A brief rant about cricket snacks

[andrewducker]

Over here is a site selling bars made from cricket protein.

Which is something which looks _fantastically_ useful, in an ecological sense. Compared to beef it needs 1/10 of the amount of feed, 1/2000 of the amount of water, and produces 1/80 of the amount of CO2.

But then...if you take a look you discover that the bars that they're selling are £18 for 320g. Or £56/Kg. Which is nearly twice what Sainsbury's Best Fillet Steak sells for.

Oh, and the bars aren't made of cricket protein. They're basically made of nuts and sugar - and are only 6% cricket.

Now, I don't mind some flavouring in with my protein bars. I happily snack on pepperamis, or salami, or even jerky. But it feels fundamentally dishonest to spend your front page comparing how much more efficient cricket bars are, and how healthy they are, basically compare them to beef snacks, and then sell you a snack that's four times as much sugar in it as it has cricket.

Comments

[miss_s_b]

I thought this was going to be about snacks they sell at cricket matches. Boy was I in for a surprise..

[andrewducker]

Well that's my achievement for the day.

[cosmolinguist]

It probably won't surprise you that I had exactly the same thought. :)

[cmcmck]

I had exactly the same thought, but I hear what you say- this is nothing short of outrageous marketing opportunism.

[franklanguage]

The saddest thing about this is I notice all the other ingredients in the snacks are vegan. One wonders who this product is being marketed to—a health-food person who is mostly vegetarian for ethical reasons, or someone who is just curious to taste a little bug flour in his snack bar.

Crickets and other bugs are a source of protein for the future, considering how wasteful and land- and water-intensive farming of cattle is. Another, of course, will be "shmeat" or lab-grown meat, which will be providing equivalent protein to animal protein, without actually having to kill it.