Stuff You Should Know - Selects: Are crickets the future of food?

Episode Date: March 1, 2025

Crickets are part of a larger insect-based diet enjoyed in most parts of the world. Loaded with vitamins, minerals and protein, and green to boot, crickets could help solve some of the world's food problems if Europe and America get on board. Learn all about cricket farming in this classic episode.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey Will, do you ever get overwhelmed by how much science happens these days? Constantly. I'm like, ah, there's so much science, I can't keep track of it all. Then it's a good thing our podcast, Part-Time Geniuses, is counting down the 25 greatest science ideas from the past 25 years. That's right, Mango. We're talking animals. In a paper called, quote, chickens prefer beautiful humans.

Right. This was actually the title of the paper. I like this. They all discovered that that much like humans, chickens are attracted to symmetrical faces. We're talking medical miracles. He's an endocrinologist who found a way to stimulate insulin producing cells using,

wait for it, the saliva of a Gila monster. There's no way to make that not sound crazy. We even talked to some of the experts behind these breakthroughs. It's a week full of fact-packed stories you won't want to miss. So listen to the part-time genius countdown of the 25 greatest science ideas of the past 25 years, starting Monday, March 3rd on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, everyone. I hope you're having a great weekend so far. Do you want to know about crickets and how you can sustain yourself on them? Well then listen to this episode, Are Crickets the Future of Food? And this is from September 7th, 2017. I hope you enjoy it all over again. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh W. Chuck Clark. There's Charles Malcolm Bryant and there's Jerry the Wiz rolling.

It sounds like an Aaron Cooper poster gone bad. Yep. Already. Yeah. We will have like the swirly face like the weird people in Jacob's Ladder. It's funny we had a office visitor a couple weeks ago and I don't think you were here and in fact I know you weren't here because you would have been in here. Right.

But there was a there's our great step brothers, you know the movie step brothers for those of you out here out there There's a promo of John C. Reilly and Will Ferrell with as like a with an Olin Mills type You know posed photograph and Aaron Cooper our buddy from Kansas who does our great Photoshop stuff Made us into I was John C Re Rowley and you were Will Ferrell. And the guy came in and was looking around and was like, oh man, these are great. And he went, look at that. He went, that looks like, I don't know, it looks like it could be like something like the movie Step Brother or something.

And I said, oh, that's exactly what it is. I tried to make him not feel bad. That was nice of you. That was very gracious of you as a host. Yeah, like he didn't quite zone in on all of them were us. I gotcha. He should have like clapped loudly beside his ear. Man, I had a little scary thing today. What happened?

If I may, this is kind of part PSA. This has nothing to do with cricket farming. Okay. If I may this is kind of part PSA this has nothing to do with cricket farming. Okay, but We're getting our our basement waterproofed Because for 13 years it's been leaking water. Mm-hmm like really bad. Mm-hmm so much so that we have mold now Oh, yeah black mold. Yes, and oh no, we're also getting mold remediation done at the same time, man So needless to say that's a fun fun way to spend a lot of money. But I come home today and my carbon monoxide alarm is going off because these yahoos are using a gas-powered concrete saw in our basement.

And it's like full on saying, you know, get out of the house and my animals are in there so oh man like and I just happened to go home after I went to a coffee shop to study because I Needed to grab something but like I literally could have come home to dead animals Man and dead workmen in the basement. Yeah those guys too Wow, I'll bet they're not the sharpest tacks in the box anymore. It was weird, man. And they were down there. I mean, not only did they not have on so much as a dust mask for the gas, but like concrete dust is really dangerous too.

They're like, I don't care. I've got Obamacare. It was so weird, man. And just it freaked me out to the point where Emily, she wanted to like fire the guy. He wasn't even there like the, you know, the foreman or owner of the company. Yeah. And she wanted to be like, man, if he doesn't understand that this is dangerous. Uh, and he said, you know, open up your windows, it'll be clear in 15 minutes. And it took two hours for that alarm to stop going off.

Oh my gosh. Wow. That is really scary. It was really bad, man. I was out on my deck basically for the rest of the morning until I came in with my dogs and my cat in a crate. Man, that's like how some people commit suicide. I know.

You know? Yeah. And these guys are just doing it gratis for you. Yeah, it was weird. Yeah, anyway, so I'm slightly shaken. Yeah, I'll bet. I'm glad you made it, man. You look good.

You look okay. Thank you. You look healthy. Your pallor isn't gaunt. I think you're okay. I just got to calm down here. The sound of the crickets on our miniature cricket farm here are soothing me at least. I know.

