Gonna be honest, if you told me a country was going to start doing this, I would not have picked Italy

I am all for this, eating insects is done in many cultures and a healthy source of nutrition. We westerners may see it as something intimidating at first, because we so squirmish about bugs, but I am honestly curious about the taste.

That being said, I don’t know why we need more nutritious flour. We are not lacking protein in our diets. Even vegans and vegetarians easily hit the minimum protein intake by consuming plant based protein…

I’m still kind of puzzled about why you’d want to use something like this, instead of plant-based ingredients.

Though obviously it doesn’t make sense to completely outlaw it, either.

Everyone here saying how awful this sounds, and I’m just sitting here excited to try a new food. I ate mealworms before and they were pretty good, so why not?

It’s certainly not what I’m used to but it’s definitely less weird than some common foods we typically eat like cheese (which I fucking love, but if you think about it its weird as shit!)

the ideas that:

no one should have to eat bugs if they don’t want to

and

people who want to eat bugs should be able to get bugs easily

aren’t mutually exclusive.

@throws_lemy All far-righters on suicide watch

This is the best summary I could come up with:

“This is very big news for us,” said Cianni, whose main motive for the business initiative was to provide an alternative, sustainable protein source.

Since 2020, millions of crickets have been raised at the company’s plant in Montecassiano, a town in the central Marche region, where they are heat-treated before being frozen and ground into powder.

The EU approved the sale of insects – namely crickets, locusts and darkling beetle larvae – for human consumption in early 2023, sparking a flurry of proposed regulations from the Italian government, including one aimed at ensuring insects are kept away from traditional dishes such as pasta and pizza.

“It’s fundamental that these flours are not confused with food made in Italy,” said the agriculture minister Francesco Lollobrigida at the time.

However, by the time the regulations became official at the end of last year, the government had relented, instead imposing strict labelling rules, such as clearly stating the product’s origin and the requirement to use Acheta domesticus, the Latin for house cricket, on packets so as to make it a little less startling to the consumer.

“It’s good for the environment because the resources required to breed crickets and the spaces used are really small, and so emissions are almost zero,” said Cianni.

The original article contains 470 words, the summary contains 210 words. Saved 55%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

It’s all fine as long as it doesn’t look like a cricket.

How many insect parts are allowed per kg of flour? 🤔

✌️🍝🦗 Will ask my Italian mum, if we maybe could have some cricket lasagne. Jammi-jammi.

Can’t wait to try this.

Would go soo well as a traditional Italian Hawaiian pizza.

(/s on the pizza thing, do kinda wanna try it though)

Yall are excited for this but I’ll stick to wheat flour, thanks.

Flour basically has insects in it too anyway (which is why supermarkets need to rotate flour every few months on the shelves, despite it being long life). I’ve tried cricket chips, mealworms and such before, and honestly, you don’t even notice… It’s really just crunch

Nice. The legs make great toothpicks.