Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should Know from House Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh W.
Speaker 1: Chuck Clark. There's Charles Malcolm Bryant, and there's Jerry the
Speaker 1: whiz Roll. And it sounds like an Aaron Cooper poster
Speaker 1: gone bad. Yeah already. Yeah, we'll have like the swirling
Speaker 1: face like the weird people in Jacob's Ladder. It's funny.
Speaker 1: We had a office visitor a couple of weeks ago
Speaker 1: and I don't think you were here, and the in fact,
Speaker 1: I know you weren't here because you would have been
Speaker 1: in here, but there was. There's our great step Brothers,
Speaker 1: you know the movie Step Brothers. For those of you
Speaker 1: out here out there, there's a promo of John c
Speaker 1: Riley and Will Ferrell with as like with an Olan
Speaker 1: Mills type U you know post photograph and Aaron Cooper
Speaker 1: are our buddy from Kansas who does our great photoshop stuff.
Speaker 1: Uh made us into I was John c Rally and
Speaker 1: your Will Ferrell and the guy came in and I
Speaker 1: was looking around and I was like, oh man, these
Speaker 1: are great, and you know, look at that, you know
Speaker 1: that looks like I don't know, it looks like it
Speaker 1: could be like something like the movie step Brother or something. Said, Oh,
Speaker 1: that's exactly what it is. I tried to make him
Speaker 1: not feel bad. That was nice of you. That was
Speaker 1: very gracious of you as a host. Yeah, Like he
Speaker 1: didn't quite zone in on all of them were us.
Speaker 1: He should have like clapped loudly beside his ear. Uh man,
Speaker 1: I had a little scary thing today. What happened? If
Speaker 1: I may, this is kind of part p s A.
Speaker 1: This has nothing to do with cricket farming. But um,
Speaker 1: we're getting our our basement water proofed because for thirteen
Speaker 1: years it's been leaking water like really bad, so much
Speaker 1: so that we have mold now oh yeah, black mold. Yes,
Speaker 1: And we're also getting mold remediation and done at the
Speaker 1: same time. So needless to say, that's a fun, fun
Speaker 1: way to spend a lot of money. Um, but I
Speaker 1: come home today and my carbon monoxide alarm is going
Speaker 1: off because these yahoo's are using a gas powered concrete
Speaker 1: saw in our basement. No, and it's like full on saying,
Speaker 1: you know, get out of the house, and my animals
Speaker 1: are in there, so like, and I just happened to
Speaker 1: go home after I went to a coffee shop to
Speaker 1: study because I needed to grab something. But like, I
Speaker 1: literally could have come home to dead animals man and
Speaker 1: dead workman. Yeah those guys too. Wow, I'll bet they're
Speaker 1: not the sharpest text in the box. Anyway. It was weird, man,
Speaker 1: And they were down there. I mean, not only did
Speaker 1: they not have on so much as a dust mask
Speaker 1: for the for the gas, but like concrete dust is
Speaker 1: really dangerous too. They're like, I don't care. I've got
Speaker 1: Obama care. It was so weird, man, and just it
Speaker 1: freaked me out to the point where Emily she wanted
Speaker 1: to like fire the guy. Uh he wasn't even there,
Speaker 1: like the you know, the foreman or the company. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and she wanted to be like, man, if he doesn't
Speaker 1: understand that this is dangerous, And he said, you know,
Speaker 1: open up your windows, it'll be clear in fifteen minutes.
Speaker 1: And it took two hours for that alarm to stop
Speaker 1: going on. Oh my gosh, Wow, that is really scary.
Speaker 1: It was really bad, man. I was out on my
Speaker 1: deck basically for the rest of the morning until I
Speaker 1: came in with my dogs and my cat in a crate. Man,
Speaker 1: that's like how some people commit suicide. I know, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: and these guys are just doing it grattis for you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was, uh yeah, anyway, so I'm slightly shaken. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll bet. I'm glad you made it. Man. You look good.
Speaker 1: You look okay, thank you. You look healthy. Your pallor
Speaker 1: isn't gaunt. I think you're You're okay. I just gotta
Speaker 1: calm down here. That the sound of the crickets on
Speaker 1: our miniature cricket farm here for soothing me. At least
Speaker 1: I know they'd put me to sleep. I'm glad we
Speaker 1: set that up. That was pretty good. That was one
Speaker 1: of our better segways. Sadly enough. Thanks. Um. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: are talking crickets, aren't we. Yeah, we covered into mafaji A.
Speaker 1: Meant to look up when, but it was. It seems
Speaker 1: like a long time ago, right, And that's eating bugs
Speaker 1: and insects. But this is focusing specifically on crickets because
Speaker 1: by all accounts, they seem like sort of the our
Speaker 1: best bet at trying to get something like this going
Speaker 1: in America for real. Yeah, they're I mean, they're pretty
Speaker 1: easy to raise. Uh, they don't require much space. You
Speaker 1: can set up your own cricket farm at home. Um.
Speaker 1: And really we should say the point of all this,
Speaker 1: the whole reason anybody would want people to start raising
Speaker 1: crickets at home is because the um, well, the the
Speaker 1: earth is about to collapse and our food supply is
Speaker 1: in in real danger. Right. So I've got some stats
Speaker 1: for you, chuck. So, meat consumption per capita has um
Speaker 1: increased into the developed world. Actually it's doubled in the
Speaker 1: last thirty years, and that's thanks in no small part
Speaker 1: to the rise of the brick countries Brazil, Russia, India,
Speaker 1: and China, who have huge, massive populations. As they entered
Speaker 1: capitalist um the capitalist global economy um, have generally become enriched,
Speaker 1: and the more money they have, the more meat civilization
Speaker 1: tends to consume, at least these days. Right. So that
Speaker 1: doesn't seem bad in and of itself until you look
Speaker 1: into what kind of resources it takes to actually raise meat.
