People are logging how many insects they eat on a huge food tracking app, and users are experimenting with a grasshopper taco recipe
- Food-tracking app Lifesum has added a function to let users log when they eat insects.
- Lifesum collaborated with North America's biggest insect farm, Entomo Farms, to build the function.
- Its in-house chef created a grasshopper taco recipe for the occasion.
Lifesum helps its 30 million users track their diets by recording their meals and giving them nutritional information. Now it's welcoming insectivores by letting users track how many bugs they're eating.
The app integrated the new function on October 22, and since then more than 900 of its users have tracked consumption of crickets, mealworms, and various other creepy crawlies.
Lifesum partnered up with Entomo farms, a company based in Ontario and North America's largest insect farm for consumption.
Henrik Torstensson, CEO of Lifesum, told Business Insider that his company first approached Entomo about the collaboration after getting interested in entomophagy, as the consumption of insects is sometimes known.
Read more: London's first insect farm owners are trying get people to eat worms and crickets to save the world
To encourage users to get creative, Lifesum had its in-house chef create a grasshopper taco recipe. Torstensson has sampled the tacos himself.
"It was really, really good," he said. "The crunchiness was a little bit surprising compared to a normal beef taco."
Lifesum will probably integrate more insect recipes in the future, Torstensson added.
According to Lifesum's user data, its grasshopper taco recipe has been tracked 533 times so far, with 85% of loggings coming from millennial women.
Lifesum has previously integrated lifestyle trends into its app, including "plogging," a practice which originated in Sweden (where Lifesum was founded) which involves jogging and picking up litter.
With 30 million members in total, Lifesum's 900 bug-eaters overall is relatively small fry. However, the function has only been live for a few weeks, and Torstensson thinks more people in Western culture are trying bugs.
He says that insects are a cost-effective source of protein, that there's evidence they are good for our gut bacteria, and that they're more eco-friendly to farm than traditional livestock.
"This is still at the early adopter phase... but it kind of ties into being good food at a good price and also has the environmental aspect," he said.