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Colm O'Shea
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Ryan Bailey

Wow, Colm. Over 1,000 crickets per 100 g bag. ~3x more protein than wheat flour, almost no carbs, >400 mg of Omega 3 in a couple tablespoons. Curious as to what you would make with it?

Sorry, no experience with this, but a "cricket croissant" has a nice ring to it.

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Eva Pelegrin

I stumbled upon this cricket flour article and I was impressed by its sustainability aspect:

"Crickets require about 6 times less feeding than cattle, 4 times less than sheep and 2 times less than pigs to produce the same amount of protein… Crickets also require far less water than cattle; in fact, to get a pound of dry protein from a cow, between 1,700 and 2,500 gallons of water is required. To get the same amount of protein from a cricket, only one gallon of water is needed — that’s a tremendous difference.”

If you’re not inclined to read the article, as a cautionary note, it recommends to start with a small amount of cricket protein to get your body used to it and to avoid any potential allergic reactions. Also, make sure you buy cricket flour from a trustworthy source to insure it is free of chemicals.

I think I’m going to try it! Unfortunately, I'm a very spartan cook and will need a little help with quick, no-brainer recipes. 

Ryan, a cricket croissant is beyond my powers and imagination, but it sounds delish.
Jeff, if someone made me an ant burger, I would definitely eat it!

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William Marler

I'd love to see this take off ... the environment differences between raising crickets & raising beef are pretty striking. I ordered the Exo bars to see what they'll taste like & encourage the company, but I'm fairly dismayed by their macro values on the package; a bar with 10g protein has 17g fat & 30g carbs. That's not really a "protein bar" to me ... it's more like a "candy bar with a glass of milk."

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Colm O'Shea

There's no way I'm eating a protein bar with that many sugars/carbs in it. But these packets of cricket protein powder look promising:

http://www.cricketflours.com/product/cricket-protein-powder/

 I'm not sure if the price is ideal, but the low carb/fat profile relative to the protein seems promising to me. I'd be interested to learn if Jeff thinks it's a smart addition as a supplement or not (assuming you've completed Thrive 1 and you've covered your basics). 

 

 

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Ryan Bailey

Let's not get too carried away with the environmental thing here. I mean... they are crickets. How are crickets stimulating the grasslands to promote carbon sequestration compared to the nicely ran grass-fed ruminate operation? We are not talking wild crickets here, but farmed indoor production likely.  Sorry, I digress; Sustainable grass-fed management is for another topic.

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If anybody is interested I happened to do a taste test of the Exo Protein bars with my kids for my YouTube channel - 

They did give me just a tiny bit of digestive upset afterwards AND, they are hella expensive of just 10g of protein.  From my POV the math just doesn't work out.  They need LESS water and you get FAR more product out for your inputs, but the end result is like four times as expensive as a good quality whey protein.  I looked on Amazon for just straight cricket flour and the cheapest I found a pound for was around $45.  Compare that to buying a good, clean, grass fed whey or casein from someone like truenutrition.com for MUCH less.  I can buy grass fed beef from a reseller here in AZ for $6/lbs.

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Eva Pelegrin

EXO, I would never purchase an over-priced bar, with crickets or without them. It’s still processed and way too much sugar, only 3-7g of fiber and 300 cal in 3 bites, no thank you, I'm going to be hungry in 1 hr.

Someone must be making a LOT of money… It’s a shame that profit margins are so high with cricket flour. If it employs less resources, shouldn't it be cheaper? I don’t want to hear about economies of scale, smaller distribution argument. It’s not just that but maybe I’m wrong. It’s the marketing hype that bothers me. It reminds me of genetic testing. How come that computing power is so cheap and generally available, (gigabytes and gigabytes) yet genetic testing can be so over-priced? I have a client that just paid $5,000 EACH for him and his wife, in order to supposedly treat/prevent probably illness, etc. 

Not to digress from the cricket topic, but these type of sustainability/over-priced commodities bother me in principle. 

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17 hours ago, Eva Pelegrin said:

. It reminds me of genetic testing. How come that computing power is so cheap and generally available, (gigabytes and gigabytes) yet genetic testing can be so over-priced? I have a client that just paid $5,000 EACH for him and his wife, in order to supposedly treat/prevent probably illness, etc. 

I'm getting slightly off topic, but just give it a few more years.  

People are freaking out about the $15 minimum wage and the level of automation it's going to cause in the food industry, but I firmly believe that level of automation is coming to nearly EVERY field, especially medicine.  

I'm predicting that within 25 years the general practitioner is going to be non-existent, at least in it's current form.  We'll be able to swab our own cheek or draw a small amount of blood or urine and an app on our phone will run any test we want from home and be able to interpenetrate the results if needed.  We're already starting to see the first generation of this tech become available on Amazon.  People who want to take responsibility for their own health are going to have unprecedented ability to do so.

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Daniel Taylor-Shaut

Roasted crickets taste like popcorn, with added fiber from their exoskeletons.

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On 6/11/2016 at 3:24 PM, Daniel Taylor-Shaut said:

Roasted crickets taste like popcorn, with added fiber from their exoskeletons.

IIRC, I'm pretty sure cricket exoskeletons are mostly keratin, which would be a protein not fiber... 

Assuming we can't break down that much keratin, would it act like a fiber in the gut?

