The power bar made from crickets is now on the shelves of Icelandic grocery stores.
The Jungle Bar, a power bar made in part from dried and powdered crickets, can now be bought at Hagkaup.
Búi Bjarmar Aðalsteinsson, who helped make the product a reality with Stefán Atli Thoroddsen, proudly announced the event on Facebook.
The project has been two years in the making, and first came to our readers’ attention last year, when we reported on their reasons for trying to get the project off the ground.
“The situation right now is that after 20 years, there will be no [arable] land left,” Búi told Vísir at the time, in terms of their motivation for trying to get the Jungle Bar into production. “We will need to either add land, or import from Asia. According to the UN, insects could possibly be the answer.”
In fact, there are numerous advantages to using insects rather than livestock as a protein source. According to data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), it takes about 1.7kg of feed and 8 litres of water to produce 1kg of protein from crickets; to produce the same amount of protein from cows requires 10kg of feed and 8,350 litres of water. Crickets also take up considerably less space for farming them than cows do.
Now that Jungle Bar is available in stores, and pretty reasonably priced at that, there is little reason not to give it a try.
Related:
Meet Two Icelanders Who Want You To Eat A Bunch Of Crickets
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