Skye Blackburn's lifelong fascination with creepy-crawlies took a surprising turn when she founded Edible Bug Shop in 2007.
The entomologist, food scientist and mother of three develops and markets edible insect products including cricket protein corn chips, lemon myrtle cricket protein fusilli, almond cricket protein granola, and choc chip and wattle seed cookie mix.
In 2020 The Edible Bug Shop rebranded its retail range as Circle Harvest.
"I founded Australia's first insect protein farm with the huge task of convincing people that insect proteins would play an important role in our food system," Blackburn explains.
"I could see so much untapped potential in insects as a source of food and felt I had the perfect combination of skills to educate people about the need for diversification within our food system.
"By replacing just one meat-based meal with a meal that uses our crickets as your source of protein a week, you can save over 100,000 litres of water a year."
Why is diversification important? It's a matter of food security.
"By the year 2050 the way that we produce our food will not be able to support our growing population," Blackburn says.
"We need to be able to produce more food using less resources, and that is what start-ups and scientists in Australia are doing. Using AgTech, food tech, plants, algae and seaweed, regenerative and vertical farming as well as insect proteins to name a few, there are lots of people working on making our food system more sustainable.
"Insects have already started to play an important role in our food supply chain: they eat organic food waste; their frass (insect poop) is being used as a fertiliser; they are being used as protein in animal feed and pet food; and they are also a very nutrient-dense source of food for humans to eat.
"Insect farming produces more food in a shorter space of time using less resources when compared to traditional farming, and with the development of technologies like robotics we can farm them in commercial qualities and make a real difference to providing diversification within our food system."
Professor Johannes le Coutre, a food and health expert from UNSW Sydney's School of Chemical Engineering, says nothing should be off the table when it comes to feeding an anticipated world population of 10 billion people in 30 years' time.
And that means, among other initiatives, adding protein-rich insects to our diet.
"Once we get over the yuck factor, I believe the conversations around consuming insects as a source of food can be approachable emotionally," he says.
Public perception is a major hurdle for Blackburn and others in her industry. People generally don't like the idea of eating insects.
"The most common misconception is that you have to eat an insect whole. That's not the case," she says.
"When we are talking about our food system and how eating insects can fit into that, it's about eating familiar foods that have been enriched with invisible insect proteins. This will make the food more nutrient-dense.
"People often think that insects are dirty in some way, which is also not true. Insects farmed specifically for human consumption abide by strict hygiene conditions.
"They are regularly checked for parasites, heavy metals, pesticides and other contaminants. They comply with the same food standards as any other product that you would purchase in the supermarket."
Another misconception (which she says has been popping up in commentary recently) is that chitin, which is found in an insect's exoskeleton, is harmful to human health.
"Again, this is not the case. There are lots of studies from reputable sources showing the safety of insect proteins," she says.
"Some people who have an allergic reaction to shellfish can have a similar reaction when consuming insects because they have some of the same proteins in their exoskeletons, and we list this on all of our packaging as we would any other food allergen in a food product.
"The chitin is an excellent source of probiotic fibre and helps maintain gut microflora."
Blackburn and her team transform unused warehouses into insect protein farms with enclosures that are "stacked like little bug apartments". Crickets and mealworms are the most suitable for commercial insect farming. They have a short life cycle that can be replicated in an indoor environment and can "produce a lot of food in as little as six weeks".
Crickets and mealworms are also very nutrient dense and can be fed on clean fruit and vegetable waste from food production processing or farms. Importantly, they are low in flavour, colour and texture.
"This means we can add insect powders, oils and pastes into everyday food items to make them more nutrient dense without any changes to the taste or texture of the food," she says.
"So, you can have the foods that you already enjoy, like chips, pasta, cereal and even cookies, but they are made more nutrient dense with the addition of the invisible insect proteins."
Cricket protein powder, she says, is "about 69 per cent natural protein, has four times the amount of calcium as milk, three times the amount of iron as spinach, three times the amount of omega 3 as salmon, is very high in vitamins B12, magnesium, zinc, potassium and has all nine essential amino acids". It's also "low in bad fats and carbs".
When it comes to flavour, Blackburn tries to use native Australian ingredients where possible.
"We want to bump up the nutrition in the foods that we make as much as possible, but this can't come at the expense of taste. There's no way customers will buy our products if they don't taste delicious, and we work really hard on making sure that's the case," she says.
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