They put me to sleep. I'm glad we set that up. That was pretty good. That was one of our better segues, sadly enough. Thanks. Yeah, we are talking crickets, aren't we? Yeah, we covered entomophagy. I meant to look up when, but it was, seems like a long time ago. Right. And that's eating bugs and insects. But this is focusing specifically on crickets because by all accounts they seem like sort

of the, our best bet at trying to get something like this going in America for real. Yeah, I mean they're pretty easy to raise. They don't require much space. You can set up your own cricket farm at home. And really we should say the point of all this, the whole reason anybody would want people to start raising crickets at home is because the, well, the earth is about to collapse and our food supply is in real danger. Right?

So I've got some stats for you, Chuck. Okay. So meat consumption per capita has increased into the developed world. Actually, it's doubled in the last 30 years. And that's thanks in no small part to the rise of the BRIC countries, Brazil, Russia, India, and China, who have huge massive populations and as they entered capitalist, the capitalist global economy have generally become enriched and the more money they have, the more meat a civilization tends to consume, at least these days, right? Yeah. So that doesn't seem bad in and of itself until you look into what kind of resources

it takes to actually raise meat. So you ready for this one? I don't know. I'm afraid. To produce one pound of meat, that's a half a kilo basically of meat. Is this beef? Beef, sorry, yeah. It requires about 2,400 gallons of water. I've heard stuff like that before. Which is like absolutely nuts. Even when you consider that not only are you watering the cow, you're also watering the crops that you feed to the cow.

So there's double water consumption. But one of the reasons cattle, beef, requires so much water is because you only consume 40% of the cow. Yeah. So 60% of the water is going to sustain parts of the cow you're not even eating, right? So there's a lot of wasted water, even if your water delivery system is 100% efficient, right? Yeah.

That's just water. 51% of the greenhouse gases that are emitted on planet Earth come from animal agriculture. 51%. And one third of the world's adequate or high quality cropland has been lost to erosion or pollution in the last 40 years. Now that's a huge problem whether we are all vegetarians or not because we're talking crop land, but we use way more crop land to feed our livestock than we do to feed ourselves, right? Something like 56 million acres of land are used to grow crops in the United States to feed animals. Four million are used to grow crops for human consumption. So there's a lot, a lot of resources that are used up just from meat-based diets, right?

A lot of people say, well, just go to plant-based diets. And other people say, you can't get enough protein from plant-based diets, which apparently is not true from what I'm seeing. Other people are saying, fine, you want some protein? I got something for you. And it's crickets. Yeah, I'm kind of, I'm not surprised, but it goes to show you the population boom if meat consumption has increased that much in the face of probably more vegetarianism and

veganism than ever before, too, you know? Well, that's kind of heartening. Like, if there does seem to be, I guess if societies follow. Yeah, I'd like, we should, I mean, we've been dancing around doing episodes on vegetarianism and veganism for a while, so we should probably tackle that at some point. All right. I'm kind of curious about the history,

because it seems like in the, like, probably since the onset of America until and then I'm just I'm talking off my at the top of my head here but until probably the 90s it seemed like everybody was just like meat meat meat meat meat. Well there's a I mean it's definitely associated with wealth right if you can afford to eat a nice steak, kind of indicates you have a certain amount of status in your society, right? Well, like the 50s, it seems like they would eat steak

for lunch, and I can't imagine like a steak for lunch that seems so indulgent. Yeah, I think it is. You know? Yeah. Like, yeah, just give me the 20 ounce ribeye for lunch. Right. It's just just I don't know I can't imagine that but in three martinis I don't argue with that part

That is pretty indulgent three martinis and a 20 ounce ribeye for lunch. I mean that was Don Draper, you know Yeah, I never saw that show. I know I never saw it. It's just available where Is it out there really I thought they erased it all I know. I never saw it. It's available. Where? Is it out there really? I thought they erased it all. Yeah, they did. They said, that's it, it's done. Didn't he go become a lumberjack at the end? No, he did not.

Oh, okay. Oh, that's Dexter. Oh man, I know we've talked about the ending of that show. I actually never saw the end of that one. Oh. You just told me about it. Yeah, I think you still owe it to yourself just to watch the finale. Okay.

