When most of us were growing up, we usually had a regular carton of 1%, skim or 2% cow’s milk in the fridge. Nowadays, the milk variety has expanded to include milk from nuts like almond and cashew which have become quite common in American kitchens.
Photo by Yonatan Soler
In a society that is constantly looking for alternatives, scientists have conveniently found a new milk source that may just make you go right back to the comfort of your 2%. Brace yourself because you might just find cockroach milk in the dairy aisle of your grocery store in the future.
Photo courtesy of vhealthybyv.com
So…The question you’re all probably wondering: how the heck do you milk a cockroach? The answer is, you don’t. At least, not in the squeeze-an-utter kind of way. About a decade ago, Scientists discovered that cockroaches produce milk protein crystals when they have their offsprings.
The discovery of cockroach milk isn’t all that new; however, what is new is the fact that scientists have potentially found a way to mass produce cockroach milk using genetic sequencing. This would also indicate a possibility of producing cockroach milk in vitro. Welcome to the 21st century’s idea of milk production.
If we’re already exploding with the variety of milk, why would we even want milk from an organism that occasionally ends up in our nightmares? These milk crystals beat dairy milk any day when it comes to nutrition content. Each one was found to have fat, sugar and a complete set of essential amino acids. A crystal even has more than double the amount of caloric energy than in the same amount of dairy milk. Who knew cockroaches were such productive insects?
Photo by Aakanksha Joshi
In addition to being another alternative to milk, cockroach milk can also be seen as a sustainable one since it would lower the need for livestock. Whether it will become available to the public in the future is still up in the air as more experiments need to be done, but if it does, just focus on how nutritious it is.
Photo by Topanga McBride