News

Cricket drying

One of the possible ways to extend shelf life of crickets is to dry them. Charles Odira from the company Mixa, Flying Food partner in Kenya, has developed a solar dryer for this purpose. Drying using solar energy doesn’t require electricity and is sustainable. Ruben Molenaar, from the HAS university, has investigated drying using the…
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Communication about crickets

The house cricket, Acheta Domestica, is not a common part of the diet around the Victoria lake in Kenya and Uganda. Nsenene (grasshoppers), white ants, termites and lake flies are regarded as delicacies, but crickets are not. However, crickets are delicious, nutritious, and on top of that easy to rear (as opposed to the insects…
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Conservation methods and product development

Two students of the HAS have been working on the Flying Food project as graduation subject. They have, under supervision of Marleen Vrij and Antien Zuidberg. They looked into conservation techniques and developed a number of recipes featuring crickets based on interviews and questionnairs in Kenya.
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Conference ‘Insects to feed the world’

The Flying Food Project was heavily represented at the conference ‘Insects to Feed the World’ in Wageningen. Delegations from Kenyan, Ugandan and Dutch partners were present, TNO had a stand highlighting the project, and the project organised a break-out session on the rearing of crickets. Over 450 experts and entrepreneurs from numerous sectors and 45…
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Flying Food in a dutch article on entomophagy

Eating insects is attracting more and more attention world wide – also in the Netherlands, where eating insects is still very uncommon. In the food magazine ‘ Gezond Eten’, the Flying Food project was mentioned in an article about entomophagy. PDF article: GeNL1403_042045_KokenMetInsecten_ok Website: www.gezondetenmagazine.nl
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Optimisation egg laying places

For cricket farms it is important to have a high production of crickets. A part of the production is crickets laying eggs. The cricket farms use different types of substrates for crickets to lay eggs in, depending on which country the crickets are reared in. In Thailand farmers use rice husks combined with sand as…
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The first student project

The first student project of the Flying Food project is finished – it was on the digestibility of crickets in relation to processing. Michelle van Oort, student of the Maastricht University, wrote about her work in the Dutch Magazine VoedingsIndustrie Read the article: 201309_voedingsindustrie (PDF)
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Start of the project

In May 2013 the Flying Food project started with the ambitious goals of setting up hundreds of cricket farms in the Nyanza and Masaka regions in Kenya and Uganda. The farmers will provide thousends of low income consumers with highly nutritious crickets.
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