Speaker 1: So you're ready for this one, I don't know. I'm
Speaker 1: afraid to produce one pound of meat that's a half
Speaker 1: a kilo basically of meat beef. Sorry, yeah, um, it
Speaker 1: requires about four hundred gallons of water. I've heard stuff
Speaker 1: like that before, which is like absolutely nuts, even when
Speaker 1: you consider that Not only are you watering the cow,
Speaker 1: you're also watering, you know that the crops that you
Speaker 1: feed to the cow, So there's double water consumption. But
Speaker 1: one of the problem, one of the reasons cattle beef
Speaker 1: requires so much um water is because you only consume
Speaker 1: of the cow. So the water is going to sustain
Speaker 1: parts of the cow you're not even eating, right, So
Speaker 1: there's a lot of wasted water, even if your water
Speaker 1: delivery system is efficient, right, that's just water. Fifty one
Speaker 1: of the greenhouse gases that are admitted on planet Earth
Speaker 1: come from animal agriculture and um. One third of the
Speaker 1: world's adequate or high quality crop land has been lost
Speaker 1: to erosion or pollution in the last forty years. And
Speaker 1: then that's a huge problem, whether we are all vegetarians
Speaker 1: or not, because we're talking crop land, but we use
Speaker 1: way more crop land to feed our livestock than we
Speaker 1: do to feed ourselves. Right, Something like fifty six million
Speaker 1: acres of land are used to grow crops in the
Speaker 1: United States to feed animals. Four million are used to
Speaker 1: grow crops for human consumption. So there's a lot, a
Speaker 1: lot of resources that are used up just from meat
Speaker 1: based diets, right, A lot of people say, well, just
Speaker 1: go to plant based diets, and other people say you
Speaker 1: can't get enough protein from plant based diets, which apparently
Speaker 1: is not true from from what I'm seeing. Um, other
Speaker 1: people are saying, fine, you want some protein, I got
Speaker 1: something for you, and it's crickets. Yeah, I'm kind of
Speaker 1: a I'm not surprised, but it goes to show you
Speaker 1: the population boom. If meat consumption is increased that much
Speaker 1: in the face of probably more vegetarianism and v aganism
Speaker 1: then ever before too. You know, well, that's kind of heartening,
Speaker 1: like if if there does seem to be if I
Speaker 1: guess if if societies follow, Yeah, like we should. I mean,
Speaker 1: we've been dancing around doing episodes on vegetarianism and veganism
Speaker 1: for a while, so we should probably tackle that at
Speaker 1: some point. I'm kind of curious about the history because
Speaker 1: it seems like in the like probably since the onset
Speaker 1: of America until uh and then I'm just I'm talking
Speaker 1: off the top of my head here, but until probably
Speaker 1: the nineties, it seems like everybody was just like meat, meat, meat, meat, meat. Well,
Speaker 1: there's a I mean, it's definitely associated with wealth, right,
Speaker 1: if you can afford to eat a nice steak kind
Speaker 1: of indicates you have a certain amount of status in
Speaker 1: your society, right, well, like the fifties, it seems like
Speaker 1: they would eat steak for lunch, right And I can't
Speaker 1: imagine like a steak for lunch. That seems so indulgent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it is, you know, yeah, like, yeah, just
Speaker 1: give me, give me the twenty ounce ribby for lunch.
Speaker 1: It's just I don't know, I can't imagine that. But
Speaker 1: in three martinis. I don't argue with that part. That
Speaker 1: is pretty indulgent. Three martinis in a twenty ounce by
Speaker 1: four lunch. I mean that was don Draper, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I never saw that show. I know, I never saw it.
Speaker 1: It's it's available. Where is it out there? Really? I
Speaker 1: thought they erased it all. Yeah they did. They said
Speaker 1: that's it, it's done. Didn't he go become a lumberjack
Speaker 1: in at the end? No he did? Okay, oh that's
Speaker 1: texting uh oh man. And then we talked about the
Speaker 1: ending of that show. Greg, I actually never saw the
Speaker 1: end of that one. You just told me about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you stild it to yourself just to watch
Speaker 1: the finale. Um. So this dude Kevin, Uh, how would
Speaker 1: you pronounce that b B A C H, which is fine,
Speaker 1: that's clearly Bach and h U b R. You just
Speaker 1: don't often see two h's side by side. So anyway,
Speaker 1: Kevin Bakuba Uh is a dude that is kind of championing,
Speaker 1: not kind of very much championing this movement. In two
Speaker 1: thousand seven, he went to Thailand and tasted crickets deep
Speaker 1: fried crickets and Uh, he's from California, and he was like, Hey,
Speaker 1: this is really good. He's been far out. They've been
Speaker 1: doing this UM in Thailand since the late nineties. The
Speaker 1: king established a big growing program for crickets and cricket
Speaker 1: farms UM education in schools, like you know, this is
Speaker 1: a good way to get protein in your diet. And
Speaker 1: he said, I think this is the direction of America
Speaker 1: should go. And I'm going to get in on the
Speaker 1: the money side of it. Yeah, like the farming of it.
Speaker 1: Apparently it's a twenty million dollar industry already. Not bad. No,
Speaker 1: it isn't UM. And we should say that Bach cuber
Speaker 1: Was is one of several um people who are into this, uh.
