So I was complaining to some friends via email about the salty, sugary, fatty grocery products here—WARNING! CANADA HAS NO TRADER JOE’S!!!—but granted, we don’t have a car so our shopping is hyperlocal, and we’re in a touristy area. That skews the food-quality deck somewhat.
Both friends helpfully sent me links to farmers markets and specialty stores that have items that are a little more California-foodscape-like.
Sadly for me, most of their suggested markets were too far away (Farm Boy, the closest corollary to Trader Joe’s in Canada, only exists in Ontario—the closest one is over two hours away).
One vegan-products market in Montréal seemed bikeable or Metro-able though, so I looked at their online marketplace to get a sense of the price point. I assumed the prices would be boutique-y and exclusionary, so I was pleasantly surprised to see they were somewhat reasonable.
But one price tag caught my eye: a kilo of fusilli pasta for $33 Canadian. I was outraged. Srsly, Montreal vegan food store???? That’s about $25 U.S.! Two pounds of fusilli at Trader Joe’s is only four bucks!
Then I took a breath and thought: there has to be something magic about this pasta….it’s mega-organic-ultra-sustainable-blessed-by-vegan-nuns super-special in some way, because that. price.
So I looked up fusilli de farine de grillons to find out what the expensive, magic element was.
Translation: “fusilli of cricket flour.”
Well that’s not helpful, I thought; that can’t be the literal meaning. “Cricket flour” must be foodie jargon for, I dunno, flour that’s milled so finely it creaks when it’s stirred in a bowl, or something like that.
Naw, dawg. It’s real crickets.
I couldn’t find any articles in English for you, but long story short, people are putting crickets in food to bump up protein and nutrients in an environmentally-friendly way. You can get tons of cricket products: cricket bagels, cricket brownies, roasted garlic with crickets, grilled mealworms and crickets with maple syrup to sprinkle on your cereal (MAPLE REPORT WILL NOT BE HAPPENING, SORRY)…the list goes on and on.
I also learned that there are huge cricket farms in Québec and neighboring Ontario—yep, here’s where we grow ’em—with many other countries also cranking out cricket treats.
Though currently demand for cricket flour is low, producers tout their product as a possible solution for addressing world hunger and the high carbon footprint of traditional ranching. Whether finely-ground crickets as a superfood will catch on outside the health food community remains to be seen. The price point is gonna have to get a lot lower before I’m tempted to try them, anyway.
TBH, I don’t have a problem with insects as food—I’ve eaten plenty of bugs in my lifetime, intentionally even—but I had no idea that cricket flour had grown commercially to this extent in Canada (to be fair, before today I didn’t have any idea about cricket flour at all).
However, I do have an ethical poser from today’s revelations: are crickets vegan? I was surprised to see these products at a vegan food store. I would think that vegans voluntarily eating bugs just isn’t, ahem, cricket.
5 replies on “Jiminy!”
Crickets are an animal. Eating crickets, desiccated or otherwise, is not eating vegan or vegetarian. I have also seen crickets listed prominently as a dog food ingredient at Petco… and they use Jiminy’s image (or pert near) on the bag. Only disturbing to me because I spent 6 months last year working on the movie Pinocchio, hearing Jiminy’s voice… don’t eat my friend! You know, we have chickpea pasta… it’s a little chewier than wheat pasta, but you get that protein we’re all hankering for. And it’s certainly more affordable… $25! Egad!
To be fair, the store doesn’t claim everything they offer is vegan—just that it’s “eco-foodie” and have a lot of vegan offerings. Still….
That is literally the opposite of vegan. They have ground up hundreds of animals for food. It’s like advertising a steak as vegan because the cow was raised in some innovative way.
(I am not even vegetarian, but I am a stickler for accuracy).
Also, most vegans definitely consider insects as “animals.” There is debate in the vegan community over whether sustainably farmed honey can be considered vegan, because it is an animal product.
…or wine, or yeasted breads, or sugar that’s refined by running it through bone charcoal. Again, to be fair: the market doesn’t claim that everything they offer is vegan, just that it’s “eco-foodie,” so I assume because of the touted environmental benefits of crickets vs. beef it fills the bill.