Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogel, Bam here, you can go ahead and stop
Speaker 1: the world and let me get off. Scuttle Butt from
Speaker 1: the super food sector has it that cockroach milk could
Speaker 1: become a new niche in the non dairy milk craze.
Speaker 1: Americans do love their dairy free alternative milks. Non dairy
Speaker 1: milk sales grew six over the past five years, skyrocketing
Speaker 1: to an estimated two billion in seventeen so I, almond
Speaker 1: and coconut are the current top favorites, but other plant
Speaker 1: based milks include pecan, cash you, macadamia, hazelnut, kinwa, flax out, rice,
Speaker 1: and hemp are also on the rise, and a new
Speaker 1: market research report predicts that global plant based milk sales
Speaker 1: will exceed thirty four billion dollars by four But I
Speaker 1: said cockroach milk. The chatter about cockroach milk first started
Speaker 1: in that's when a study published in the Journal of
Speaker 1: the International Union of Crystallography reported that the milk like
Speaker 1: substance found in the mid gut of the Pacific beetle
Speaker 1: cockroach is one of the most nutritious substances on Earth.
Speaker 1: The Diplottera punctata, which is the only cockroach known to
Speaker 1: give birth to live young instead of laying eggs like
Speaker 1: regular roaches, produces protein crystals that are what scientists call
Speaker 1: a complete food, containing proteins, fats, and sugars. Just one
Speaker 1: of these crystals has more than three times the amount
Speaker 1: of energy in an equivalent amount of buffalo milk, which
Speaker 1: in turn has more energy than plain old cow's milk.
Speaker 1: Bottom line, it's packed with calories and nutrients. Because milking
Speaker 1: cockroaches is not a viable option, an international team of
Speaker 1: researchers headed by scientists from the Institute of Stem Cell
Speaker 1: Biology and Regenerative Medicine in India have figured out a
Speaker 1: way to sequence the genes that produce the milk protein crystals.
Speaker 1: They hope to eventually employ yeast as an efficient way
Speaker 1: to produce these milk yielding protein crystals in large quantities.
Speaker 1: The study suggests that because it's such a dense, time
Speaker 1: released protein source, cockroach milk could help alleviate food and
Speaker 1: security around the world. The light philosopher and self help
Speaker 1: guru Dr Wayne Dyer once queried this food for thought,
Speaker 1: Can you see the beauty in a cockroach? Well? Can you.
Speaker 1: Today's episode was written by Carrie Tato and produced by
Speaker 1: Tyler Clang. For more on this and lots of other
Speaker 1: scuttle butt topics, visit our home planet, how Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com