Speaker 1: The idea of cricket farming, commercial cricket farming UM, and
Speaker 1: he's definitely one of the o G s for sure.
Speaker 1: His business was the first to get approval to sell
Speaker 1: crickets as food in the United States. We got FDA
Speaker 1: approval because the cricket industry actually is kind of old.
Speaker 1: Well it's not too old, but I saw anywhere between
Speaker 1: fifty and seventy years old in the US UM. And
Speaker 1: they're raised to say feed fish for commercial fish farming,
Speaker 1: or to grind up as a protein supplement for um
Speaker 1: livestock feed. So people have been raising crickets for a while,
Speaker 1: or to feed to like reptiles, um to sell them
Speaker 1: to pet stores. So there there was an established infrastructure
Speaker 1: of cricket farming UM. But the making the transition from
Speaker 1: selling it to feed to cows or fish or snakes
Speaker 1: to selling it to people to eat directly, that's that
Speaker 1: was a big step, and bok Huber was the first
Speaker 1: one to take it in the US UM. I should
Speaker 1: just say the reason I point out he's just one
Speaker 1: of many is because this How Stuff Works article is
Speaker 1: basically like here's my report on Kevin bok Huber's ted
Speaker 1: ted talk. You know, yeah, I think just he he
Speaker 1: definitely deserves you know, credit because he's leading the charge,
Speaker 1: but so are other people as well. Yeah, he's wo
Speaker 1: went throughout this thing though. Yeah. Um. And you know,
Speaker 1: if you listen to the Intamafaji episode episode no, it's
Speaker 1: it's episode. UM. We pointed out then and it bears
Speaker 1: repeating that America is new to this, but I think
Speaker 1: it was. Canada and the United States and in Western
Speaker 1: Europe are literally the only places on Earth that don't
Speaker 1: consume insects as a regular part of their diet these days.
Speaker 1: So I saw so this article kind of says the
Speaker 1: standard of the world regularly consumes insects as part of
Speaker 1: their diet. I saw that there's a a Food and
Speaker 1: Agriculture organization, the u N Organization reports said something it
Speaker 1: was more like about a third of the populations rather
Speaker 1: than eight percent, maybe like thirty which is still significant.
Speaker 1: It is um and in in the West specifically, the
Speaker 1: idea of eating bugs is not It's not commonplace, right,
Speaker 1: And I actually saw a pretty good explanation for why. Um,
Speaker 1: Like thirteen of the fourteen large livestock animals that are
Speaker 1: domesticated are found in Eurasia and made their way over
Speaker 1: to the America's and those things those animals provide not
Speaker 1: just meat, but also things like milk, um, clothing, everything. Basically,
Speaker 1: So since since these what you would call Western countries
Speaker 1: had access to these domesticated animal most they never needed
Speaker 1: bugs as a food source. And then secondly, since they
Speaker 1: were raising domesticated animals, by definition, they had um a
Speaker 1: sedentary um agricultural lifestyle, which meant that their exposure to
Speaker 1: bugs was bugs as pests. So not only were bugs
Speaker 1: not edible, they were something you that were just undesirable
Speaker 1: on their face. So that led to the it closed
Speaker 1: the door on bugs being eaten by Westerners, and so
Speaker 1: that that came to be filled by a sense of disgust,
Speaker 1: which is a basic human emotion, but it's the only
Speaker 1: one that's culturally bound, which means you learn what is
Speaker 1: disgusting from your from your cultural group, for sure, but
Speaker 1: that also means you can unlearn it too. Well, this
Speaker 1: big cricket has anything to do with it. Uh, why
Speaker 1: don't we take a quick break and gonna come back
Speaker 1: and talked about a UN report that kind of changed
Speaker 1: a lot of things about four years ago? Change, all right,
Speaker 1: So I promised you a UN report. Uh, there was
Speaker 1: a big kind of sea change. I don't know about
Speaker 1: sea change. It was the beginning beginning of the sea change. Uh.
Speaker 1: They issued a report called Edible Insects Colon Future Prospects
Speaker 1: for Food and Feed Security, and it was basically just
Speaker 1: championing um intoma fagy and all the benefits that surround it,
Speaker 1: like how nutrient dense crickets and other insects are, the
Speaker 1: fact that it's um socially sustainable, UM economically viable and friendly,
Speaker 1: environmentally friendly, and it kind of, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: paints it as like, hey, this this is the future,
Speaker 1: or it could be part of the future at least
Speaker 1: of getting protein into you know, Americans, right. And the
Speaker 1: report itself didn't focus exclusively on crickets, but crickets feature
Speaker 1: prominently in the report to the it was about. It
Speaker 1: was about bugs in general and eating bugs in general UM,
Speaker 1: and it was it made a pretty big splash. I
Speaker 1: remember when it came out like that. It really hit
Speaker 1: the news cycle pretty hard. But it also caught the
Speaker 1: attention of that box cuber guy who said, all right,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I think I'm gonna get into this because
Speaker 1: he had already been exposed to eating crickets in Thailand.
Speaker 1: And then that when that UN report came out, he
Speaker 1: I think um began his start up here in the
Speaker 1: States of his commercial cricket farm start up. Yeah. It's
Speaker 1: funny they have put in this article that it was
Speaker 1: the most popular document in the history of the u N.
