High-protein grasshoppers are about to jump onto your plate

ISRAELI21c-They may not look like lunch to you, but to many people around the world, grasshoppers add a high-protein, low-fat crunch to their diet.

And in true Israeli startup tradition, the Israeli company Steak TzarTzar has innovated a way to lengthen the normally short breeding season of edible grasshoppers by leaps and bounds. As a result, this costly and scarce source of nutrition will be more widely available, all year long.

It's no joke: Chockfull of whole protein, vitamins and healthful fatty acids, with no cholesterol or saturated fat, grasshoppers could be one answer to the chronic malnutrition affecting approximately 805 million people, according to the United Nations.

This is a serious social business opportunity. Steak TzarTzar was a finalist in the 2015 Social Innovation and Global Ethics Forum competition in Geneva, and is one of 24 food startups nominated for the second annual Food+City Food Challenge Prize to be awarded in Texas in February 2016.

Nevertheless, cofounders Dror Tamir, Ben Friedman and Chanan Aviv know that eating grasshoppers sounds funny to Western ears, so they play up the humorous aspect of their business to make it more palatable. The name of the company combines the cute Hebrew word for "cricket" combined with "steak," a word that makes many a Western mouth water.

One way to get around the "yuck factor" will be using Steak TzarTzar grasshoppers as a basis for protein powders, a multibillion-dollar market. "There is a lot of interest from leading retailers such as Whole Foods," Tamir tells ISRAEL21c.

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