Be Part of the Buzz - Crowbar

In a previous post I mentioned some exciting insect products that are appearing on the market both in the UK and further afield.  Crowbar Protein is an Icelandic startup that produces food products made with edible insects. The company has been developing its first product, Jungle Bar – The Insect Powered Protein Bar, for almost a year and it has now become available via Kickstarter, the crowd funding website.

The bars are date-based with chocolate so already a great start to the ingredient list. Needless to say, they taste great! For those of you who are still on the fence about eating insects or concerned about the yuck! factor, you'll be pleased to know that you can't actually taste the insects.  Cricket flour is added to the protein bar recipe for the fantastic nutritional value, but as for the taste, you mostly just taste the dates, chocolate and seeds.

The main ingredients of Jungle Bar are dates, sesame, sunflower & pumpkin seeds, chocolate and cricket flour. Cricket flour is made out of crickets that have been dried and ground down to fine flour, which then is mixed with the other ingredients to make the final product.  You may ask why the cricket flour needs to be added at all.  Well, crickets contain vital nutrition such as protein, iron, calcium and omega 3 and 6 (good fat).  They are lower in (bad) fat than a lot of other protein sources.  All of that goodness in a protein bar will give you energy as well as contributing to your diet with the essential goodness that we all need to support our body and our brain.

Crowbar Protein was founded in 2014 after one of its founders, Búi Aðalsteinsson, got global attention for his concept art project called The Fly Factory. The Fly Factory showed how easy, affordable and sustainable it is to farm insects and make food out of them.  The media attention this project suggested to Aðalsteinsson that there was a real interest and demand for insects as food.

As well as producing delicious food, Crowbar Protein‘s mission is to educate people in the West about the individual and social benefits of eating edible insects, some of which have been discussed in recent posts.

Crowbar Protein recently sampled their products in this video below. It appears they found some willing participants on the street and revealed the secret ingredient after sampling (I'm not sure they would have got away with that in the UK).

I think you'll agree the Jungle bar looks and sounds great!  Why not support this innovative company by donating to support the development of the Jungle bar and future products.

www.kickstarter.com/projects/crowbarprotein/jungle-bar-the-insect-powered-protein-bar

More information on Crowbar Protein can be found on the media links below:

Daily Mail
Dezeen
BBC