Come to France to enjoy chocolate insects

After astonishment, curiosity, embarrassment, even a frightening feeling, customers began to hesitate before the elaborate processed insects, rice or crickets of Nancy's chocolate factory (the region eastern France). This chocolate production facility has introduced the taste of extremely familiar pests in Asia into their products to provide a new, unique product.

"Don't stare at these special decorative elements, or you can't eat them," said Sylvain Musquar, chocolate maker, who also came up with the idea of ​​producing colored square chocolates. Black with winged cricket wings. Mr. Musquar has had a long time working in two Asian countries, South Korea and Japan.

Mr. Musquar used tweezers to put insects on top of chocolate tablets

"In these countries, I used to eat cooked insects. At that time I had the desire to combine the chocolate I made with insects," said Musquar in the laboratory, where he spent weeks. to find the ideal sugar ratio and best match to combine chocolate with crunchy crickets. Finally, he selected a recipe for chocolate insects with ingredients such as almonds, hazelnuts, peanuts and sugar. Later, Mr. Musquar used a small tweezers to put insects on top to increase the appeal of this particular type of chocolate.

Crunchy insects, flavored with hazelnuts and chocolate flavors have attracted many customers. They bought a whole box of chocolates to give to friends and relatives, Mr. Musquar said. Recently, familiar customers after discovering this new product told Musquar boss that chocolate chocolate is a great success."I don't think too much about this new ingredient of chocolate, but I really want to enjoy it with my family. That's probably not a bad idea," said one woman, holding a box of chocolates. There are also some patrons of the store saying that they do not dare to eat chocolate insects because they are afraid of sanitation issues. However, this worry was relieved when Musquar confirmed that the insects were boiled and then dried at a specialized facility in southwestern France, the MicroNutris company of the engineer. French young Cédric Auriol (32 years old).

Nutritional properties

"We started producing all kinds of insect chocolates since 2011, when the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) recommended insects to help fight hunger in the world," Auriol explained. .

Chocolate insects attract many customers

In May 2013, FAO also launched a program to encourage large-scale insect farming. Insects are rich in nutrients and rich in protein, contributing to raising the constantly growing world population while natural resources are running out.

It is worth noting that these crickets and worms must be reared under a special regime. Worms feed for 8 weeks while crickets are kept for 12 weeks in a strictly compliant way of nutritional quality, rich in vitamins and minerals as well as saturated fatty acids.

Currently, MicroNutris provides "input" to many pioneer food store owners, from a star-studded restaurant in Nice (southeastern France) to many fast-food chain stores. People who order via the Internet. "We supply 1 ton of insects to the market every month , " said Auriol. It is the nutritional and environmental characteristics of insects that attract Nancy's chocolate production facilities. According to Auriol, compared to raising cows, raising insects releases about 10 times less greenhouse gases.

Last Christmas, MicroNutris provided the Mazamet and Guy Roux chocolate production facilities with a variety of insects for them to bake lovely chocolate boxes.

"Insects are the food of the future, I want to bring insects to my customers," added Musquar. He succeeded in making customers forget the dirty image of insects. "However, not all customers like this new type of chocolate, even if people refuse to touch it on the grounds that it looks terrible."

Either way, insect chocolate is a unique product and its price is very "expensive" . 22 euros (600,000 VND) for a box of only 9 tablets and 1 kg of insects costing no less than 1,800 euros.