Loblaws Canada, owner of the President’s Choice brand and dozens of grocery store chains, is often the first retail power in this country to bring out new products and break new ground. Now, it’s trailblazing the large-scale production and sale of insect based foods with a new Cricket-based protein powder…
A Cricket grow house at Entomo Farms in Norwood, Ontario, Canada. Entomo grows
100 million crickets a year and sells them in a range of interesting forms.
They are also supplying Loblaws with Cricket Powder…
We’ve been hearing a lot of noise in the past few years about ‘alternative protein sources’ and ‘the end of meat as we know it’. But now, for the first time, a leading food retailer is diving into the deep end of the near future, introducing a protein powder product made from milled crickets.
What is even more adventurous of Loblaws is that it’s marketing the Cricket product under its high-end, prestige President’s choice label. No, it’s its not just bugs, folks; it’s something special, something exclusive, something trendy. Something everybody who’s anybody has to try.
One 2.5 tablespoon serving contains 90 Calories of energy and 13 grams of protein. It also delivers and contains a full day’s recommended serving of vitamin B12, which is vital to your metabolism and central to other body functions. That’s impressive, to nurtitionists.
The official line…
Kathlyne Ross, Vice-President of Product Development and Innovation at Loblaws, said in a statement, “By making products like Cricket Powder widely available in our grocery stores, we are giving Canadians the option to not only try something new, but to also make a conscious decision on what they eat and how it impacts the environment.”
The statement added that crickets are also an extremely efficient for of protein, requiring much less water and feed than conventional protein sources such as Beef, Pork, Chicken and Lamb.
So… It all makes perfect sense when you look at Cricket Powder that way.
Join the crowd
It is estimated that some 80 per cent of the world’s population already eats insects – many of them crickets – in some way or form already. Apparently fried bugs are considered a delicacy in some parts of Asia and Africa. I had heard of that, but not that they were so popular!
As ardent as some restaurateurs and boutique producers have been about introducing the ‘classic presentation’ of crickets to the developed West, it hasn’t caught on. To many of us, it’s still an ‘ugh’ bug if it still looks like one.
Marketing a powder, with the suggested application as an additive to your breakfast smoothie or workout bracer, is a nice, low-key way to ease the product into the mainstream.
Some observations…
One odd thing: Nobody involved in growing or selling Crickets and Crickets products has yet remarked on how they taste? Are they demurring from opining on this critical (I say) point? And if so, why? My official position is, it would be ideal if Crickets in any form tasted like nothing in particular at all. If they have to taste like something, let it be Chicken!
And… I’m betting the Vegetarians and, especially, Vegans still won’t eat it. A vegan acquaintance of mine describes her ‘red line’ on for rejecting a food item as being, ‘if it has a face’. Crickets have faces. Cute little faces. With big, boggly, goggly eyes, just like baby deer… Just kidding! I hope no Vegetarian or Vegan will let themself be swayed away from Cricket Powder by my humourous musings. Remember, people: They’re just bugs. And they don’t care about you, either.
~ Maggie J.