Personal testament: I have eaten protein bars made from cricket meal; I like the bars but do not picture myself transitioning to cricket dinner dishes. I am not yet sure that pure cricket powder is a product for me.

But I have been surprised by the success of Gricket bars in the Authentica shops–we clearly underestimated how culinarily adventurous the travelers visiting Costa Rica might be. Meanwhile, much further north, I am happy to see this family’s work and the success of the film they entered into this contest run by one of our most important sources of environmental news and opinion during the last decade:

The Three Cricketeers: Betting on Bug Food to Help the Planet

A family in Minnesota wants to put crickets on your dinner plate. In the First Runner-Up in the 2022 Yale Environment 360 Film Contest, they explain how the insects are a high-protein food that can help reduce the massive emissions produced by livestock and large-scale farming.

For Claire Simons and her husband, Chad, it all started when their son brought home a snickerdoodle made of cricket flour one Earth Day. The cookie was delicious, and the next day the Simons — long concerned about the American diet and the destructive impact of industrial farming — began building a cricket habitat in their basement. A year later, in 2016, they launched their cricket farm, and by 2018 they were cranking out cricket goodies at an urban farm in a Minneapolis warehouse.

In “The Three Cricketeers,” the First Runner-Up in the 2022 Yale Environment 360 Film Contest, filmmaker Sue Williams tells the story of the Simons’ efforts to raise countless crickets and turn them into chocolate-covered crickets, cricket snacks, and cricket powder used in baking, all under the 3Cricketeers brand…

Watch the video and read the introduction here.