When bakers put notices on the outside of the shop door, they usually advertise their daily specials: Today three donuts for the price of four, freshly arrived Easter flatbread, XXL Oktoberfest pretzels – things like that. However, the fact that they point out what is not available here is rather unusual. However, the Hofpfisterei obviously feels the need to tell its customers unmistakably as soon as they enter the sales room on Bahnhofstrasse in Oberhaching: “No insects or products made from insects are used, you can rely on that.” The word “none” is underlined.
Most customers should be relieved about this. On the other hand, only a few are disappointed who think with great appetite of pretzels with the legs of the migratory locust sticking out, or who enthusiastically hear the cracking of the chitinous armor of beetles when they bite heartily into a bun and long for the sight of the yellow mealworm while they cut the peasant bread. All imaginable according to a new EU directive that recently came into force.
However, the EU did not intend that in the future a jungle test should be linked to the roll fetch. Therefore are Acheta domesticusthe house cricket, and Alphitobius diaperinus, the larvae of the lustrous black mold beetle, only permitted in powder form for incorporation into food. So if you don’t read the small print on food – secret mixing is forbidden – you sometimes don’t even notice that you’ve just eaten Maya the Bee and her friends. The cricket should come across as a little nutty. And if you feed them rosemary before eating, according to insect experts, they actually taste like rosemary.
In this country, however, it is certainly still the case that most people are overcome with nausea at the thought of the large crawling on the plate, if not even sweating is triggered and fainting spells are to be expected. But this is a well-established phenomenon: What one disgusts is culturally different. Sardinians love sheep’s milk cheese with maggots, fried spiders are a Cambodian specialty, and fried snake is a delicacy in Vietnam.
If you find all of this a little too disgusting, let me tell you: Dye made from dried and boiled lice has been used here for a long time: as carmine red in lipstick, for coating chocolate beans or as a binding agent. It’s just called E 120 and E 904. However, if it says house cricket, it says house cricket on it. Like a bee sting.