Jan 26 (dw.com) - Bugs have long been consumed in Japan, but now the market is growing. Company owners say this is down to the numerous nutritional and environmental benefits of this novel form of protein.
Packets of fried or sugared crickets are still sold to children as snacks in many rural towns. But companies are now developing insect farms on a larger scale, marketing the insects on their high nutritional value and environmental benefits.
Across Japan, specialist shops sell foodstuffs incorporating everything from spiders to crickets, weevils and cicada. Meanwhile, restaurants stage promotional events with bugs on the menu.
Crickets as a balanced meal
Gryllus Co. is a food technology company set up in 2019 by Takahito Watanabe, a professor of developmental biology at Tokushima University, to raise crickets and develop them into a food source.
The company says its philosophy is to create a "new harmony" that helps solve the problem of protein going to waste, builds a global food cycle and provides healthy food.
"Crickets have long been eaten in Japan and we see them as potentially an important and useful resource," said Fumiya Aokubu, a spokesman for the company. "Raising crickets is environment-friendly, it requires very little land, water or feedstock, while the food conversion rate is far superior to livestock such as pigs, beef cattle or chickens."
Watanabe and his team are presently carrying out research to determine the exact nutritional values of crickets and the best ways in which they can be incorporated into food, Aokubu told DW, although much of that data is at present a closely guarded company secret, he added.
The research has so far determined that crickets are high in calcium, magnesium, zinc, iron, vitamins and dietary fiber. Additionally, crickets can be processed into cosmetics and pharmaceutical products, as well as fertilizers.
