DENVER — There’s a shipping container filled with edible bugs in a secret location in West Denver. Yes, that’s a real sentence you just read.
It’s the Rocky Mountain Micro Ranch; Colorado’s first and only edible insect farm.
“I wouldn’t have believed it six years ago if you would have told me that this would be happening,” CEO and Founder Wendy Lu McGill told 9NEWS.
She raises hundreds of thousands of crickets and mealworms (baby beetles) to sell to restaurants and vendors all over the country.
The idea to open the farm came after years of working overseas in a practice called rural development. She traveled the word studying ways to use available resources to be healthy and sustainable. Eating bugs was a good solution.
“Crickets have as much iron as spinach, by weight, as much calcium of milk, as much B12 as salmon, and then really high levels of zinc and magnesium,” McGill said.
Not to mention you don’t need a ton of space to maintain a healthy bug population.
She realizes people are still warming up to the idea.
“I have not convinced my children. They’re horrified.”
But convincing people to eat bugs isn’t necessarily part of her goal.
“I mostly just want people to think about what they eat, its impact on their bodies and planet, and then I can go home and sleep well.”
If you’d like to try her “Chirpy Jerky” or other bug-related products, CLICK HERE.
The restaurant “Linger” in the Highlands is also serving RMMR’s crickets sweet and sour style.
