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Insect burgers - 25th November 2022

Insects are snacks in many countries. They’re very healthy.

Now, people are making burgers with crickets. These are small insects. They usually live in long grass.

Bounce Burger’s a restaurant in Thailand. It sells cricket burgers. It makes cricket sausages and cookies too. The chef uses the crickets' bodies. But he doesn't use their legs. These are hard to swallow.

Poopipat Thiapairat works at Bounce Burger.

Poopipat Thiapairat: "The problem with crickets is that they get stuck in your throat. The chitin parts of the crickets like legs and wings make them hard to swallow so we came to the idea that we should take off these parts and use only the body of the crickets. It’s the same concept as beef or pork where we don’t eat the bones."

People often eat crickets with soy sauce. Will they like cricket burgers? Anut says the burgers taste good.

Anut Sotthibandhu: "The taste is good. The sauce blends over the smell of the crickets so I don’t feel like there are crickets in my burger."

Cricket burgers are good for the environment. Farms for cows and pigs need lots of land and water. And there's lots of pollution from these farms. But insect farms don't need much land or water.

Thanaphum Muang-ieam works for a cricket farm.

Thanaphum Muang-ieam: "In our R&D farm, so then we we produce 40 40 kilograms (of crickets) a weeks so that is 160 kilograms yeah a month - is a R&D scale. And then all of them, we send to our restaurant, Bounce burger, yeah, to process in many menus."

Some people don't want to eat insects. But insect farms may be important in the future. Countries need more food. And it needs to be healthy food. This food could come from insect farms.