Yes. I know what I wrote.

Using insects as food is a growing trend, at least according to the very fashionable and trendy news I'm following. In the end, it might be just a small thing which will never gain big popularity.

However, in Finland we've seen already few very nice examples in crickets for food. They have been basically banned by regulations for a long time, but finally we are free to use insects as food. Until now, some people have sold dried or friend crickets not for food, but as.. other items.

I could imagine someone buying a bunch of fried crickets as decoration - and accidentally eating them! Oh no.

Well now as life has gone far easier, I will start introducing my favorite things so far!

Cricket bread

_{Photo from pixabay, the bread in the photo does not contain crickets}

Finnish bakery Fazer has created a cricket bread. Bunch of dried crickets mixed in a bread dough and you'll have a tasty and a bit crispy bread. One bread contains 70 crickets mixed in the dough. The sad part is though that the crickets are added as a powder. Some people who have tasted the bread have felt a bit bad as they haven't found whole crickets from the bread.

What a disappointment.

However most people who have been able to taste cricket bread have been happy with both flavor and the texture of the bread. The availability of the bread is still limited to certain cities, so I have not tasted the bread yet!

However you can read some more about cricket bread in the article below:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/23/anyone-for-crickets-bread-made-insect-finnish-bakery-fazer

Or if you know how to read Finnish, read the short article below:
https://www.is.fi/ruokala/ajankohtaista/art-2000005461475.html

Cricket chocolate!

Now to the thing I'm most excited about. Today I bought cricket chocolate with a crazy price. Made of Finnish crickets and chocolate, this is like chocolate raisins but without the raisins.. and crickets instead. It is basically dried crickets covered in chocolate.

And it was really nice.

It was like a bit crispy chocolate, but it was good. The cricket gave a good flavor in it, as you could clearly see and taste the cricket too as long as you properly chewed the chocolate instead of just tossing it in your mouth and swallowing it.

It's not something I will be buying all the time in the future, but a great shocker for most people. Or to scare kids. However on the same time, it is the perfect treat to get people to understand how insect food is not a scary thing.

_{Low quality cropped phone photo, but package of FINNISH cricket chocolate.}

Insect food in general

Insect food has been seen as a good replacement for meat as protein. Production of insects can be far more efficient than producing multiple different meats, causing less CO2 emissions and requiring far less space and water to be grown. Meat industry is one of the main causes of deforestation, as soy is grown to feed meat animals.

With increasing amount of insects as human food, we could reduce harm done to the environment. Even better than this, vegan or vegetarian options could be used more and more, as they are even better for the environment and seen as more ethical option.

However, adding crickets to foods which have been vegan or vegetarian before is not making it more ethical or sustainable. I don't remember us having regular bread with meat in it or chocolate with meat inside. These products are only been made less ethical and more harmful for the environment.

However they play an important role in making insect food as more approachable for the general public. It's more difficult to jump directly to cricket sausages or similar, if we haven't had crickets in other products before.

And now we all see that crickets are not scary as food. They are quite easy and tasty.

_{Image from Pixabay}