Lifestyle

EU permits using insects in the food – Will be used in pizza and pasta dishes

Published January 26, 2023 | By NewsJive.com

Are you ready to eat bugs? Well, the citizens of the European Union can expect to be served pizzas and pasta dishes made of insects. From January 24 2023 this will be a reality in all EU countries.

The European Commission, European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has given permition for food producers of pasta, pizza, cereal bars, biscuits and whey powder, to use insects like house crickets in a powdered form as an ingridient.

EFSA markets the new type of introduced food culture in the EU on their website as “adventurous”, trying to convince and raise the European voters to start eating bugs.

“What’s your idea of a tasty snack? Fruit, biscuits, bread and jam perhaps? What would you say if you were offered something more adventurous – fried crickets or grasshoppers?”, writes EFSA who also argues that bugs and insects as food are “popular in some countries such as Thailand and Mexico”, where insects are “often eaten with chili and lime”, writes EFSA.

The EU is apparently not happy with the resistance of this kind of food culture among the Europeans adn try to change this. EFSA writes; “In Europe, reactions are mixed!” and adds that their “expert” Ermolaos Ververis, will try to convince the Europeans that “insects are safe” to eat, and try to “makes us rethink what we know as staple foods in Europe”.

Why the European Union has decided to legalize this type of food culture in the first place is somewhat unclear and remarkable, in relation to the European voters resistance to this type of food and that they in fact haven’t been able to vote about this issue in democratic elections.

EFSA also approved earlier this month the larvae of the Alphitobius diaperinus, known as the lesser mealworm, for human consumption.

In Belgium they already have pizzerias who serves pizzas with bugs.