Students Win Seed Money to Make Flour from Insects KOSU News
go to original September 29, 2013

A team of McGill University MBA students has won the $1 million Hult Prize for a project that aims to improve the availability of nutritious food to slum dwellers around the world by providing them with insect-infused flour. (Science English/CBCNews)

Mohammed Ashour has a big order to fill: By March 2014, he has to deliver ten tons of grasshoppers to customers in Mexico.

He and four other MBA students at McGill University have a plan to farm insects in poor countries and turn them into flour that can be used in everything from bread to corn tortillas. And last week, former U.S. president Bill Clinton handed them $1 million to make it happen.

The team, which includes Ashour, Shobhita Soor, Jesse Pearlstein, Zev Thompson and Gabe Mott, received the Hult Prize for social entrepreneurs at the Clinton Global Initiative’s annual meeting. The seed funding will go to their project, Aspire Food Group, which aims to make insect-based food products available year-round to people living in some of the world’s poorest slums.

The project is launching at a time when a lot of people are looking for ways to get more people eating super nutritious insects, which some are calling “mini-livestock.” From the Bay Area to Holland, insects are inspiring restauranteurs, entrepreneurs (check out the grow-your-own-locust kits) and researchers. As The Salt reported, in May the United Nations agricultural arm released a report supporting iron and protein-rich insects for dinner because of their nutritional, environmental and economic appeal.

Read the rest at KOSU.org

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