Speaker 1: I didn't I didn't see that anywhere. I think that
Speaker 1: was he said that at his ted report. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: but um yeah, they definitely made a splash. I'll give
Speaker 1: him that for sure. Yeah, he spoke at a ted
Speaker 1: X Youngstown, Ohio, because that's where he's base, that's where
Speaker 1: his company is, and I guess he he just made
Speaker 1: up his own ted X probably. All right, So let's
Speaker 1: talk about crickets. Um. Well, all insects in particular are
Speaker 1: very rich in protein. Like we've talked about. They have
Speaker 1: a lot of healthy fats, a lot of zinc, a
Speaker 1: lot of iron, a lot of calcium. Uh. And there's
Speaker 1: something called I guess efficient animals. Um, well, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean this is when vegetarians and vegans are like, these
Speaker 1: kind of terms make their skin crawl. I'm sure. But
Speaker 1: the kind of efficiency you get out of raising, in killing,
Speaker 1: and eating an animal is on a spectrum. And you
Speaker 1: know from cows, like you talked about, it's probably the worst.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't guess, don't you think? Right? Right? The animal
Speaker 1: itself is efficient at converting food that you feed it
Speaker 1: into stuff that you can get from it. Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: like you said, not a lot of the cow is
Speaker 1: used to eat. No, it's like of a cow is
Speaker 1: is edible and digestible. And I think the chicken is
Speaker 1: about the most efficient animal protein right now, stuff like crickets.
Speaker 1: So there's two different things here, right. So you've got
Speaker 1: um efficiency in nutrient conversion, which is say, like if
Speaker 1: you eat an apple, you can convert you know x
Speaker 1: amount of the energy available in the apple into you know,
Speaker 1: energy for yourself metabolism, right right, Yeah? That but poop
Speaker 1: is waste, so that stuff wouldn't count toward efficiency. It
Speaker 1: would actually subtract from your efficiency and lower your efficiency.
Speaker 1: If you ate an apple and used every bit of
Speaker 1: it and it produced zero poop, you would have efficiently
Speaker 1: converted that app all into useful energy. Right. It would
Speaker 1: be to be a magic apple and you wouldn't need
Speaker 1: a poop shoot, um, but instead you do. Because there
Speaker 1: is no such thing as percent efficiency in any animal, right,
Speaker 1: But some are better than others, like you were saying,
Speaker 1: and with a cricket, it's something like, um, they're like
Speaker 1: twelve times more efficient at converting food into usable energy
Speaker 1: or stored in this case stored protein. Right, So for
Speaker 1: every kilogram of live cricket weight, which is a pretty
Speaker 1: substantial amount of crickets, but but kilogram to kilogram or
Speaker 1: pound a pound, it just takes one point seven kilograms
Speaker 1: of feed to produce one kilogram of live crickets. Not
Speaker 1: bad for a cow. It takes ten kilograms of feed
Speaker 1: to produce one kilogram of beef, very inefficient by comparison.
Speaker 1: So if you take the fact that it doesn't take
Speaker 1: much feed to produce a biomass of crickets, and that
Speaker 1: crickets are edible and digestible compared to the cows edible
Speaker 1: and digestible, then you really have a if you're just
Speaker 1: going pound to pound or kilogram to kilogram, and much
Speaker 1: more nutrient dense, much more efficient, and then therefore much less,
Speaker 1: much less wasteful um animal that you could eat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of that has to do with the fact
Speaker 1: that crickets are cold blooded, so they're very much more
Speaker 1: efficient at converting that feed into protein. And um, crickets
Speaker 1: aren't even the most efficient insect, you know, No, huh,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure which one is. Actually, I think meal
Speaker 1: worms are pretty efficient. You just said that because you're
Speaker 1: eating a meal worm. Right, Well, I have a meal
Speaker 1: worm farm. I was gonna ask you to buy in
Speaker 1: on huh all right in my pocket. See is that
Speaker 1: a meal worm farm in your pocket? It is I
Speaker 1: pocket mulch uh. So, like we mentioned Mr bach Uba
Speaker 1: is um. If he's not German, he should be Kevin
Speaker 1: back Ruber. I think he's a He's Irish German. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's spelled k v in though, so we're just inserting
Speaker 1: vowels for me, right, like d n C E. What's that?
Speaker 1: It's this band? Okay, probably the young person's band, I believe, so,
Speaker 1: no wonder, I don't know, but he has one of
Speaker 1: I think they're about and this has probably changed even
Speaker 1: since this has written about twenty five or so cricket
Speaker 1: startup farms here in the United States. Yeah, I couldn't
Speaker 1: find the current number. Yeah, let's just say at least
Speaker 1: twenty five, although all but they go under pretty quick,
Speaker 1: you think, so. I could see I could see losing
Speaker 1: your shirt on cricket farming right now, it's so it's
Speaker 1: just so early, and and the market is so not there,
Speaker 1: and the stuff that producing is so expensive. Well, and
Speaker 1: their output right now is still really small. Um, in
Speaker 1: the in the early years here. But you know, the
Speaker 1: dream for for him and all these cricket farmers is
Speaker 1: that that one day it will it will. I don't
Speaker 1: think they have designs that will ever be like in
Speaker 1: some parts of the world where it's on every menu
Speaker 1: and every restaurant, but they would certainly like to see
Speaker 1: cricket snacks in grocery stores and um menu offerings and
Speaker 1: some some of the more wacky hipster restaurants at least. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Did you do you watch Shirt Tank? Oh? You know,
Speaker 1: I do? Okay, So did you see the one with
Speaker 1: Rose Wang and Laura Dasario. I've seen them all, Okay.
Speaker 1: So you saw the one with Chirps their snack, their
Speaker 1: cricket based stack product, Chirps. I want to try it.
