WARNING, this is not for the faint of heart.
So a group of scientists have discovered that the milk-like fluid from cockroaches is four times as nutritious as cow’s milk. Yes you read that right, COCKROACHES!!
This is according to the website techinsider.io and the researchers think it could be the key to feeding our growing population in the future.
Although most cockroaches don’t actually produce milk, A particular type of cockroaches known as Diploptera punctate, has been shown to pump out a type of ‘milk’ containing protein crystals to feed its babies.
The fact that an insect produces milk is pretty fascinating – but what fascinated researchers is the fact that a single one of these protein crystals contains more than three times the amount of energy found in an equivalent amount of buffalo milk (which is also higher in calories than dairy milk). “The crystals are like a complete food – they have proteins, fats and sugars. If you look into the protein sequences, they have all the essential amino acids,” said Sanchari Banerjee, one of the researchers working on this project.
Based on this research, an international team of scientists headed by researchers from the Institute of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine in India decided to sequence the genes responsible for producing the milk protein crystals to see if they could somehow replicate them in the lab.
Not only is the milk a dense source of calories and nutrients, it’s also time released. As the protein in the milk is digested, the crystal releases more protein at an equivalent rate to continue the digestion.
According to their research, this dense protein source is a great option for those trying to GAIN Weight, and it is not recommended for western diets that are already high in calories. For those who struggle to get the amount of calories required per day, this could be a quick and easy way to get calories and nutrients.
“If you need food that is calorifically high, that is time released and food that is complete. This is it,” said Subramanian Ramaswamy, who led the project. He adds that they are very stable source of protein supplement.
Now the researchers have the sequence, they are hoping to get yeast to produce the crystals in much larger quantities- making it slightly more efficient (and less gross) than extracting crystals from cockroach’s guts.
The research was published in IUCrJ, the journal of the International Union of Crystallography.
Would you drink cockroach milk? Ewwwww…..
** Source: www.techinsider.io