Food Writer Cuts Her Grocery Bill in Half by Feeding Her Baby Crickets

Baby food runs the gamut — banana, pumpkin, peas, pear, and…bugs? Such is the case for a food writer and new mom.

Tiffany Leigh is a freelance author whose work has appeared in HuffPost, Vogue, Playboy, Forbes, Travel + Leisure, Food and Wine Magazine, and Eater. She’s also mother to an 18-month-old, who she describes as “fearless when it comes to food.”

Via an article for Insider, Tiffany talks of her own indiscriminate palate:

I’m a food writer and will try anything at least once…

The world traveler has explored creepy-crawly curiosities:

I’ve tasted everything from fried tarantula legs to scorpion on a stick. I’ve also enjoyed crickets and ants when traveling to countries like Thailand and Vietnam, and I loved how they were incorporated into local dishes to enhance their textural appeal.

Feeding a baby isn’t cheap — Tiffany notes her food costs recently spiked to as high as $300 a week. That prompted an idea:

To supplement the rising prices, I decided to get Cricket Puff snacks, Cricket Protein Powder, and Whole Roasted Crickets from Entomo Farms.

By putting all those well-rubbed legs into rotation, she’s knocked down her weekly bill to as little as $150. And what weight of bug guts is needed to provide protein for a 20-pound rugrat? That’d be 11 grams as a daily average, or two mere teaspoons of cricket powder.

It’s easy peasy and cheesy:

We first tried cricket cheese puffs — which look like Cheetos — and she took to them immediately. My baby devoured them with delight and didn’t notice the slight textural difference.

The next experiment fared less fabulously:

Next, I tried giving my baby whole roasted crickets. … [Y]ou could see their little heads, thoraxes, and abdomens all clustered together. … [I] restrained my facial expressions, let her peer into the bag, and grab a cricket out for herself. Without hesitation, she took a bite — but promptly chucked the rest onto the floor.

But a second success was secured:

We had more success when the ground crickets were “hidden” in pancakes. You could see the black flecks in the batter, but my baby was unfazed by the appearance change. She took a big bite and clamored for more. … The only difference was that they had a slightly nutty finish.

It may sound nutty, but the idea of Westerners eating insects is nothing new. Just months ago, I covered a crunchy change to European ingredients:

The European Union is putting the “pow” in “powder.” It’s giving eaters an explosion of insect compliments of a pinch of arthropod. From now on, those overseas will be bound to eat ground cousins of grasshoppers.

Thanks to Implementing Regulation (EU) 2017/2470, Cricket powder will…be allowed in the following:

Multigrain Bread and Rolls

Crackers and Breadsticks

Cereal Bars

Dry Pre-Mixes for Baked Products

Biscuits

Dry Stuffed and Non-Stuffed Pasta-Based Products

Sauces

Processed Potato Products

Legume- and Vegetable- Based Dishes

Pizza

Pasta-Based Products

Whey Powder

Meat Analogues

Soups and Soup Concentrates or Powders

Maize Flour-Based Snacks

Beer-Like Beverages

Chocolate Confectionary

Nuts and Oilseeds

Snacks Other Than Chips

Meat Preparations

The prospect of picking antennae from your teeth has long loomed. In 2017, the New York Post profiled Tomorrow’s Harvest farm, where “you won’t find acres of land on which animals graze, or rows of corn, or bales of hay. Just stacks of boxes in a basement and the summery song of thousands of…crickets.”

The World Economic Forum approves. In 2021, it praised the chewing of chirpers.

Back to babies eating bugs, board-certified pediatric dietitian Venus Kalami is all for it. As quoted in Insider:

“Once (a) baby has their pincer grasp, crickets and other edible insects may be served whole as finger food.”

Sounds scrumptious.

When you were a baby, you likely lived on fruits and veggies; but a lot has changed since then. These are the days of “Impossible” burgers and synthetic beef. Therefore, as I wrote in January, “[I]n the future, don’t be surprised if your meal has mealworms.” For you and your little ones, “[S]oon, when you get some grub…it may be grub worms.”

-ALEX

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Find all my RedState work here.

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