So this dude, Kevin, how would you pronounce that? Bachhubah. B-A-C-H, which is fine, that's clearly Bachh. And H-U-B-R, you just don't often see two H's side by side. No. So anyway, Kevin Bachhuba is a dude that is kind of championing, well not kind of, very much championing this movement. In 2007 he went to Thailand and tasted crickets, deep fried crickets,

and he's from California and he was like, hey, this is really good. He said far out. They've been doing this. In Thailand since the late 90s, the King established a big growing program for crickets and cricket farms, education and schools, like, you know, this is a good way to get protein in your diet. And he said, I think this is the direction America should go and I'm going to get protein in your diet. And he said, I think this is the direction America should go and I'm gonna get in on the money side of it.

Like the farming of it. Apparently it's a $20 million industry already. Not bad. No, it isn't. And we should say that Bachhuber is one of several people who are into this, the idea of cricket farming, commercial cricket farming. And he's definitely one of the OGs for sure.

His business was the first to get approval to sell crickets as food in the United States. He got FDA approval because the cricket industry actually is kind of old. Well, it's not too old, but I saw anywhere between 50 FDA approval because the the cricket industry actually is kind of old well That's not too old, but I saw anywhere between 50 and 70 years old in the US And they're raised to say feed fish for commercial fish farming or to grind up as a protein supplement for Livestock feed so people have been raising crickets for a while or to feed to like reptiles to sell them to pet stores

Yeah, so there there was an established infrastructure of cricket farming raising crickets for a while or to feed to like reptiles, to sell them to pet stores. So there was an established infrastructure of cricket farming, but making the transition from selling it to feed to cows or fish or snakes to selling it to people to eat directly, that was a big step and Bachhuber was the first one to take it in the US. I should just say the reason I point out he's just one of many is because this House Stuff Works article is basically like, here's my report on Kevin Bachhuber's Ted Talk. Sort of.

You know? Yeah. I think just he definitely deserves credit because he's leading the charge, but so are other people as well. Yeah, he's woven throughout this thing though. Yeah. And you know, if you listen to the Entomophagy episode, episode? No, it's episode.

We pointed out then, and it bears repeating that America is new to this, but I think it was Canada and the United States and Western Europe are literally the only places on earth that don't consume insects as a regular part of their diet these days. So I saw, so this article kind of says the standard 80% of the world regularly consumes insects as part of their diet. I saw that there's a food and agriculture organization, the UN organization report said something, it was more like about a third of the population, so rather than 80%, maybe like 30 to 35%,

which is still significant. Yeah, that's a big difference. It is. And in the West specifically, the idea of eating bugs is not, it's not commonplace. I actually saw a pretty good explanation for why. 13 of the 14 large livestock animals that are domesticated are found in Eurasia and

made their way over to the Americas. And those animals provide not just meat, but also things like milk, clothing, everything basically. So since these, what you would call Western countries, had access to these domesticated animals, they never needed bugs as a food source. And then secondly, since they were raising domesticated animals, by definition, they had a sedentary agricultural lifestyle, which meant that their exposure to bugs was bugs as pests. So not only were bugs not edible, They were something you that were just undesirable

On on their face. Oh sure so that led to the It closed the door on bugs being eaten by Westerners and so that that came to be Filled by a sense of disgust Which is a basic human emotion, but it's the only one that's culturally bound, which means you learn what is disgusting from your cultural group. Yeah, for sure. But that also means you can unlearn it too. Well, if big cricket has anything to do with it. Why don't we take a quick break,

and we're going to come back and talk about a UN report that kind of changed a lot of things about four years ago. Hey, Will. Do you ever get overwhelmed by how much science happens these days? Constantly. I'm like, ah, there's so much science, I can't keep track of it all. Then it's a good thing our podcast, Part-Time Geniuses, is counting down the 25 greatest science ideas from the past 25 years. That's right, Mango.

We're talking animals. In a paper called, quote, chickens prefer beautiful humans. Right. This was actually the title of the paper. I like this. They all discovered that much like humans, chickens are attracted to symmetrical faces. Got it. We're talking medical miracles.

He's an endocrinologist who found a way to stimulate insulin-producing cells using, wait for it, the saliva of a Gila monster. There's no way to make that not sound crazy. We even talked to some of the experts behind these breakthroughs. It's a week full of fact-packed stories you won't want to miss. So listen to the part-time genius countdown of the 25 greatest science ideas of the past 25 years, starting Monday, March 3rd on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get UN report. 2013, there was a big kind of sea change. I don't know about sea change.

