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LINCOLN — Most food companies hope to keep bugs out of their products.

A Nebraska business is trying to figure out just how many insects it can put in.

Crickets, ground to a powder, are a key ingredient in new pasta and rice products being developed by Bugeater Foods, a startup working from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus.

The goal is to get as much buggy nutrition into the pasta as possible while still making a product that looks and tastes good and cooks properly.

The better it tastes, the better the chance of getting consumers to overcome their aversion to eating insects, which are high in protein, healthy fats, fiber, vitamins and minerals, but also, for many people, high in the ick factor.

Along with expanding the supply chain of crickets raised for human and livestock consumption, overcoming people’s aversion to eating bugs is the biggest hurdle for the nascent insect protein industry.

Using insects in staple foods like rice and noodles is a new direction for Bugeater, which launched in January 2015. Taking its name from the pre-Cornhuskers, 1890s-era Nebraska football team, the company started out with a focus on a protein shake product called Jump.