Are you Entovegan?

Maybe a few of you have heard the term “Entovegan” floating around. Perhaps this is your first encounter with the word.

HUH? Yes, entovegan! What in the world is that, you ask? The entovegan is a person who eats for the planet. They choose a plant-based diet and avoid animal products based on the belief that these products contribute to the degradation of our food systems and have detrimental impacts on our environment. While they are vegetarian or vegan, they are open to eating Acheta (cricket protein), because:

1. It isn’t resource-intensive.
2. It is a regenerative form of agriculture.
3. It has the power to rebuild topsoil.
4. It hosts many of the nutritional benefits that a vegan or vegetarian may be missing from not eating animal-based foods.

“Ento-” is a prefix related to insects, so an ento-vegan or ento-vegetarian is someone who eats like a vegetarian or vegan but also utilizes the value of insect protein.

When Orchestra Provisions is out in the community buzzing about our protein, a common question from vegetarians and vegans is: Are our protein powders vegan or vegetarian? The short answer is—absolutely not. Our protein powder contains Acheta—better known as cricket protein. Of course, crickets are living creatures. HOWEVER, Acheta is entovegan.

This is where it gets interesting because my next question for the presenting vegan or vegetarian is this: What are your motivations for being veg? (We’ll abbreviate by using the word “veg” to include both vegetarians and vegans.) The answers usually fall into two categories.

One category is the amazingly kind human who quivers at the thought of causing any harm to another being, species irrelevant. These folks are against animal products from an ethical standpoint of “no killing.” For this group of vegs, our protein is most likely a no-go.

On the other hand, the next category benefits greatly from our protein powder. These people are environmentally motivated. They choose to eat for the planet, meaning that they want to eat in a way that is gentle on the earth and its systems, allowing it to provide nourishment and quality of life for future generations in the same way it has for our grandparents. These conscious eaters care about topsoil health, aquifer regeneration, circular agricultural economies, clean air, and nutritious foods with small carbon footprints.

If this is you, then maybe you fancy yourself an entoveg. Many vegs can struggle with meeting daily intakes of certain nutrients that are plentiful in animal foods, such as heme iron (which is highly absorbed in the body compared to its non-heme plant-based counterpart), B vitamins, and protein. Guess what Acheta has? All of that stuff and more!

What makes Acheta protein more environmentally friendly? Everything about it, really. Here’s a quick list:

1. Crickets reproduce quickly and efficiently in great numbers. This is their survival mechanism as prey at the bottom of the food chain. This is incredibly important when you think about it as a food source. Unlike eating higher on the food chain, you can rest easy knowing that there are plenty more to be born—and very quickly. When we raise them in an agricultural setting, we can ensure we don’t tamper with their natural balance in our ecosystem.
2. As one would imagine, Acheta requires very little feed and water compared to competing protein sources. Think cow vs. cricket: not only is the cow a much larger creature, but it also requires a lot of water to generate the amount of feed it needs. Think fields of soy and that water demand vs. cricket. Fun fact: Crickets have to drink from a sponge; if you give them a reservoir of water, they will drown. Now that’s a visual of how little water we’re talking about.
3. Very little processing is required. This is a selling point for a small carbon footprint. How are they harvested? They are frozen into hibernation and dehydrated. Then they are milled and turned into protein powder—a whole food, ready to go to market!
4. Unlike the excrement of dairy or meat cows, cricket excrement, called “frass,” is a highly nutritive and natural fertilizer that helps rebuild topsoil.
5. These farms can be indoors, in urban or rural centers, with a very small footprint. When you think about humans cutting down the rainforest to grow soy and corn for larger animal agriculture, this is pretty appealing. In order for our trees to make oxygen, our ecosystems to recapture and sequester carbon, and filter the water that ends up in our aquifers, we need biodiversity—and a lot of it—supported by vast wildlands. Cricket (Acheta) agriculture allows space for wildlands to remain just that—wild, diverse, and regenerative!

SO, if you fancy yourself a vegetarian or vegan on the premise of saving the planet, you may be interested in going entovegan. Better for the planet and better for you!