets as food for livestock and aquaculture, but the rejection of the authorities caused the house of cards to fall.
Unable to come back, on November 7 of this year, Gryllus INC. declared its insolvency, with a debt totaling approximately 153 million yen, about 945,000 euros.
Potential. Watanabe, who in addition to being the founder of the company is a professor of developmental biology at the University of Tokushima, in the south of Japan, commented that they began the adventure due to the protein crisis that the world will go through with population increases. “We believed there was enough potential for it to be successful in Japan,” he says.
The reality has been different, but despite the setback, he is convinced that insects are the future of cooking. “I don’t know how long it will take, but I think insects will become a key part of our diet. For much of human history, insects have been a key source of protein, so I think there is a good chance to be accepted as a food source again, when they can be improved with new technologies,” says Watanabe.
Alternatives. The researcher chose crickets for their ease of raising, the speed of maturation and their contribution of calcium, magnesium, zinc, iron, vitamins and fiber, but although there are others who consider them as one of the great foods of the future – and of the present , even in the form of protein bars—are not the only ones.
One approved by the European Food Safety Authority itself is the mealworm. Others, as the Spanish Agency for Food Safety and Nutrition details on their website, are migratory locusts or dung beetle larvae. And the preparations are varied: frozen, dried, powdered, paste and even in powder form. light.
There are many who are clear that insects will be part of the Western diet of the future. You just have to overcome the yuck factor, or the disgust factor.
Images | Broken, Gryllus INC.
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