The motto of a start-up Winnipeg company could become, "You want bugs with that?"

Ecotone Foods is planning to offer a new trail mix that will include bugs among your nuts and fruits. Specifically, whole crickets, meal worms and super worms will be featured in the Roasted Insect Snack Mix.

And they are good for you.

"The meal worms and super worms aren't actually worms, they're darkling beetle larvae," Nick Hiebert, Ecotone Foods co-founder, said Sunday. "An Ontario farm harvests them."

They are rinsed in warm water and roasted at 270 degrees to kill any bacteria, making them edible.

The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization recently announced that beetles, wasps and caterpillars are unexplored nutrition sources that could help address global food shortages. By 2030, more than 9 million people will need to be fed, along with the billions of animals raised annually for food and as pets, the report said. Meanwhile, land and water pollution from intensive livestock production and over-grazing are leading to forest degradation, contributing to climate change, it said. Farming insects for food could alleviate much of that.

"The UN says eating insects is a viable alternative," Hiebert said. "And if the UN is right, it could help save the planet."

Some edible-insect based companies in the United States have been milling the insects into flour to make chips, cookies and energy bars, Hiebert said. But Hiebert plans to make the insects in his trail mix visible.

"We want people to be able to see insects as food so they can acclimatize themselves to the idea of eating insects," he said. "That's our No. 1 motivation."

And he wants no part of this becoming "a novelty" like chocolate-covered ants.

"It's not a joke, it's a viable alternative," Hiebert said. "The human digestive system is actually designed to eat bugs."

There is no harm in eating them.

"Quite the contrary," Eva Muller, a UN food director, said in the report. "They have a lot of protein and are considered a delicacy in many countries."

Hiebert hopes to open his business and start selling his revolutionary trail mix by next May.

jim.bender@sunmedia.ca

Twitter: @bendersun