Since yesterday, Europe also eats flour from domestic crickets

Cricket/ Photo: DAVID AUBREY / Sciencephoto / Profimedia

As of yesterday, the powder, that is, the flour from the "house cricket", can officially be sold on the European market, and the list of products in which it is allowed to be found is practically endless. In limited quantities, it can be used for the production of: bread, pastries, biscuits, cereals, frozen pizzas and other pasta. It is also allowed in spices, beer, instant soups, meat substitutes, sauces, processed potatoes, legume and vegetable dishes, confectionery...

The introduction of insect-based high-protein flour into the diet of Europeans has been talked about for a long time. Based on the opinion of the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA), the powder for house crickets (Aheta domesticus) is safe, and it was included in the so-called new food at the beginning of January this year, reported Politika rs.

So the Vietnamese company "Cricket One Co" got the green light to sell it on the EU market for the next five years. The fried crickets are said to taste like nuts, mainly hazelnuts, but also sunflower seeds. Experts claim that they are rich in iron, amino acids and contain more than 60 grams of protein per hundred grams. The information that the food will be enriched with this type of protein causes violent reactions in the public and on social networks, and we will practically not even know about it.

The dominant view of consumers in Europe is that they do not want to consume insects – in any form. Experts in Lithuania, for example, believe that the citizens' fears are unfounded, because the production of this flour is still expensive and the question is how much it will actually be in mass use. Lithuania's National Food and Veterinary Service told media that crickets and other insects are treated as novel food in the EU, which is subject to stricter requirements and has clear limits on how much powder can be added to another product.

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