Joel B. Mason, MD, isn’t ready to pop a whole cricket in his mouth just yet. But he’s okay with eating granola, pasta, or energy bars made with powdered crickets.

“[Y]ou can fold it into a number of recipes and use it similarly to the way you use flour,” he said. Besides facilitating cooking and baking, “it gets past this yuck factor that most North Americans have about popping an insect into their mouth.”

Mason’s interest in edible insects doesn’t stem from living in exotic lands or indulging in culinary innovation. He’s a cancer researcher with an affinity for the environment. Preventing colon cancer through nutrition is his primary pursuit, and that’s part of where crickets come in.