It was the beginning. Beginning of a sea change. They issued a report called Edible Insects Colon, Future Prospects for Food and Feed Security. And it was basically just championing entomophagy and all the benefits that surround it, like how nutrient-dense crickets and other insects are, the fact that it's socially sustainable, economically viable, and friendly, environmentally friendly. And it kind of paints it as like, hey, this is the future, or it could be part of the future at least, of getting protein into Americans. Right. And the report itself didn't focus exclusively on crickets,

but crickets feature prominently in the report. They're the star. It was about bugs in general and eating bugs in general. And it made a pretty big splash. I remember when it came out. It really hit the news cycle pretty hard. But it also caught the attention of that Bocuber guy who said, all right, I think I'm going to get into this.

Because he'd already been exposed to eating crickets in Thailand. And then when that UN report came out, he, I think, began his startup here in the states of his commercial cricket farm startup. Yeah, it's funny, they put in this article that it was the most popular document in the history of the UN. Yeah, I didn't see that anywhere. I think that was, he said that at his Ted report. Yeah yeah. But yeah it definitely made a splash I'll give him that for

sure. Yeah he spoke at a Ted X Youngstown Ohio because that's where he's based that's where his company is. Right. And I guess he he just made up his own Ted X probably. Right. Alright so let's talk about crickets. Well all insects in particular are very rich in protein, like we've talked about. They have a lot of healthy fats, a lot of zinc, a lot of iron, a lot of calcium. And there's something called, I guess, efficient animals. I mean, this is when vegetarians and vegans are, like these kind of terms make their skin crawl, I'm sure. But the kind of efficiency you get out of raising and killing and eating an animal is on a spectrum.

And, you know, from cows, like you talked about, it's probably the worst. I would guess, don't you think? Right, right. The animal itself is efficient at converting food that you feed it into stuff that you can get from it. Yeah. So, like you said, not a lot of the cow is used to eat. No. It's like 40% of a cow is edible and digestible. And I think the chicken is about the most efficient animal protein right now. Right.

But nothing like crickets. So there's two different things here, right? So you've got efficiency in nutrient conversion, which is, say, like if you eat an apple, you can convert X amount of the energy available in the apple into energy for yourself, metabolism, right? And poop. Right.

Yeah, but poop is waste. So that stuff wouldn't count toward efficiency. It would actually subtract from your efficiency and lower your efficiency. If you ate an apple and used every bit of it and it produced zero poop, you would have 100% efficiently converted that apple into useful energy, right?

And that'd be a weird apple. It would be a magic apple and you wouldn't need a poop shoot. But instead you do because there is no such thing as 100% efficiency in any animal, right? But some are better than others like you were saying. And with a cricket, it's something like, they're like 12 times more efficient at converting food into usable energy or stored, in this case, stored protein, right?

So for every kilogram of live cricket weight, which is a pretty substantial amount of crickets, but kilogram to kilogram or pound to pound, it just takes 1.7 kilograms of feed to produce one kilogram of live crickets. Not bad. For a cow, it takes 10 kilograms of feed to produce one kilogram of beef. Very inefficient by comparison.

So if you take the fact that it doesn't take much feed to produce a biomass of crickets and that crickets are 80% edible and digestible compared to the cows 40% edible and digestible then you really have a if you're just going pound to pound or kilogram to kilogram and much more nutrient dense much more efficient and then therefore much less much less wasteful animal that you could eat. Yeah, a lot of that has to do with the fact that crickets are cold-blooded, so they're very much more efficient at converting that feed into protein.

And crickets aren't even the most efficient insect. No, no. I'm not sure which one is actually. I think mealworms are pretty efficient. Oh yeah. You just said that because you're eating a mealworm. Right. Well I have a mealworm farm I was going to ask you to buy in on.

Oh really? Uh huh. In my pocket. See? Is that a mealworm farm in your pocket? It is. My pocket mulch. So like we mentioned, Mr. Bachrubah is, if he's not German, he should be. Kevin Bachrubah?

I think he's Irish German, maybe. It's spelled KVN though, so we're just inserting vowels for him. Right. Like D-N-C-E. What's that? It's this band. Oh, probably a young person's band. I believe so no wonder I don't know But he is one that I think they're about and this is probably changed even since this is written about 25 or so Cricket startup farms here in the United States. Yeah, I couldn't find the current number Yeah, let's just say at least 25.