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Daniel Taylor-Shaut
6 hours ago, Ashe Higgs said:

IIRC, I'm pretty sure cricket exoskeletons are mostly keratin, which would be a protein not fiber... 

Assuming we can't break down that much keratin, would it act like a fiber in the gut?

Meh, I always failed the hard sciences in school. Whatever classification their exoskeletons may be, it certainly tastes awfully stringy (think artichokes and string beans).

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William Marler

So... trying getting this thread back on topic ...

I don't think there's a difference that I or my metabolism could detect in getting 10g or even 50g of protein from crickets v. the same amount from another source, all else equal. I'm not willing to pony up the dough to self-experiment by getting straight cricket flour though, and the eXo bars have way, way, way too much fat/carbs in them to get more than 10-20g cricket protein/day from them. I'm hoping they come out with something palatable in the 250-Calorie, 20g protein range though ... I'd try them.

There is no stringyness in the eXo bars. Wouldn't even know they were made from cricket flour, if they didn't make a big thing about it (not that I'm endorsing them for taste quite yet ... I've only had the cocoa one so far, and it wasn't particularly tasty, even with the 20g fat and 30g carbs it had next to the cricket protein).

 

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Colm O'Shea

Alright, that does it. I'm ordering some cricket flour and seeing what it's like. My main reasoning that insects might be preferable as a "livestock" is the reduced methane production, but I haven't looked for any data one way or the other for bugs vs hoofed animals with regards to carbon footprint, etc. I'll get back to everyone with my experience. 

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Jeff Serven

Google the carbon foot print of beef (allegedly biggest methane produce) vs. soy. Interesting stuff. 

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Colm O'Shea

I did google it, and got drawn into a rabbit hole. Here's an interesting discussion from a variety of different perspectives:

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2010/07/vegetarianism-worse-for-the-environment

Some things that jumped out at me (apart from the fact that so many of the thinkers quoted seem to echo things Jeff has said here already) included:

1) The issue of food waste as distinct from food production in terms of global warming. Apparently kids (and people in general) tend to waste more veggies than meat, and that waste goes into methane-producing landfills.

2) Air-shipped veg will have a worse impact than local meat.

3) Grazing cattle is such a land-hungry practice that it may be a useful method of preventing urban sprawl.  

There were other engaging claims in there too. Worth a read--it's quick!

 

 

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Eva Pelegrin

As an addendum to my “why is this so expensive” post above, I learned from the company that while crickets are easy and moderately cheap to raise, raising them in large quantities actually takes a lot of space and human resources. Apparently, it’s a very labor-intensive undertaking!

On average, it takes approximately 5,000 crickets to make a single pound of cricket powder. That's a lot of crickets when you think about how many pounds of crickets companies need to sell in order to make a viable business. A few companies are currently trying to automate some of this process, but at this point it is still quite expensive to manufacture this powder on a large scale. Learning about this gave me permission to buy some cricket flour. I sympathize and identify with such enterprise, as my business model is also very labor intensive.

@Colm O'Shea Today I had my first cricket organic chicken salad with Japanese ginger dressing. As to the taste, it was earthy, roasted flavor. Kinda like using a je ne sais quoi spice. No side effects and very filling. But that’s maybe because my salads are usually in a 9 ½“ bowl, haha.

Fun fat: Sorry about my mundane, flat food shot. I rate it a zero for composition and styling. There was a time when I art-directed photography and we’d spent hours for one darn picture in what now seems a past life. Cricket salad.JPG

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Colm O'Shea

So interesting, Eva. My flours are en route. I ordered the chocolate flavor cos I'm too chicken (or something that tastes like chicken) to eat it plain. Do you know if I can just dump it in water and drink it? Or do you have to cook with it?

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William Marler

Really interesting Eva! And +1 to you & Colm for stretching your cultural comfort zones. 

I'm going to guess that a cricket flour + water shake is nothing at all like what I'm accustomed to with a whey or casein shake ... honestly I think I expect the cricket flour won't dissolve at all, but will precipitate out (kind of like some BCAA's I've tried). Interested to hear your results though...

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Eva Pelegrin

You can totally eat it raw. I imagine that if we drink it in water it’s ok but not fabulous tasting. Have you ever tried those custom dark concoctions from Chinese herbal formulas prescribed by an acupuncturist? It’s like trying to swallow the entire earth at once. That’s what I’m picturing.

I’m going with a blend-in strategy. You can mix it in your smoothies or sprinkle it on soups or other foods. I’m not the person for cooked recipes, although I want to venture into trying a gluten-free chocolate banana bread I saw online. Seemed simple enough for me.

I typically wrap my breakfast in 2 sheets of organic raw nori and the cricket flower will go inside with a source of protein: smoked salmon, omelet, pastrami or extra lean prosciutto. Plus dark greens, beets or fennel, over an avocado or hummus layer, with precision-sprinkled pine nuts – my usual fav combos. I bought the plain flour to mix in with everything and the chocolate to do the bread and maybe the occasional shake.

Speaking of “chickens,” my curiosity didn’t stretch far enough to try the whole cricket or other edible insects. After seeing a picture in Amazon with comments like quote: “Fun, weird, taste is bland with a nice crunch”; “Tasted a bit dusty, but fun for a laugh!”; “We all tried them in the office, the faces we made were classic”; “I use these for witchcraft, because some things require dried bugs! Will buy again.” Eye-roll. The powder seemed like a great idea and all that my cultural heritage can handle at the moment, lol.

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