EXO — An Energy Bar With A Little Something Different
There are about 40 crickets in each bar.
Unwrap an EXO protein bar and you’ll find something unusual lurking inside.
Crickets.
Yes, these bars have an unlikely ingredient — flour made from ground crickets.
Gabi Lewis and Greg Sewitz got the idea for these unusual bars when they were in their final year at Brown University after discovering the health and environmental benefits insects have. Indeed, according to them, insects are a source of protein in 80 percent of the world. Moreover, crickets are low in saturated fat and contain more iron than beef.
They figured the easiest way to entice people to eat insects would be to put them in a form they readily understood — a bar. So, they enlisted the help of Chef Kyle Connaughton, former head chef of R&D at The Fat Duck in England and former culinary director of Chipotle, to develop the bars.