Speaker 1: I do too. Um. I'm not like, I'm not an
Speaker 1: adventurous eater, as you know, but I would totally try
Speaker 1: fried crickets and things that doesn't gross me out for
Speaker 1: some reason. No, I I and I would try it
Speaker 1: as well, and do you I don't know if you
Speaker 1: remember not. But when we did that uh locust thing
Speaker 1: for Science Channel, it's like the second time has come
Speaker 1: up this month. Weirdly enough. Um, they made fried locusts
Speaker 1: and I refused to eat them. And it wasn't because
Speaker 1: I was grossed out. It was because I was sure
Speaker 1: that I was going to have some sort of weird
Speaker 1: allergic reaction to them, and I would have had, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I would have had to have been, like, you know,
Speaker 1: life flighted somewhere to a hospital and would have missed
Speaker 1: my flight home. Um. That that is the only reason
Speaker 1: I didn't eat them. It had nothing to do with disgust.
Speaker 1: But in that u N report they address allergies and
Speaker 1: they said that it's actually exceedingly rare that somebody has
Speaker 1: an allergic reaction to an arthropod um or to an insect.
Speaker 1: I should say, um, But the reason why I thought
Speaker 1: so was because, yeah, I had had um, I like
Speaker 1: a shrimp blow up once and I just was not
Speaker 1: about to roll the dice on that, not for what
Speaker 1: Science Channel was paying. Well, I think it's very funny
Speaker 1: that you, uh, I remember your shrimp. You're shrimp years
Speaker 1: in that you had an allergic reaction to shrimp, but
Speaker 1: you wanted to eat shrimp so bad you started to
Speaker 1: eat shrimp a little bit just to see if you
Speaker 1: could eat shrimp. Yeah. Shrimp chips, yeah, which use real
Speaker 1: shrimp powder. It's like I think Japanese or Korean or
Speaker 1: Chinese delicacy. But now you can eat shrimp, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I did immunotherapy and now I'm fine. I can eat
Speaker 1: shrimp all day long. I love that you were so
Speaker 1: dedicated to Yeah. I love shrimp. Man, good shrimp, like
Speaker 1: season with old Bay, just simple stuff. Oh man, so good. Uh,
Speaker 1: this is a great time to bring up one of
Speaker 1: my big pet peeves. I know that cooking with shrimp
Speaker 1: heads and tails on increases the flavor quite a bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is why they do it. Um. But it's one
Speaker 1: thing if you get an appetizer with like the uh,
Speaker 1: like a prawn with a head left on or something.
Speaker 1: But if you like I get pasta dishes sometimes, oh
Speaker 1: that have like heads and tails on them. If there's
Speaker 1: a fork involved, you don't want to have to put
Speaker 1: your fork down and take the head and tail off. No,
Speaker 1: like you literally have to dig them out of the pasta,
Speaker 1: take the head and tail off and then put them
Speaker 1: back in your food, right, which is just I don't
Speaker 1: get why restaurants do that, Like maybe cook it in
Speaker 1: there and then take it off for us. So I
Speaker 1: ran across the reason probably why. All right, let's hear it.
Speaker 1: There's something called keton which makes up the exoskeleton of
Speaker 1: m of bugs, but it also makes up the shells
Speaker 1: of crustaceans as well. UM and kiton. Supposedly, if you
Speaker 1: don't have an allergic reaction to it, Kiton is apparently
Speaker 1: good for it's it's said to be good for weight loss, UM,
Speaker 1: digestion aids in digestion allegedly UM and I think it
Speaker 1: has something to do with your blood pressure too. And
Speaker 1: in other countries, non non non Western countries, I think
Speaker 1: they prescribed kitan quite a bit as like a dietary supplement. UM.
Speaker 1: And I saw one study that said, yeah, it had
Speaker 1: a little bit of an effect, a little more than placebo,
Speaker 1: but not clinically significant. But it was just one study,
Speaker 1: So I'm I'm curious if if kitton actually does have
Speaker 1: an effect, but it's possible. They're saying you should eat
Speaker 1: the whole thing. Well, that's the shell. What I mean,
Speaker 1: it's I don't know. They could also just be a fat,
Speaker 1: lazy chef, you know. Well, I mean I'll eat a
Speaker 1: soft shell crab so the cows come home. But I'm
Speaker 1: not eating a shrimp tail. Yeah it sounds gross. Well,
Speaker 1: it's just not like, uh, they don't soften up enough,
Speaker 1: you know. But if you think about it, though, if
Speaker 1: you're eating a fried cricket or something, you're eating the
Speaker 1: whole thing shell and all antenna. Well yeah, but I
Speaker 1: think that in the in the soft shell crab zone,
Speaker 1: So you eat the shell of the soft shell crab. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what you're supposed to do, That's what it is.
Speaker 1: I don't know that i've ever had soft shell him. Oh,
Speaker 1: my friend, is that like a blue crab. No. I
Speaker 1: think it's a special kind of crab that has parents
Speaker 1: must love it very much. I might be wrong. I
Speaker 1: think it's a special kind of crab and then you
Speaker 1: prepare it with the shell. But I think the shell
Speaker 1: is soft to begin with, though. I don't think it's
Speaker 1: just from cooking. But like spider Roll is one of
Speaker 1: my favorite sushi rolls, that's a soft shell crab. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought that was crab like spelled with the K
Speaker 1: like fake crab. No, No, that like the little legs
Speaker 1: are coming out at the end and everything. That's what
Speaker 1: they call it a spider roll because it looks like
Speaker 1: a little spider legs. And I'll try that and then uh,
Speaker 1: like a soft shell crab sandwiches, I mean open the
Speaker 1: bun and there's just like this crab staring at you. Yeah, going,
Speaker 1: how's it going. You're gonna eat me in a second,
Speaker 1: aren't you. Oh, I'm getting hungry now, and you want
Speaker 1: to take a break real quick, well quickly before we
Speaker 1: just should mention that they did get a deal on
Speaker 1: Shark Tank with Mark Cuban. Right, we're contractually obligated to
Speaker 1: munch and Mark Cuban, that's right. We get our kickback coming.
