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Insect burgers - 25th November 2022

Have you ever eaten an insect burger? Insects are full of protein and they're becoming a popular business idea.

Bounce Burger, in Thailand, is a cricket burger shop. It also sells sausages, cookies and other snacks, which are all made from crickets. Only the bodies of the crickets are used. The legs and wings are removed because these aren't easy to swallow.

Poopipat Thiapairat’s the manager at Bounce Burger.

Poopipat Thiapairat: "The problem with crickets is that they get stuck in your throat. The chitin parts of the crickets like legs and wings make them hard to swallow so we came to the idea that we should take off these parts and use only the body of the crickets. It’s the same concept as beef or pork where we don’t eat the bones."

Crickets are usually eaten whole with soy sauce but will people prefer crickets in burgers? Anut Sotthibandhu likes the burgers.

Anut Sotthibandhu: "The taste is good. The sauce blends over the smell of the crickets so I don’t feel like there are crickets in my burger."

Cricket burgers can help the environment. Cricket farms don't use a lot of land or water. But cow and pig farms produce lots of pollution and use lots of land and water.

There are thousands of cricket farms in Thailand. Thanaphum Muang-ieam manages The Bricket cricket farm, a research centre.

Thanaphum Muang-ieam: "In our R&D farm, so then we we produce 40 40 kilograms (of crickets) a weeks so that is 160 kilograms yeah a month - It’s a R&D scale. And then all of them, we send to our restaurant, Bounce burger, yeah, to be processed in many menus."

Many people dislike insects and wouldn't eat them. But some countries don't have enough food and insect farms could be the answer. Insect farms produce healthy protein and are environmentally friendly. Insects could be the food of the future.