Using Edible Insects in Production of Cookies, Biscuits, and Crackers

Food security is becoming a big problem because of the increase in the ever-growing of the world population which brings about starvation and malnutrition. On the other side, the conventional protein sources and available farmlands are limited. However, edible insects are a sustainable protein source because of requiring less land, water, feed, and also pesticide usage which results in environmental pollution. Therefore, using edible insects could be a promising protein alternative for the baking industry, in particular, cookies, biscuits, and crackers following bread.

In this regard, the commonly used edible insects are cricket, termite, grasshopper, locust, silkworm pupae, and mealworm which are generally used in concentrations between 5-25% based on flour for those bakery goods. According to studies, termites are one of the most used ones by researchers. It has also been revealed that they are more preferred than crickets. In addition, the protein, fat, ash, dietary fiber, amino acid, and also some mineral and vitamin content of those bakery products increased, as expected, whereas carbohydrate content decreased when using edible insects. On the other hand, the thickness values increased and spread ratio values decreased in cookies, while a converse effect has been observed in biscuits. Moreover, drying parameters and drying methods of edible insects could affect not only nutritional quality especially protein digestibility, fatty acid composition, and solubility of minerals, but also volatile composition and odour characteristics, and thus sensory properties, together with different insect species. Therefore, those related conditions should be optimized to be more appealing for consumers. Because, there are still limitations for consumer acceptability, although edible insects have high nutritional value and higher digestibility than plant-based proteins. However, using edible insects is still a promising and valuable resource to enrich bakery products by increasing the nutritional value and health-promoting effects and meet protein shortage.