Budget supermarket Aldi is contemplating trading edible insect recipe kits as the cost of living crisis hits families.
Bugs such as crickets are known to be an affordable and sustainable form of protein.
Now Aldi is considering whether to stock products by Yum Bug, which makes the insect recipe kits.
Yum Bug founders Aaron Thomas and Leo Taylor, both 28, are competing against other start-ups to get their products on the supermarket’s racks.
The pair were selected from hundreds of applicants to appear on Channel 4’s ‘Aldi’s Next Big Thing’.
Hosted by Anita Rani, of Countryfile and BBC Radio 4 and Chris Bevan, of Britain’s Best Home Cook and Eat Well for Less, the six-part TV series sees suppliers compete in categories such as dinners, baked goods, treats and store cupboard essentials.
Products are given to Julie Ashfield, Managing Director of Buying at Aldi UK, who deliberates on factors such as price, packaging, shopper demand, and the ability to scale up, before whittling contenders down to just two.
The finalists are then given four weeks to address any feedback, before presenting improved products to Julie who determines which product will appear as a Specialbuy in over 970 stores.
Mr Thomas, from Islington, London, said they were on a mission to alter perceptions of insects as food, and that they were one of the most sustainable protein sources in the world.
He said that crickets are up to 70 per cent protein, which is three times the amount of protein found in beef. They’ve also got more iron than spinach, more calcium than milk, and the inventory keeps going, and they’re an amazing superfood.
He said that they want to take bug consumption mainstream and that if they were able to get in front of Aldi’s audience, it would be an incredible opportunity.
Mr Taylor said that he and Aaron had been cooking with insects for years, it began in 2017 at weekends experimenting out of their parent’s garage, cooking up all kinds of recipes and posting content online. He said they then sold their first insect recipe boxes out of their bedrooms in lockdown, and that’s actually when everything snowballed.
Aldi says the competition was part of its commitment to locally sourced products. It’s pledged to prioritise homegrown suppliers as it works towards spending an extra £3.5 billion a year with British companies by the end of 2025.
Of course, Bill Gates will love this. It’s what they want us to all eat, and you will own nothing, be happy and be a slave to the bourgeoisie elites, and consuming bugs has nothing to do with the cost of living or saving the world with carbon reductions. Its goal is a form of ritual humiliation. The masses eat insects and the civilised elites dine on steak.
While it’s true that in some countries they do eat insects, in numerous countries they do not, but now they’re endeavouring to make it a reality because some people are so determined on messing around with the food chain.
But this is how social transformation is exploited. On TV, in magazines and in the news, but will they really persuade everybody that consuming bugs is the best thing to do because we’re in a crisis? Of course, they will, they will just target the masses. They’re already pushing it into schools because if they get them while they’re young, then they won’t know any different. Our children don’t belong to us anymore, they belong to our governments, and if we’re not careful, next the governments will be getting us to eat each other.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 