Okay, although I'll bet they go under pretty quick. You think so? I could see losing your shirt on cricket farming right now. It's just so early. Yeah, true. And the market is so not there and the stuff they're producing is so expensive. Well, and their output right now is still really small

in the early years here. But the dream for him and all these cricket farmers is that one day it will, I don't think they have designs that will ever be in some parts of the world where it's on every menu and every restaurant, but they would certainly like to see cricket snacks in grocery stores and menu offerings in some of the more wacky hipster restaurants at least.

Yeah, did you watch Shark Tank? Oh, you know I do. Okay, so did you see the one with Rose Wang and Laura Desario? I've seen them all. Okay, so you saw the one with chirps, they're cricket-based snack product chirps. I want to try it. I do too.

I'm not an adventurous eater, as you know, but I would totally try fried crickets and things. That doesn't gross me out for some reason. No, and I would try it as well. And I don't know if you remember or not, but when we did that locust thing for Science Channel the second time has come up this month weirdly enough they made fried locusts and I refused to eat them right and it wasn't because I was grossed out it was because I was sure that I was gonna have

some sort of weird allergic reaction to them all right and I would have had right yeah yeah and I would have had to have been like, you know, life-flighted somewhere to a hospital and would have missed my flight home. That is the only reason I didn't eat them. It had nothing to do with disgust. But in that UN report, they address allergies and they said that it's actually exceedingly rare that somebody has an allergic reaction to an arthropod or to an insect I should say. But the reason why I thought so is because yeah, I had had like a shrimp blow up once

and I just was not about to roll the dice on that. Not for what Science Channel was paying us. Well, I think it's very funny that you, I remember your shrimp years in that you had an allergic reaction to shrimp. But you wanted to eat shrimp so bad, you started to eat shrimp a little bit just to see if you could eat shrimp. Yeah, shrimp chips. Yeah. Which use real shrimp powder. It's like a, I think Japanese or Korean or Chinese delicacy. But now you use real shrimp powder. It's like a I think Japanese or

Korean or Chinese delicacy. But now you can eat shrimp right? Yeah I did immunotherapy and now I'm fine. I can eat shrimp all day long. I love that you were so dedicated to eating shrimp. Yeah I love shrimp man. Good shrimp like seasoned with Old Bay just simple stuff. Oh man so good. This is a great time to bring up one of my big pet peeves. Okay. I know that cooking with shrimp heads and tails on increases the flavor quite a bit. Does it? Yeah. Okay.

Which is why they do it. But it's one thing if you get an appetizer with like a prawn with the head left on or something. But if you, like I get pasta dishes sometimes. Oh yeah. That have like heads and tails on them. If there's a fork involved, you don't want to have to put your fork down and take the head and tail off.

No, like you literally have to dig them out of the pasta, take the head and tail off, and then put them back in your food. Right. Which is just, I don't get why restaurants do that. Like maybe cook it in there and then take it off for us. So I ran across a reason probably why. All right, let's hear it.

There's something called chitin, which makes up the exoskeleton of bugs, but it also makes up the shells of crustaceans as well. And chitin supposedly, if you don't have an allergic reaction to it, chitin is apparently good for, it's said to be good for weight loss, digestion, aids in digestion allegedly, and I think it has something to do with your blood pressure too.

And in other countries, non-Western countries, I think they prescribe chitin quite a bit as like a dietary supplement. And I saw one study that said, yeah, it had a little bit of an effect, a little more than placebo, but not clinically significant, but it was just one study. So I'm curious if chitin actually does have an effect, but it's possible they're saying you should eat the whole thing.

Well, that's what I was gonna ask. All the shell. What? I's what I was gonna add. All the shell. What? I mean, I don't know. They could also just be a fat lazy chef, you know? Well, I mean, I'll eat a soft shell crab till the cows come home, but I'm not eating a shrimp tail.

Yeah, it sounds gross. Well, it's just not like, they don't soften up enough, you know? But if you think about it though, if you're eating a fried cricket or something, you're eating the whole thing. Shell and all, antennae. Well, yeah, but I thought that in the soft shell crab zone. So you eat the shell of the soft shell crab?

Yeah, that's what you're supposed to do. That's what it is. I don't know that I've ever had soft shell crab. Oh, my friend. Is that like a blue crab? No, I think it's a special kind shell crab. Oh, my friend. Is that like a blue crab? No, I think it's a special kind of crab. Oh.

It's parents must love it very much. I might be wrong. I think it's a special kind of crab and then you prepare it with the shell. But I think the shell is soft to begin with though. I don't think it's just from cooking. But like spider roll is one of my favorite sushi rolls. That's softshell crab.