Speaker 1: I would try chirps for sure. If the Trips people
Speaker 1: are out there listening and you want to send us
Speaker 1: some chirps, I will try them up, all right, So
Speaker 1: let's take that break, Okay, So chuck, we said, um,
Speaker 1: I think I said that one of the things that's
Speaker 1: holding this industry back right now is that the it's
Speaker 1: so expensive the products they're making. Um, there's something called
Speaker 1: cricket flour, which is ground up cricket meal basically a
Speaker 1: protein powder made from crickets, right, and it's it's anywhere
Speaker 1: from like thirty five to fifty dollars a pound for it.
Speaker 1: It's very expensive, a lot of money. But it's really
Speaker 1: ironic because crickets require so much less um space and
Speaker 1: food and water, um and electricity. It's apparently the the
Speaker 1: labor force that is the most expensive thing of any
Speaker 1: commercial cricket farm because there it's just hard to find
Speaker 1: people who can do that, even though it's not exactly hard,
Speaker 1: it's just there's a lot of trial and error going on.
Speaker 1: So from what I saw, is the labor force that's
Speaker 1: that's eating up most of them the revenue or profits
Speaker 1: from cricket farming well, planning all those tiny people, those
Speaker 1: three people, right, it's not easy. But there are startups
Speaker 1: also that are that are trying to sell like home
Speaker 1: cricket kits too, because that's part of the whole idea
Speaker 1: where if you're gonna get people to supplement their diet,
Speaker 1: well just let them grow them at home too. So
Speaker 1: should we talk a little bit about this the farming. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so crickets live about seven weeks. Um. I mean that
Speaker 1: right there shows you a big difference between that and
Speaker 1: like the beef industry. Uh So during that seven week
Speaker 1: life cycle, they they have three different environments that they
Speaker 1: reside in and they basically live and hang out on
Speaker 1: what they call cricket high rises, which are little egg cartons. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I saw that. The um they have tried all sorts
Speaker 1: of different material and they keep going back to egg
Speaker 1: cartons for some reason. Crickets just love hanging out on
Speaker 1: egg cartons. Well, who doesn't, uh. And what they eat
Speaker 1: is because I was kind of wondering that they eat
Speaker 1: grain based feed, organic grain based feed, um, fruits and vegetables.
Speaker 1: And they some of them will reach that breeding stage,
Speaker 1: some won't, and if they do, they're gonna lay a
Speaker 1: lot of eggs, like you know, several thousand eggs a
Speaker 1: mommy cricket will lay in her lifetime. Yeah, so many
Speaker 1: eggs in fact that they they typically just throw most
Speaker 1: of them out, like they'll keep some to grow a
Speaker 1: new generation from. But there's just so many that are
Speaker 1: just tossed out because they don't have the capacity yet
Speaker 1: to grow them. Um. So that you know there, I
Speaker 1: think bok Hubert put it like he could be drowning
Speaker 1: in eggs. If he's not careful drowning in cricket eggs.
Speaker 1: He probably wakes up every night sweating. He probably really
Speaker 1: does wake up every night from the cricket chirping. Oh,
Speaker 1: I never really thought about that. That must be nice. Actually, yeah,
Speaker 1: it can be. So they like hot human environments, or
Speaker 1: at least warm, depending on your definition of hot. Hot
Speaker 1: to me eight to ninety five degrees fahrenheit with about
Speaker 1: a forty humidity level, and the whole process from soup
Speaker 1: to nuts or from eggs to chirps is about fifty
Speaker 1: six yeah. Um yeah. And if you you can do
Speaker 1: this yourself at home, you just need basically two terrariums.
Speaker 1: You need to put them near heat because that is substantial.
Speaker 1: Eight to nine degrees is hot, waight, hotter than you're
Speaker 1: gonna keep your house. So you do need like a
Speaker 1: heat lamp of some sort, and you need water a
Speaker 1: source of water to Those are the two most important
Speaker 1: things with raising crickets. And the reason you have two
Speaker 1: terrariums is because in the one where you have like
Speaker 1: the thirty h initial crickets, say, um, you're gonna put
Speaker 1: a dish of soil, and that's where they're going to
Speaker 1: lay their eggs. You want to check the soil every
Speaker 1: day for eggs. And when you find eggs, you take
Speaker 1: that little soiled dish out and put it in the
Speaker 1: other terrarium. And then that's where the eggs are gonna
Speaker 1: grow and hatch. And um, when the crickets hatch, they're
Speaker 1: fully formed. There's no larval stage, right, they don't go
Speaker 1: from like a maggot into a cricket. They're fully formed.
Speaker 1: They're just much smaller, right, And according to Aris Stottle,
Speaker 1: it's about around here or maybe within the next week
Speaker 1: or so, that they're the most delicious. Aristotle. Yeah, Aristotle
Speaker 1: wrote in his Historia an Amalium. Actually he was writing
Speaker 1: about cicadas that um, they're better when uh there before
Speaker 1: their last mold. So I guess I wouldn't apply to crickets, No,
Speaker 1: I would, because they did they they do more. He
Speaker 1: also said that females taste best after copulation because they
Speaker 1: are full of eggs after Aristotle has copulated, right or
Speaker 1: after instead of a cigarette, just seed a pregnant female cicada.
