Overview
This nutrition-focused study measured 14 elements in three commercial cricket powders and in house crickets, yellow mealworms, desert locusts and superworms bought in the Czech Republic. Cadmium and lead were low in every sample, with maxima of 0.014 and 0.019 mg/100 g dry weight. The filed PDF is the authors’ accepted manuscript, not the typeset journal version.
Key numbers
- Cadmium (mg/100 g dry weight): cricket powder 0.002 to 0.01, house cricket 0.004 to 0.006, mealworm 0.008 to 0.014, desert locust 0.003 to 0.008, superworm 0.002 to 0.003 (Table 1).
- Lead (mg/100 g dry weight): cricket powder 0.006 to 0.019, house cricket 0.01 to 0.014, mealworm 0.004 to 0.01, locust 0.01 to 0.015, superworm 0.002 to 0.004 (Table 1).
- Nickel up to 0.151 mg/100 g in superworm (Table 1).
Methods (brief)
Whole insects were starved for two days, freeze-killed and oven-dried; powders were analyzed as received. Samples were microwave-digested and analyzed by high-resolution graphite-furnace AAS for cadmium, lead, nickel, chromium, cobalt, iron and phosphorus, with four reference materials (recoveries 90 to 106%).
Evidence Fitness
Direct retail data with good quality control, but small groups (two or three samples per type), ranges only (per-sample values are in an unfiled supplement), no purchase dates, and dry-weight units of mg/100 g. Some insects came from pet shops. Because the PDF is the accepted manuscript, check the typeset version before quoting exact page numbers.