Cooking resistant edible crickets-specific peptides for authenticity testing of meat products

As consumer and manufacturer interests in edible insects and processed food with added insects are increasing, new possibilities for detecting edible insect proteins in processed foods have become increasingly important. In the present study, a proteomic strategy was applied to identify insect proteins and thermostable house cricket-specific (Acheta domesticus) peptide markers. To determine the limit of detection (LOD) for house cricket proteins, cooked meatballs containing house cricket protein powder (CP) as a partial pork substitute were investigated. The final concentration of CP ranged from 0.8% to 7.6%. The LODs for tropomyosin 1 and translational elongation factor-2 were 0.8% (w/w), whereas for apolipophorin-III it was 2.5% (w/w). Eight heat-resistant peptides unique to the family Grillidae (true crickets) and four peptides unique to the Acheta domesticus were identified. The results suggest that selected cricket-specific and processing-resistant peptide markers have potential utility in the authentication of the cricket formulations used in meat products. However, this has to be confirmed on different heavily processed meat products.