Speaker 1: Try this baby, right, It'll knock your socks off, I
Speaker 1: bet Aristotle, pillow talk with something else or just be
Speaker 1: like uh yeah, and he just keeps going on and
Speaker 1: on about cicadas. Um, so harvesting. Uh, I mean, there's
Speaker 1: no way around it. At some point, like any live
Speaker 1: thing that you're raising, you're gonna have to kill it.
Speaker 1: And instead of um, like what we see on factory
Speaker 1: farms with cows and pigs, what you do on a
Speaker 1: cricket farm is you cool them down and then freeze them.
Speaker 1: And so what happens is they they get cold, they
Speaker 1: start to get a little chili, their temperature drops, and
Speaker 1: they go into what's called a dia pause um, sort
Speaker 1: of a hibernation like state. And then pretty much after
Speaker 1: that they go it is sure as chilian here and
Speaker 1: then they're gone and frozen. Yeah, apparently they eventually free solid.
Speaker 1: So they spent about twenty four hours in the freezer
Speaker 1: and then they're ready to be sold either ground in
Speaker 1: to say like a powder or baked into a fried snack,
Speaker 1: or sold to somebody else. But that's that. And I
Speaker 1: was like, do they wake up then if you if
Speaker 1: you heat them up in a pan, But apparently after
Speaker 1: twenty four hours and they're frozen solid, they're they're dead,
Speaker 1: but to them it's just like going to sleep forever.
Speaker 1: Yeah what Um? I kind of wonder when I was
Speaker 1: reading this, I was like, how do veacons and vegetarians
Speaker 1: feel about eating in sex. Supposedly it does not count
Speaker 1: as vegetarian. Well, it depends on who you ask. Um.
Speaker 1: I didn't get any like there is no official rule book. Um,
Speaker 1: there's not. I don't think so. But basically, I just
Speaker 1: went to a bunch of vegan and vegetarian websites and
Speaker 1: looked to see what people said and it it kind
Speaker 1: of ranged from well, sure, allied insects and this is
Speaker 1: a much better way to to get protein in your
Speaker 1: body than animals, um, to where other people said, no,
Speaker 1: it's a living thing, not going to eat it. I
Speaker 1: get all the protein I need from plants. If you're
Speaker 1: eating something a live animal, then you're not a vegan
Speaker 1: or a vegetarian. Yeah. I saw crickets referred to as
Speaker 1: many livestock all one word. I mean they are a
Speaker 1: live there, a living animal. So I guess it's a
Speaker 1: personal choice. That sounds like yeah, just like you know
Speaker 1: vegetarians eat fish sometimes too. Uh, well, that'd be a pesctarian, right,
Speaker 1: I guess. But I've met plenty of vegetarians. They're like,
Speaker 1: I'm a vegetarian and I eat fish, leave me alone.
Speaker 1: And that's an ego. Technically you're a pescutarian and then
Speaker 1: you get punched in the face. Right. Uh. So eating
Speaker 1: crickets um, Some people say sort of nutty. Some people
Speaker 1: say it's a little sweet, like sweet corn. I'm I
Speaker 1: would like to know for myself. I wish we could
Speaker 1: have gotten her hand on some chirps beforehand, but maybe
Speaker 1: we can follow up in the future. We need a
Speaker 1: big bowl of chirps right here, like yeah, like we
Speaker 1: did with soilon. Yeah, with a soilon, soilon, we'll do
Speaker 1: a follow up soilon. Um. So there's this lady, Daniella Martin,
Speaker 1: and she has a travel show and a well it's
Speaker 1: an insect cooking and travel show called Girl Meets Bug.
Speaker 1: Very cute. Um and we should say the chirps. Ladies
Speaker 1: called crickets the gateway bug also that was kind of funny,
Speaker 1: uh and puny. And Daniella says that she started eating
Speaker 1: crickets and kind of became fascinated with insects in general
Speaker 1: when she was in Mexico and Yucatan, and it kind
Speaker 1: of became, I don't think, obsessed, but just super interested
Speaker 1: in this as a as her protein of choice, and said,
Speaker 1: you know, I started cooking him up with the little
Speaker 1: a little butter, little onion, little salt, and like with anything,
Speaker 1: if you put it in a pan with some butter
Speaker 1: and onion and salt, maybe a little garlic, it's probably
Speaker 1: gonna taste pretty darn good. Yeah. You could cook almost
Speaker 1: anything with butter, salt and onions and you're fine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: even when you hear stories of these creepy cannibal people,
Speaker 1: think you should cook it in butter with a little
Speaker 1: salt and onion and garlic. Yeah, I think that one
Speaker 1: guy who advertised on like Craigslist cannibal he yeah, he's
Speaker 1: saw tatd with yeah onion, you're right, huh, Yes, I
Speaker 1: think it was. I would say what he ate penis
Speaker 1: that he did, and that was a very disturbing case.
Speaker 1: Sure so, um, she says, Uh, Crisping him in the
Speaker 1: oven is another besides you know, grinding them in the powder,
Speaker 1: cooking them up like broiling him in the oven. Don't
Speaker 1: overcook it. Olive oil with garlic, salt, throw them in
Speaker 1: about two fifty about fifteen minutes and a little sea
Speaker 1: salt on top maybe, and you're gonna have a crunchy, delicious,
Speaker 1: nutrient rich snack. Yeah. And you want to clean them
Speaker 1: off too if you're cooking them from raw, I mean
Speaker 1: they're they're bugs. Uh, that's it's something you want to do.