Okay. Yeah. I thought that was crab, like, spelled with a K, like fake crab. No, no. Like, the little legs are coming out of the end and everything. What? That's why they call it a spider roll, because it looks like little spider legs. I'll try that.

And then, like, a softshell crab sandwich is, I mean, you open the bun and there's just like this crab staring at you Yeah, how's it going? You're gonna eat me in a second aren't you? I'm getting hungry now. You want to take a break real quick? Well quickly before we just should mention that they did get a deal on Shark Tank. Oh, yeah with Mark Cuban For chirps, right? We're contractually obligated to munch on Mark Cuban. That's right. We get our kickback coming.

I would try chirps for sure. If the chirps people are out there listening and you want to send us some chirps, I will try them up. All right. So let's take that break. Okay. Hey Will, do you ever get overwhelmed by how much science happens these days? Constantly. I'm like, ah, there's so much science I can't keep track of it all.

Then it's a good thing our podcast, Part-Time Genius, is counting down the 25 greatest science ideas from the past 25 years. That's right, Mango. We're talking animals. In a paper called, quote, chickens prefer beautiful humans. Right. This was actually the title of the paper. They all discovered that much like humans,

chickens are attracted to symmetrical faces. Got it. We're talking medical miracles. He's an endocrinologist who found a way to stimulate insulin producing cells using, wait for it, the saliva of a Gila monster. There's no way to make that not sound crazy. We even talked to some of the experts behind these breakthroughs.

It's a week full of fact-packed stories you won't want to miss. So listen to the part-time genius countdown of the 25 greatest science ideas of the past 25 years, starting Monday, March 3rd on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck. So Chuck, we said, I think I said that one of the things that's holding this industry back right now

Is that the it's so expensive the the products they're making There's something called cricket flour, which is ground-up cricket meal. Mm-hmm. Basically a protein powder made from crickets, right? And it's it's anywhere from like thirty five to fifty dollars a pound for it Yeah, it's very expensive a lot of money It's anywhere from like 35 to 50 dollars a pound for it. It's very expensive. But it's really ironic because crickets require so much less space and food and water and electricity. It's apparently the labor force that is the most expensive thing of any commercial cricket farm,

because it's just hard to find people who can do that, even though it's not exactly hard. It's just there's a lot of trial and error going on. So from what I saw, it's the labor force that's eating up most of the revenue or profits from cricket farming. Well, finding all those tiny people, those three inch people, it's not easy. But there are startups also that are trying to sell like home cricket kits too. Yeah. Because that's part of the whole idea where if you're going to get people to supplement their diet, well, just let them grow them at home too.

So should we talk a little bit about this, the farming? Yeah. So crickets, uh, live about seven weeks. Um, I mean, that right there shows you a big difference between that and like the beef industry. Sure. Uh, so during that seven week life cycle, they, they have three different environments that they reside in.

And they basically live and hang out on what they call cricket high rises, which are little egg cartons. Yeah, I saw that they have tried all sorts of different material and they keep going back to egg cartons. For some reason, crickets just love hanging out on egg cartons. Well, who doesn't? And what they eat is, because I was kind of wondering that, they eat grain-based feed, organic grain-based feed, fruits and vegetables, and they,

some of them will reach that breeding stage, some won't. And if they do, they're gonna lay a lot of eggs, like several thousand eggs a mommy cricket will lay in her lifetime Yeah, so many eggs in fact that they that they typically just throw most of them out Like you'll keep some to grow a new generation from but there's just so many that are just tossed out because they don't have the capacity Yet to grow them. Yeah So that you know, they're I think Bachhuber put it like he could be drowning in eggs if he's not careful. Drowning in cricket eggs. He probably wakes

up every night sweating. He probably really does wake up every night from the cricket chirping. Oh I never thought about that. That must be nice actually. Yeah it can be. So they like hot humid environments or at least warm depending on your definition of hot. It's hot to me. 85 to 95 degrees Fahrenheit with about a 40% humidity level. Yep. And the whole process from soup to nuts or from eggs to chirps is about 56 days. Yeah. Roughly. Yeah and if you you can do this yourself at home, you just need basically two terrariums. You need to put them near heat,

because that is substantial. 85 to 95 degrees is hot, way hotter than you're gonna keep your house. So you do need like a heat lamp of some sort, and you need water, a source of water too. Those are the two most important things with raising crickets. And the reason you have two terrariums is because in the one where you have like the

30 initial crickets, say, you're going to put a dish of soil and that's where they're going to lay their eggs. You want to check the soil every day for eggs. And when you find eggs, you take that little soil dish out and put it in the other terrarium and then that's where the eggs are gonna grow and hatch and when the crickets hatch they're fully formed there's no larval stage right they don't go from like a maggot into a cricket they're fully formed they're just much smaller right yeah and according to Aristotle it's about around here or maybe within the next like week or so, that they're the most delicious.

Aristotle? Yeah, Aristotle wrote in his Historia Animalium, actually he was writing about cicadas, that they're better before their last molt. So I guess that wouldn't apply to crickets. No, it would, cause they molt. Do they? They do molt.

He also said that females taste best after copulation because they are full of eggs. After Aristotle has copulated? Right. Or after the cricket has. Instead of a cigarette, you just need a pregnant female cicada. Try this baby. Right. It'll knock your socks off. I bet Aristotle pillow talk with something else.

I don't think it was. You know? Or it would just be like, ugh, man, he just keeps going on and on about cicadas. So harvesting, I mean, there's no way around it. At some point, like any live thing that you're raising, you're going to have to kill it. And instead of like what we see on factory farms with cows and pigs,

what you do on a cricket farm is you cool them down and then freeze them. And so what happens is they get cold, they start to get a little chilly, their temperature drops and they go into what's called a diapause, sort of a hibernation-like state. And then pretty much after that they go, it sure is chilly in here, and then they're gone and frozen. Yeah, apparently they eventually freeze solid.

So they spend about 24 hours in the freezer and then they're ready to be sold. Either ground into say like a powder or baked into a fried snack or sold to somebody else. But that's that. And I was like, do they wake up then if you heat them up in a pan? But apparently, after 24 hours in their frozen solid,

they're dead. Yeah. But to them, it's just like going to sleep forever. Yeah, I kind of wonder when I was reading this, I was like, how do vegans and vegetarians feel about eating insects? Supposedly, it does not count as vegetarian. Well, it depends on who you ask. I didn't get any like there is no official rule book

There's not I don't think so. I'm surprised but basically I just went to a bunch of vegan Vegetarian websites and looked to see what people said and it it kind of ranged from Well, sure, I'll eat insects and this is a much better way to get protein in your body than animals, to where other people said no, it's a living thing, not going to eat it, I get all the protein I need from plants. If you're eating something, a live animal, then you're not a vegan or a vegetarian. Yeah, I saw crickets referred to as mini livestock, all one word. Yeah.

I mean, they are a living animal, for sure. So I guess it's a personal choice, it sounds like. Yeah. Just like, you know, vegetarians eat fish sometimes too. Well, that'd be a pescatarian, right? I guess, but I've met plenty of vegetarians that are like, I'm a vegetarian and I eat fish. Leave me alone. And that's when you go, technically you're a pescatarian,

and then you get punched in the face. Right. So eating crickets, some people say it's sort of nutty. Some people say it's a little sweet, like sweet corn. I would like to know for myself. I wish we could have gotten our hand on some chirps beforehand. But maybe we can follow up in the future. We need a big bowl of chirps right here.

Like, yeah, like we did with the. Soylent? Yeah, with the soylent. Soylent. We'll do a follow up. Soylent. So there's this lady, Daniela Martin, and she has a travel show,

well it's an insect cooking and travel show show called Girl Meets Bug. Very cute. And we should say the the Chirps ladies called crickets the gateway bug. Also that was kind of funny and punny. And Daniela says that she started eating crickets and kind of became fascinated with insects in general when she was in Mexico, in Yucatan, and kind of became, I don't think obsessed, but just super interested in this as her protein of choice and said, you know, I started cooking them up with a little butter, a little onion, a little salt,

and like with anything, if you put it in a pan with some butter and onion and salt, maybe a little garlic, it's probably gonna taste pretty darn good. Yeah, you could cook almost anything with butter, salt, and onions and you're fine. Yeah, even when you hear stories of these creepy cannibal people, they usually cook it in butter.

With a little salt and onion and garlic. Yeah, I think that one guy who advertised on Craigslist. He did. He sauteed with, yeah onion you're right. Huh. Anyway. Penis I think it was. Who say what?

He ate penis like that. He did. Man that was a very disturbing case. Sure. So, she says crisping them in the oven is another, besides grinding them into powder, cooking them up, like broiling them in the oven, don't overcook it. A little olive oil, a little garlic salt,

throw them in there about 250 for about 15 minutes, and a little sea salt on top maybe, and you're gonna have a crunchy, delicious, nutrient-rich snack. Yeah, and you wanna clean them off too if you're cooking them from raw. I guess so. I mean, they're bugs.

