Excuse Me, There's a Bug on My Plate!

I’m standing with Malena Sigurgeirsdóttir in front of an enormous pan in a catering kitchen in Copenhagen as she flips sizzling “meatballs” the size of ping pong balls. In Denmark they are called kødboller.

But these meatballs are not made of minced chicken or lamb; instead they contain up to 40 per cent ground buffalo mealworm larvae mixed with pea meal.

Before the tasting session, I made the mistake of doing some research and learnt that buffalo beetles live off feed scraps and chicken droppings on farms. But I can’t think about that now; I’m determined to try Sigurgeirsdóttir’s meatballs with an open mind. She and her business partner, Jessica Buhl-Nielsen, both in their early 30s, have big plans: to sell sustainable insect-based food products to the world. Not just because they will help fight climate change, but because they taste good.

Sigurgeirsdóttir places a steaming meatball on my plate. It gives a little when I press my fork into it, just like a conventional meatball. I put a morsel in my mouth. There are notes of umami and the slightest hint of iron. If I didn’t know better, I wouldn’t suspect that I am chewing ground-up bugs.

“To me, it tastes like mushroom, with a slightly nutty flavour,” says Buhl-Nielsen. “Our meat has a protein ­content that’s as high as or higher than ground beef. It also contains omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin B12 and iron, which gives it a familiar meaty taste.”

The two women founded their company, Hey Planet, in 2017 with a simple mission. “Climate change, species extinction, world hunger—our food shouldn’t contribute to these crises any longer,” Buhl-Nielsen explains. One third of the earth’s arable land is used to grow livestock feed. In the European Union, the number is even higher: 60 per cent. At the same time, millions of people are starving in the Horn of Africa, which is experiencing its worst drought in 40 years. “We already have a solution—­plant-based food—but people also want ­animal protein,” says Sigurgeirsdóttir. “Consumers and producers are still not considering insects as a solution.”

The pair met in 2016. Buhl-Nielsen, a student at the Copenhagen Business School, wanted to pursue a career that would “improve the world a little.” Sigurgeirsdóttir, who was doing her master’s in agricultural development at the University of Copenhagen, believed that Western consumers needed to eat more insect-based foods. Over a meal of risotto with roasted crickets, the pair decided to go into business together.

Since then, Sigurgeirsdóttir has been responsible for product development, “and Jessica for curbing my impatience and developing our business realistically and strategically,” says Sigurgeirsdóttir with a laugh.

Insect protein can replace meat in meals such as tacos. Photo: Hey Planet

Hey Planet’s biggest stumbling block is that most potential customers find insects disgusting. But many parts of the world have a long tradition of eating bugs. Up to the middle of the 20th century, some people in France and Germany made soups with fried May bugs, and in many tropical countries, insects are regarded as a rich source of protein.

The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle loved crispy crickets. John the Baptist ate wild honey and locusts. In all, approximately 2,100 different insect species are fit for human consumption. According to a University of California study, humans have a gene that is responsible for making an enzyme to digest chitin, which is found in insect carapaces. This is no coincidence. Research shows that the ancestors of all mammals began their evolutionary journey as insectivores.

However, science is no match for human emotion. That’s why Hey Planet packaging has almost no images of insects. The labels do state ‘Sustainable meat made from beetle protein’, though they don’t say which beetle, let alone what the buffalo beetle does.

Buffalo beetles are also known as litter beetles or lesser mealworms, but Hey Planet prefers to call their larvae buffalo worms, a name that evokes images of hearty steaks and rich mozzarella. The company grows them at a vertical beetle farm in the Netherlands. The larvae are fed malt grains and kept at 26 Celsius and 60 per cent humidity. They are killed instantly with steam, then dried and ground up. One kilogram of powder contains 16,000 larvae.

“The buffalo worms look like pine nuts,” says Buhl-Nielsen.

“Maybe not as thick in the middle,” Sigurgeirsdóttir adds.

