“For these food products, a good taste was immediately there, but to get across the psychological hurdle of eating insects, we had to take away some of the factors that scare people,” Wang said.

According to Taieb, starting with snack foods allowed the start-up to fulfill another goal as well: to prevent their insect-based foodstuffs from serving only niche consumer groups interested in environmentally sustainable products.

“From the get-go, they did not want to limit themselves and wanted a large segment of the population to approach their product,” Taieb said.

Taieb said that Six Foods’ cookies and chips will be in Boston-area supermarkets in about three months. Wang and D’Asaro added that their primary focus now is launching a Kickstarter crowdsourcing effort at the end of April, but they are already looking to develop urban insect farms across the country and testing foods made with actual insect meat.

“They are extraordinary individuals with an energy that makes them very good at getting support from many people,” Taieb said. “There is a lot of goodwill out there for their innovative goal.”

–Staff writer Karl M. Aspelund can be reached at karl.aspelund@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @kma_crimson.