Have you ever thought of eating bugs to bulk up?

While the answer is probably no, one B.C. company is putting out a new protein bar that implements crickets as the main nutrient source.

Coast Protein, Western Canada’s first cricket protein company, launched their crowdfunding campaign through Kickstarter on Monday.

From February 27th to March 31st, the company has set out to raise $20,000 to improve production and packaging, and to start offering cricket protein powders.

The Vancouver start-up currently sells about 1,000 cricket protein bars a week to various retailers across the Lower Mainland of British Columbia.

"Our hope for this campaign is not only to increase our production capacity and expand our product line, but to educate our community about the health benefits of this sustainable protein source," said Chris Baird of Coast Protein. "We've found that crickets contain more calcium than milk, and more iron than spinach, making them the ideal candidate for protein powder in shakes and smoothies.

“We've seen other healthy food trends like juicing, Kombucha, and farm-to-table takeoff in Canada and we believe that cricket protein is next."

The company also argues that their product is much more environmentally friendly than others, saying that compared to cows, crickets require 2,000 times less water, produce 100 times less methane gas, and require a fraction of the land for the same pound of protein.

"We hope that the sustainability factor of cricket protein will be a big driver of adoption," continued Baird. "Canadians are becoming more conscious of the impact that their food has on the environment, and crickets require a fraction of the resources compared to other protein sources."

If Coast reaches their goal, they have pledged to partner up with a tree planting company in British Columbia to personally plant 10,000 trees in June.