Pasta Made With Crickets Hops On The Shelves

When was the last time you answered "bugsolutely" to a question? Was it perhaps when we asked "Would you eat pasta made with ground crickets?" An increasingly popular source of sustainable protein, cricket flour is popping up in baked goods, energy bars and now, fusilli! Bugsolutely has hit the shelves, and it's the pasta of the future.

Ew, bugs, yes, whatever, but the fact of the matter is that crickets are actually delicious and a widely cultivated food source for their propensity to multiply rapidly while consuming minimal resources. Ever had crickets fried and salted? Then how else would you know they taste and crunch like extra-good, slightly nutty potato chips? And a note on that: Potato chips don't contain calcium, vitamin B12, omega-3s, iron and all nine essential amino acids, and crickets do. Plus, they're 70 percent protein. Kind of blows the "ew" factor out of the water.

Cricket flour is made by drying and powdering whole crickets, exoskeleton and all, and the raising of the bugs has little to no environmental impact — they eat whatever organic material is around, typically plant material, and consume about a thousandth the amount of water as a cow. At about $6 per 12.3-ounce box, Bugsolutely is a little pricey, but you'll get nutritional benefits not found in conventional or even protein-added pasta. If that doesn't convince you to whip up a batch of car-bug-nara, nothing will.