Research that supports the link between eating crickets and improved gut health and reduced systemic inflammation was just published, and the results are very encouraging. This is huge! The research showed that a diet high in cricket protein produced higher levels of five gut bacteria, one of which was Bifidobacterium animalis, which has "been shown in clinical trials to improve gastrointestinal function, protect against diarrhea, reduce side effects of antibiotic treatment, and increase resistance to common respiratory infections.” The study also showed a reduction in plasma TNF alpha, which is associated with cancer, IBS and alzheimer's. Cricket consumption was associated with suppression of Acidaminococcus among participants. Although not a direct focus on this study, an increase in this bacteria has been associated with a...
What was your first time eating insects like? For me, it was an act out of desperation and hopelessness. At the time, I had applied to 20 different universities, from Ivy Leagues to safety schools, hoping I would be admitted to at least one school. Just around when I received a letter from Cornell that my early application was deferred to regular decision, a friend of my mom’s reached out and sent a container of stir-fried grasshoppers. To give you some context, my mom’s friends had been feeding their teenage children grasshoppers prior to hearing back from colleges. Apparently, in Korean culture, grasshoppers are an auspicious symbol of college acceptance. In fact, the kids had gotten into schools that were...
In Mark Bittman’s recent article, The Last Conversation You’ll Ever Need To Have About Eating Right, he touched on a lot of the things that I’ve been feeling for a while. He begins by pointing out that we are the only animal that can’t figure out exactly what to eat! In his words, “It’s beyond strange that so many humans are clueless about how they should feed themselves. Every wild species on the planet knows how to do it; presumably ours did, too, before our oversized brains found new ways to complicate things. Now, we’re the only species that can be baffled about the “right” way to eat.”
Did you know that insects existed long before humans, and that they not only out number, but also outweigh us? Well, they do. They arrived on earth a solid 1,000 years before us humans, and it’s estimated that there are 200 million insects for every human on the planet -- do the math, that’s a lot of bugs. Lastly, if you add up the combined weight of all the ants on earth it is about equal to the weight of all of the humans, so just imagine if you included all the other millions of insects. So, why does this matter...
“If you look at the items that consumers say they want more of in their diet, protein tops the list,” said David Portalatin, a Houston-based food industry adviser for NPD Group. When you break this statement down further though, you see an intriguing and concerning divide.