Ultimately, they want to take the focus off the source of the company’s products. “We hope that the origin of insect protein will eventually be for­gotten, that it will be viewed only as a food-enriching ingredient,” Buhl-Nielsen says.

It would be no different than many other foods, including gummy bears; few people know that gelatin, one of their main ingredients, is derived from animal bones. In addition to insect-based meats, Hey Planet offers energy bars (flavours: peanut butter, cocoa-orange and apple cinnamon) made from a different insect: long-horned grasshopper mealworms. Each bar contains 600 of them. Is it fair that hundreds of insects perish for a single snack? “A lot more insects die due to pesticides in the soybean and corn fields of the feed industry,” says Buhl-Nielsen.

I tried the bars—they taste just like conventional energy bars. “The insect protein is dried and tastes kind of neutral,” Sigurgeirsdóttir says. So why do the insect meatballs have such a meaty flavour? “Heating them in the pan activates complex chemical iron compounds that provide the typical umami taste,” she explains.

Sigurgeirsdóttir became a vegetarian at the age of 10. Growing up in Iceland, she was often served sheep heads. “When you’re around butchering as a child, it’s a lot different from taking a fillet out of the freezer,” she says. She also became concerned about climate change at a young age.

Sigurgeirsdóttir (left) and Buhl-Nielsen with some of Hey Planet’s products. Photo: Hey Planet

Sigurgeirsdóttir worked as a teacher in Tanzania after graduating from high school. There, she helped her host family collect grasshoppers, which were added to corn porridge. She felt that she “had found a key to sustainable food for the future.” Back from Tanzania, she earned a bachelor’s degree in environmental economics and a master’s in agricultural development at the University of Copenhagen, and a master’s in food science at Cornell University in Ithica, New York.

After Buhl-Nielsen and Sigurgeirsdóttir founded Hey Planet, they received 1,06,000 euros [Rs 94.4 lakh] from Denmark’s state innovation fund and conducted trials at the Danish Technological Institute. The initial development phase, which involved experimenting with pressure, temperature and ingredient ratios, took three years.

“We wanted to get the same texture as meat,” says Sigurgeirsdóttir. “Plant-based burgers are often crispy on the surface, but mushy on the inside, so they are unsatisfactory.” For an authentic meat experience, consistency is almost more important than flavour: “The mouth needs to work. It wants something to chew on; it needs the right amount of resistance,” she says.

Hey Planet energy bars and crispbreads are sold in stores in Denmark and Germany, and on the company’s website. So far, its patties, mince and meatballs are distributed only to the catering industry in Copenhagen.

Several corporate cafeterias offer Hey Planet meatballs. “We are trying to attract major fast-food chains,” says Buhl-Nielsen. “It would give us a seal of approval for the mainstream.”

Before the company starts selling insect meat directly to consumers in supermarkets, it needs to “break down the wall in people’s heads,” she explains. “We are going full throttle for one year, creating publicity in collaboration with well-known chefs and restaurants.”

Buhl-Nielsen believes that in five years, their products will be considered “normal food,” and pork or beef will be eaten no more than once a week. “This is the only way,” says Sigurgeirsdóttir. “The wastefulness is unsustainable.”

The production of one kilogram of beef releases the same amount of greenhouse gas as driving 400 kilometres in the average car. According to the United Nations, producing one kilogram of weight gain in cattle takes an average of eight kilograms of feed. In contrast, producing one kilogram of insect mass needs just two kilograms of feed.

As I cycle through Copenhagen after my visit to Hey Planet, I pass a stand selling rød pølses, Denmark’s popular pork sausages. Suddenly the idea of marketing food made from insects doesn’t seem like a pipe dream. After all, most Danish people don’t think twice about what gives rød pølses their distinctive red colour: a dye extracted from cochineals, a South American parasitic insect.

First published in For Our Planet (2022), Copyright ©️ 2022 by For Our Planet.