Camola Sustainable Foods
Two nerds with Italian heritage tried eating a grasshopper one day and fell in love with the idea that everyone should eat insects.
Silvia and Claudio have teamed up to bring you a line of products that are not only delicious and nutritious, but better for the environment and more easily sustainable.
Silvia and Claudio are Entomologists which basically means that they study insects. Silvia is the baker of the team. With their Italian roots they have created a “Bugscotti” that is delicious and like no other biscotti, has the added protein of the cricket powder.
What do crickets taste like you ask? Personally I don’t find a discernible taste difference in any of the Camola products. They will apparently taste like celery in the new soup line coming out soon! The cricket flour doesn’t emulsify like regular flour. This means the cricket flour needs to be mixed with regular flour to get the same results. Your baking will just have more protein.
I wanted to know how crickets were farmed. Camola will have their own cricket farm soon, but for now they have an outside source. The crickets are raised in controlled conditions until they are the right size and then they are humanely harvested by freezing. They are then baked in an oven and ground into flour.
How do crickets contribute to sustainability? From the website:
To produce 1Kg of cricket flour requires about 4 L of water. In comparison, 1Kg of beef can require up to 48000 L of water! The difference is astonishing! Insects also have a high conversion factor (amount of feed that becomes body mass): for example, 1Kg of crickets only 3-4 kg of feed are required, compared to the 10 kg necessary to farm 1 Kg of beef.
And nutritious! I already knew that they had a lot of vitamins and other goodness but wasn’t aware of how much until Sylvia let me know. Again from the website so that I have the facts straight:
In terms of nutrients, they are 66% of protein in weight, rich in iron, potassium, calcium and vitamin B12. One tablespoon of cricket flour (about 10g) provides 100% of the B12 you will need in a day. Crickets have a complete aminoacidic profile, including all the 9 essential amino acids, making them a very healthy protein!
As an additional bonus, crickets are low in cholesterol and other unhealthy fatty acids (which means you can eat more protein without the guilt!). Also, farming insects does not require hormones, steroids or antibiotics, making them a healthy choice for people with specific allergies or that want to avoid food contamination.
Camola is going to expand into many different kinds of products, they are not just a bakery anymore! My favourite product so far is the “Bug Bites” which are basically little date balls that have the cricket powder mixed into them.
The Crick Chips and the Bugscotti are also very tasty. No discernible “off” taste in any of the products that I have tried so far. Try them, you just might like them!
All of the products can be ordered from the website and delivered to your door. If you visit the farmer’s markets, you will find them Camola selling there as well.
The website has just been re-vamped with all kinds of new information. The social media accounts have all changed as well. Find them all here: