The local mainstream media has also joined the foreign bandwagon in pushing the insect agenda as the future of our food and it has been preparing the nations for a few years now.
Back in 2017 Times of Malta published an article marketing a Finland baker who had launched bread from crushed crickets.[1]The Times talks of Fazer a Finnish bakery and food service company as a first to have insect-based bread available in stores. The media portal praises such bread so to programme you that it contains more protein than regular wheat bread because it is made with flour grounded from dried crickets.
Two years later and the same Times publishes another article related to insects – this time giving culinary hints and even takes the ordeal to “put together a guide on how insects can be eaten” after the authors took the ordeal to travel and visit rural villages so to learn how to cook insects. Jaħasra how nice of the Times! In its article “Fried steamed or toasted: here are the best ways to cook insects”[2] the Times first programs you as to why we should be eating insects because since Africans do then even you and me should! Then it appeals to your environmental conscience since insects “support a ‘greener’ lifestyle.” And then it appeals to your nutritional conscience by telling you that they are nutritious contain more protein than meat sources contain essential fatty acids and important minerals and vitamins. It forgot to add that it gives you chitin and parasites and that insects are nutritional source for birds which have a different gastric composition than us! Yet it concludes that “we need to rethink our diets and food habits.”
LovinMalta joins the club marketing the opening of a new restaurant in Valletta which is offering new gourmet dishes adding insects to the menu so to make them more “protein-filled”. The article in question is “Ants Scorpions and Roasted Meal Worms on Valletta’s New out-of-the-box gourmet menu[3]”.
And then it comes up with its usual non-sense polls:
Poll: “Would you consider eating insects as a more sustainable source of food?”
And then we have the Malta Daily informing us that the European Commission has bowed its head to the Elite and has now approved the eating of grasshoppers [4]after the mealworm beetle larva. This media portal adds that this move was made “to encourage better diets and more sustainable farming and food production.” The Malta Daily parrots the same programming that insects are high sources of protein that they require less work than bigger animals like cows chicken and pigs and that it “could address massive food shortages and spiking prices as human populations explode.” It adds that this “could form part of an overall shift towards eating insects as a mainstream cuisine” and that although “it could take some getting used to” in Western cultures “maybe it won’t be as bizarre in a couple of years.”
The Malta Daily also hinted that the third insect to end up on the list is expected to be the cricket.
And so the latest and recent news came from TVM news which reported that as from this month flour made from crickets can be sold for bread crackers sweets biscuits pasta and pizzas among others as announced by official journal of the European Union.[5]The company Cricket One Co. Ltd which is behind this product was given its blessing by the European Commission so that this ingredient can be sold for the next five years starting from the 24thof January. The permission to place such flour on the European markets was given from the EFSA (European Food Safety Authority) which has been running tests on this product since 8thJuly 2020.
Will we start having bread and other products made from such flour without our knowledge with no clue that now it is an ingredient in the bread and other products that we will buy?
The future of our food is doomed.
[1]https://timesofmalta.com/articles/view/bread.664029
[2]https://timesofmalta.com/articles/view/fried-steamed-or-toasted-here-are-the-best-ways-to-cook-insects.701802
[3]https://lovinmalta.com/news/ants-scorpions-and-roasted-meal-worms-on-vallettas-new-out-of-the-box-gourmet-menu/
[4]https://maltadaily.mt/eating-grasshoppers-is-now-approved-by-the-european-commission/
[5]https://tvmnews.mt/news/jibda-jinbiegh-id-dqiq-mill-gurati/