## 3 Results and Discussion
### Influence of Cricket Flour Concentration  
Figure 1 shows the droplet size distributions, where the volume percentage versus droplet diameter is plotted as a function of the emulsifier concentration.  
We observed that as the concentration of cricket flour increases, the droplet size distributions shift towards smaller sizes. At a concentration equal to or higher than 1 wt.%, the main peak is around 1-2 microns. Furthermore, it is noteworthy that at a concentration equal to or higher than 2 wt.%, the peak around one hundred microns disappears. These results highlight the need for a minimal amount of cricket flour, which acts as an emulsifier and a stabilizer at the oil-water interface, to obtain small droplet sizes. Finally, it should be noted that within the range of concentrations studied and with the processing used, all the distributions are multimodal.  
It should be noted that droplet size is a key factor influencing emulsion properties such as physical stability and rheological properties. Droplet size mainly depends on formulation and processing conditions. The smaller the droplet size, the less likely the emulsions are to be destabilized by creaming or coalescence [3]. Figure 2A shows the values of the volumetric mean diameter of the emulsions studied as a function of cricket flour concentration. A decrease in mean droplet size is clearly observed as the amount of emulsifier increases, as mentioned above. However, an optimum (minimum value) of this parameter is also shown for the 2 wt.% concentration. This could be explained by the fact that a depletion flocculation effect may be taking place at this concentration [20]. In the case of the span parameter, the lowest value is observed for the lowest emulsifier concentration. However, it should be noted that this is because the peak of the largest droplet volume is located at a large size, so that the lower polydispersity in this case is not an advantage. For the samples with the highest emulsifier concentration, the lowest value is again obtained for the 2 wt.% concentration, so this is the concentration that will be used in the following stages of this study.  
Figure 1: Droplet size distribution of all studied emulsions as a function of cricket flour concentration used.  
Figure 3 shows the plot of backscattering versus sample height after 24 h of aging for the emulsion containing 2 wt.% cricket flour as the emulsifier. Firstly, even in the first 24 h after preparation, there is a clear decrease in backscattering in the lower part of the emulsion measurement cell. As already mentioned, this fact is directly related to a mechanism of destabilization by creaming [21]. This mechanism is favored by large droplet sizes and the low viscosity of the samples. Taking into account the results already shown in which large droplet sizes were observed, the large degree of destabilization by creaming could be attributed to this last factor, which even led to the phase separation shown in Figure 3 that was observable with the naked eye approximately 5-6 h after the separation. All the emulsions studied showed phase separation by a creaming mechanism in less than 24 h.