University of Guelph students cooked up some unique ideas this year in the Ideas Congress course. The class, a partnership with the Feeding 9 Billion program, gave students the opportunity to test unique ideas to manage food issues. For some, that meant baking with bugs and ingesting some insects.
Class groups each picked an issue to tackle this semester, through a scalable solution that could bring about social change. Both the “Bug Bitez” and “Insect Effect” teams spent the semester determining how to make a difference to food security issues through alternative protein promotion and products. They hope that if consumers know delicious insect products are an option, they’ll choose them over more resource intensive animal proteins, such as beef.
Discover: Proteins of the future
Insect Effect developed a campaign to educate the university and the community on the benefits of an insect-based diet (called entomophagy) and reduce the stigma surrounding insect consumption. They plan to work with professors to make entomophagy a point of discussion in more classes on campus.
Bug Bitez plans to create a pasta sauce that looks and tastes exactly like Spaghetti Bolognese, but instead of ground beef they’ll be using cricket protein.
“We are hopeful that this familiar, convenient comfort food can help to change Canadians’ minds about edible insects,” says Kelsey Flannigan, a member of Bug Bitez.