A bakery in Finland wants humans to eat high-protein bread made with crushed crickets

A Finnish bakery is using ground flour from dried crickets.
Each loaf contains about 70 crickets.
It contains more protein than normal bread.
More than 2 billion people eat insects worldwide.

Finnish bakery and food service company Fazer has launched what it said was the world's first insect-based bread to be offered to consumers in stores.

The bread, made from flour ground from dried crickets as well as wheat flour and seeds, contains more protein than normal wheat bread. Each loaf contains about 70 crickets.

"The crickets are in the form of flour and they have been ground as a whole cricket and then made into dough and then baked to a very delicious product," said Markus Hellström, CEO of Fazer Bakeries.

The demand to find more food sources and a desire to treat animals more humanely have raised interest in using insects as a protein source in several Western countries.

In November, Finland joined five other European countries - Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria and Denmark - in allowing insects to be raised and marketed for food use.

A spokesman said Fazer had been developing the bread since last summer. It had to wait for legislation to be passed in Finland for the launch.

"It tastes like bread. It's really good....I don't know!" said Sara Koivisto, a student from Helsinki after trying the new product.

Due to a limited supply of crickets, the insect-bread will initially only be sold in 11 Fazer bakery stores located in Helsinki region hypermarkets, but the company plans to offer it in all 47 of its stores by next year.

The company buys its cricket flour from the Netherlands, but said it was also looking for local suppliers.

Fazer, a family business with sales of about 1.6 billion euros last year, did not give a sales target for the product.

Insect-eating, or entomophagy, is common in much of the world. The United Nations estimated last year that at least 2 billion people eat insects and more than 1,900 species have been used for food.

In Western countries, edible bugs are gaining traction in niche markets, particularly among those seeking a gluten-free diet or wanting to protect the environment because farming insects uses less land, water and feed than animal husbandry.

Produced by Claudia Romeo

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