Lifesum integrated insect eating into its app with grasshopper tacos

Lifesum
is encouraging users to eat more bugs.
REUTERS/Jerry Lampen

• 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.

Lifesum’s grasshopper
tacos.
Lifesum

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.