It took the two companies’ chefs about three months to perfect the recipe for the two dishes, with the aroma of the crushed cricket powder similar to that of soybeans.
Gryllus was set up in 2019 by Takahito Watanabe, a professor of developmental biology at Tokushima University, in southern Japan, with the express objective of raising crickets on an industrial scale and transforming them into a food source.
On its website, the company says its philosophy is to create a “new harmony” that helps solve the problem of protein going to waste, develops a global food cycle and provides healthy food.
Crickets have traditionally been served as nibbles in rural Japan – a vending machine that sells packets of the insects as snacks made headlines when it was introduced in Nagano Prefecture, in central Japan, this summer – and Gryllus sees them as potentially an important and useful resource.
Raising crickets is environment-friendly, the company says; they require very little land, water or feedstock, while the food conversion rate – the ratio of weight gained to feed consumed – is far superior to that of pigs, beef cattle or chickens.
Watanabe and his researchers are looking into the exact nutritional values of crickets and the best ways in which they can be incorporated into food, with research to date determining that the insects are high in calcium, magnesium, zinc, iron, vitamins and dietary fibre.
As well as being turned into food, crickets can be processed into cosmetics and pharmaceutical products, as well as fertilisers.
Large spiders, weevils, cicadas and even cockroaches are being looked at by other companies as food sources, and Zipair is open-minded about adding more insects to its menu.
“We will continue to review our customer satisfaction levels with our in-flight meals and, if positive reviews follow, there is a high probability that Zipair will expand our sustainable meal selection menu,” Matsumoto said.
Article Appeared @https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/3188489/flight-meals-made-partly-insects-japanese-airlines?module=more_top_stories_int&pgtype=homepage