That's something you wanna do. What do you do, just like wash them in a colander? I guess so, yeah. But I think like if they're already prepared, you're probably okay. Because one of the big things that like Bocuber did by getting FDA approval, now you can't just raise crickets on just anything. They have to be fed food that is okay for humans to eat too.

Right. Which is something that the cricket farming industry is running up against because one of the big things proponents are saying is like, man, you could raise crickets. If you had large scale cricket farms, you could raise crickets on food waste. And if you do that, not only are you like raising your crickets, you're also getting rid of food waste. You're composting basically, right? Composting, that's the way you say it. But apparently the FDA is like, now you can't feed things food waste, you nut job.

You're going to eat it eventually. So there's big rules against it, but I think they're trying to chip away at that as well. Yeah, I remember being alarmed when I briefly worked in the chicken industry when I found out that a lot of chicken feed is made from chickens Yeah, not not okay. Yeah, that's not right. So I saw in I think popular science They had a little nutrition facts thing for crickets. It's so cute. They said for a hundred grams of crickets You're looking at about a hundred and1 calories. You've got about five and a half grams of carbs, 12.9 grams of protein. That is substantial. 75.8 milligrams of calcium

and nine and a half milligrams of iron. That's also pretty substantial. Just from 100 grams, I think they estimate that's about 20 to 22 crickets. Like a handful and a half. Yeah. Nice. That is, that's pretty good. And the idea that if you are just raising crickets yourself, you can feed them your own kitchen waste,

and then eat the crickets yourself. Like composting. There's also, right, right. There's also very low barriers to entry into cricket farming. So if you're not a wealthy person and you need to make some extra money, you could conceivably raise crickets yourself and then sell them at market too.

It's like podcasting. Exactly. Exactly. I think that's it. I got nothing else. All right. Well, that's cricket farming everybody. Go make it happen.

And in the meantime, you can look up this article on howstuffworks.com. And since I said that, it's time for Listener Mail. I'm going to call this Kevin Spacey's accent explained. Oh, and before I read this, there is a House of Cards spoiler. Spoiler. So alert to that. Hey guys, just listened to the episode on accents. I'm happy you brought up Kevin Spacey's accent from House of Cards. Because I have a theory.

Spacey plays the character Frank Underwood, grew up poor in Gaffney, South Carolina, but then went on to the Citadel in Charleston and created a persona that eventually lands him president. His accent does not sound like a bad attempt at the R-less, old money Charleston accent, but I think it fits the character. Instead of a twangy R-full accent

that he'd have from Gaffney, Spacey's playing Frank Underwood who is playing someone with noble southern roots. And that's why it sounds fake. Am I giving Kevin Spacey too much credit? Possibly. But being from Greenville, South Carolina, I enjoyed dissecting his Carolina accent. And actually, I don't have much of an accent myself, except with words like lawyer and

oil. Jerry just laughed. of an accent myself except with words like lawyer and oil. Jerry just laughed. Because my brother who's 10 years older trained it out of me when I was very young. He said he didn't want people to underestimate my intelligence because of our accent. He would correct me every time I would say things like turn the lights on instead of turn the lights on or naked instead of naked. Yep.

If you're of naked. Yep. If you're saying naked. Smack him with a length of dry bamboo and say again. Say it again. I sort of wish I sounded more like the rest of my family, but what a considerate thing for my big brother who have done when he was a teenager. Seriously.

And that is from Mary Jean Murphy. That was pretty great, Mary Jean. Your brother is a little social engineer, isn't he? I like that. And thank you also for the spoiler about Kevin Spacey becoming president on House of Cards. If you want to get in touch with us like she did, you can send us an email to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. Hey Will, do you ever get overwhelmed by how much science happens these days? Constantly.

I'm like, ah, there's so much science, I can't keep track of it all. Then it's a good thing our podcast, Part-Time Geniuses, counting down the 25 greatest science ideas from the past 25 years. That's right, Mango. We're talking animals. In a paper called, quote, chickens prefer beautiful humans.

Right, okay. This was actually the title of the paper. They all discovered that, much like humans, chickens are attracted to symmetrical faces. Got it. We're talking medical miracles. He's an endocrinologist who found a way to stimulate insulin-producing cells using, wait for it, the saliva of a Gila monster. There's no way to make that not sound crazy.

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