Speaker 1: What do you do just like wash them in the calendar?
Speaker 1: I guess so yeah. Um, but I think like if
Speaker 1: they're already prepared, you're probably okay. Um. Because one of
Speaker 1: the big things that that that like bok Hubert did
Speaker 1: by getting f day approval, like now you can't just
Speaker 1: raise crickets on just anything, like they have to be
Speaker 1: fed food that is okay for humans. The two um,
Speaker 1: which is something that the cricket farming industry is running
Speaker 1: up against because one of the big things proponents are
Speaker 1: saying is like, man, you could raise crickets if you
Speaker 1: had large scale cricket farms, you could raise crickets on
Speaker 1: food waste. And if you if you if you do that,
Speaker 1: not only are you like raising your crickets, you're also
Speaker 1: getting rid of food waste. You're composting basically, right, composting,
Speaker 1: that's the way you say it. Um. But apparently AFTERDA
Speaker 1: he's like, now you can't feed things food waste your
Speaker 1: nut job. You're gonna eat it eventually, so there's big
Speaker 1: rules against it. But that I think they're trying to
Speaker 1: chip away at that as well. Yeah. I remember being
Speaker 1: alarmed when I briefly worked in the chicken industry when
Speaker 1: I found out that a lot of chicken feed is
Speaker 1: made from chickens. Yeah not not okay, Yeah, it's just
Speaker 1: it's not right. So I saw in I think Popular Science,
Speaker 1: they had a little nutrition facts thing for crickets. It's
Speaker 1: so cute. They said, for a hundred grams of crickets,
Speaker 1: you're can add about a hundred and twenty hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty one calories um. You've got about five and a
Speaker 1: half grams of carbs, twelve point nine grams of protein
Speaker 1: that is substantial um, seventy five point eight milligrams of calcium,
Speaker 1: and nine and a half milligrams of iron. That's also
Speaker 1: pretty substantial. Just from a hundred grams. I think they
Speaker 1: estimate that's about twenty to twenty two crickets um, like
Speaker 1: a handful and a half. Nice. That is, that's pretty good.
Speaker 1: And and the idea that if you are just raising
Speaker 1: cricket yourself. You can feed them your own kitchen waist
Speaker 1: and then eat the cricket yourself. There's also, right right,
Speaker 1: there's also um very low barriers to entry into cricket farming.
Speaker 1: So if you're um, if you're not a wealthy person
Speaker 1: and you need to make some extra money, you could
Speaker 1: conceivably raise cricket yourself and then sell them at market too.
Speaker 1: It's like podcasting, exactly exactly. I think that's it. I
Speaker 1: got nothing else. All right, Well, let's cricket farming. Everybody
Speaker 1: go make it happen. And in the meantime, you can
Speaker 1: look at this article on how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: And since I said that it's time for a listener mail,
Speaker 1: I'm going to call this Kevin Spacey's accent, explained. Oh
Speaker 1: and before I read this, there is a House of
Speaker 1: Cards spoiler alert to that. Hey, guys, just listen to
Speaker 1: the episode on accents. I'm happy you brought up Kevin
Speaker 1: Spacey's accent from House of Cards because I have a theory.
Speaker 1: Spacey plays a character Frank Underwood, grew up poor in Gaffney,
Speaker 1: South Carolina, but then went on to the Citadel and
Speaker 1: Charleston and created a persona that eventually lands him president.
Speaker 1: His accent does not sound like a bad attempt at
Speaker 1: the r less old money Charleston accent, but I think
Speaker 1: it fits the character instead of a twang are full
Speaker 1: accent that he'd have from Gaffney. Spacey's playing Frank Underwood,
Speaker 1: who was playing someone with noble Southern roots, and that's
Speaker 1: why it sounds fake. Am I giving Kevin Spacey too
Speaker 1: much credit? Possibly? But being from Greenville, South Carolina, enjoyed
Speaker 1: dissecting his Carolina accent, And actually I don't have much
Speaker 1: of an accent myself, except with words like a lawyer
Speaker 1: and oil. Jerry just left because my brother, who's ten
Speaker 1: years older, trained it out of me when I was
Speaker 1: very young. He said he didn't want people to underestimate
Speaker 1: my intelligence because of our accent. He would correct me
Speaker 1: every time I would say things like turn the light
Speaker 1: zone instead of turned the lights on, or naked instead
Speaker 1: of naked. If you're saying naked, length to dry bamboo
Speaker 1: and say again again. I sort of wish I sounded
Speaker 1: more like the rest of my family. But what a
Speaker 1: considerate thing for my big brother could have done when
Speaker 1: he was a teenager and that is from Mary Jean Murphy.
Speaker 1: That was pretty great. Mary Jean, Your brother is a
Speaker 1: little social engineer, isn't he? I like that, Um, and
Speaker 1: thank you also for the spoiler about Kevin Spacey becoming
Speaker 1: president on House of Cards. If you want to get
Speaker 1: in touch with us like she did, you can tweet
Speaker 1: to us. So that's y SK podcast. I'm also at
Speaker 1: josh um Clark. You can hang out with us on
Speaker 1: Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know. You can
Speaker 1: hang out with Chuck at Facebook dot com, slash Charles W.
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant. You can send us an email to Stuff
Speaker 1: Podcast at how stuff Works dot com and has always
Speaker 1: joined us at our home on the web, Stuff you
Speaker 1: Should Know dot com For more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics, is it how Stuff Works dot com