Cockroach milk can be the new superfood, Here’s why

The study was published in journal- “The global Union of Crystallography” under the title of “Structure of heterogeneous, glycosylated, lipid-bound, in vivo-grown protein crystal at atomic resolution from the viviparous cockroach Diploptera punctata“. “In the US there is a big thrust that all research has to be translational”, he said, meaning directly applicable to human health. In near future, it could act a key to feed babies, they added.

Now, armed with the gene sequences for these milk proteins, Ramaswamy and colleagues plan to use a yeast system to produce these crystals en masse.

So will cockroach milk become a panacea for hunger and sustainability? The study’s researchers, of the Institute of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine in India, discovered a protein crystal in this stuff that actually contains more energy than the same amount of cow’s milk.

The bug is mainly known as the Pacific beetle cockroach. “If you look into the protein sequences, they have all the essential amino acids”, said one scientist from the team, Sanchari Banerjee, to the Times of India. Even though they don’t literally lactate since they aren’t mammals, they do feed their little baby roaches with a secretion that has many similarities to the same kind of milk you pour on your cereal. Also like humans, mother Pacific beetle cockroaches produce food for their offspring. It suggested that western food diet shouldn’t include the milk in it.

Unfortunately, so far the only way to extract the crystals if from the midgut of the roach embryos. Now, maybe you’ll think twice before squashing that pesky cockroach in your apartment.

It all started when Nathan Coussens, a young researcher at the University of Iowa at the time, noticed shiny crystals pouring out of a cockroach gut. Should the cockroach crystals prove to be safe to ingest, what would you call the product?

Not only is the milk a dense source of calories and nutrients, its also time released.

Researchers are now working to sequence the genes so they can be reproduced in a lab – and presumably the world can avoid the horror of a cockroach milking farm.

Believe it or not, an global research team led by the India-based Institute of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine discovered that cockroach milk may be the greatest superfood of the future.