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Cockroach Milk . . . The Next Superfood?

Can you imagine seeing a body builder or a basketball player going into a health food store and ordering a glass of cockroach milk? New research says that this super-food may become the next health craze.

Scientists have found that the Pacific Beetle Cockroach feeds its babies with a formula which is remarkably rich in protein, fat and sugar.

Cockroach milk is not a true milk. If you were to open an embryonic beetle roach, you’d find their guts will spill out nutrient-rich milk crystals that shimmer like glitter.

“The protein crystals are milk for the cockroach infant. It is important for its growth and development,” said Leonard Chavas, one of the scientists behind the research. He says that the crystals have four times the energy mass of cow’s milk.

Chavas and his colleagues wanted to learn more about these crystals, so they extracted one. After testing and genome sequencing, they found that it was a complete food.

“It is what one would need: protein, essential amino acids, lipids and sugars,” Chavas said. He went on to explain that the energy content is so high that it helps infants within this species to grow much larger than roaches of other species.

Milking a roach is not easy. The crystals have to be extracted from the midgut of cockroach embryos and that would not be an efficient way to feed the world population. That is why Chavas and his team hope to reverse bioengineer cockroach milk.

Have a child that you want to grow into an eight foot tall basketball player? It may take a while for them to develop this. But once they do, you may be saying hello to an NBA team!