Fucibo 2024: La Nonna Says Yes!

Davide Rossi, founder of Fucibo, chats about his Italian-made, insect-based snack products – a sustainable, healthy, and delicious approach to the food of the future!

Tell us more about Fucibo and its offerings… 

Fucibo offers the very first made-in-Italy food products that contain edible insect flour.

We use only the best raw ingredients and the best Italian practices in food production, as well as EU-authorized insect flour. 

Our products to date include pasta, crackers, and chips. 

So all your products contain ground insects amongst other ingredients?

Yes, that's correct. We believe that the best way to draw people to edible-insect products is not to show the entire insect or recognizable part of it – that's why we only use insect flour.

On the other hand, there are lots of people out there who like whole-seasoned insects as well, but that's a market we're not focused on at the moment.

If we were to do a blind tasting, would we be able to taste the difference between Fucibo foods and their counterparts?

It's really hard to feel the difference, especially with the seasoned products such as our chips. If your Italian nonna was to taste our pasta, she would probably think that she's eating traditional wholemeal pasta! 

We’ve worked hard with our partners to develop recipes that could make our edible-insect products capable of reaching the quality, taste, and texture of the corresponding traditional ones.

How does the consumption of insects work in a circular economy?

It's a very long and complex topic that can be summarized simply:

• Humans grow vegetables (or farm animals) and their consumption produces leftovers

• The leftovers become insect feed

• Insects become food (for humans) or feed (for farm animals)

• Insect manure becomes soil fertilizer

Then the circle starts again. Easy, isn't it?

Is there such a thing as organic insects?

Yes, sure. The tag “organic” is for edible insects raised with organic or biological feed, and with no use of chemicals or medicines.

What about insect welfare?

Animal welfare is crucial for an insect farmer, especially when it comes to industrial production. Temperature, light, and humidity are strictly controlled to provide the best nature-like environment possible, and special care is dedicated to hygiene and substrates.

Growing edible insects for human consumption is something that requires knowledge, competence, skill, and (last but not least) love for the creatures you're breeding. That's also what we look for in our insect flour suppliers.

Is this the answer for a more sustainable future?

Edible insects are a really viable and sustainable way to produce protein. They have fantastic nutritional value but they can't be the only answer for the future of our food production or consumption.

We need a number of partial solutions to reach a bigger goal: we need to reduce food and water waste, reduce our global meat intake, farm animals and respect them as sentient beings, reduce industrial fishing so the sea can regenerate its population, and so on.

We, as Fucibo, are trying to do our best to be part of the solution with our vision of alternative Italian gastronomy.