The secret ingredient is bugs. Eatery offers cricket shakes

Saturday, August 1, 2015, 11:56 AM - It's not, shall we say, a traditional flavour.

Nevertheless, U.S. restaurant chain Wayback Burgers is serving up what it calls an 'Oreo Mud Pie Cricket Protein Milkshake.' And the 'cricket' is not a reference to the sport.

In fact, the tasty insect are added to the mix using a kind of Peruvian chocolate cricket protein powder, rather than whole chunks of bug.

"You wouldn't even know there's cricket in it," Gillian Maffeo, the company's marketing director, told CNN. "It's not like there's pieces floating around in it."

If this sounds like a belated April Fool's joke, that may be because that's exactly how it started out. However, Wayback says the response was surprisingly robust, so now they're trying it out at almost 100 locations on a limited basis from July 1 to September 30 (though with a warning that consumers who are allergic to crustacean shellfish may have an allergic reaction to the cricket powder).

It sounds horrid, but food scientists would probably love it enough to order seconds. Insects are famously high in protein, and the shake itself contains a hefty 24 grams of the stuff.

And as the world's population expands, you'll probably be seeing a lot more bugs in your broth. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization says global food production would need to jump 60 per cent to meet the needs of Earth's estimated population of 9 billion by 2050. 

In fact, they're quite keen on people noshing on insects. The FAO says around 1,600 species are already consumed worldwide in around 100 countries, and insect farms are slowly establishing themselves in Thailand and other countries.

SOURCE: Wayback Burgers | CNN | UNFAO | Thumbnail image source