September 7, 2017 • 43 mins
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 today's episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh W.
Chuck Clark. There's Charles Malcolm Bryant, and there's Jerry the
(00:22):
whiz Roll. And it sounds like an Aaron Cooper poster
gone bad. Yeah already. Yeah, we'll have like the swirling
face like the weird people in Jacob's Ladder. It's funny.
We had a office visitor a couple of weeks ago
and I don't think you were here, and the in fact,
I know you weren't here because you would have been
in here, but there was. There's our great step Brothers,
(00:42):
you know the movie Step Brothers. For those of you
out here out there, there's a promo of John c
Riley and Will Ferrell with as like with an Olan
Mills type U you know post photograph and Aaron Cooper
are our buddy from Kansas who does our great photoshop stuff.
Uh made us into I was John c Rally and
(01:03):
your Will Ferrell and the guy came in and I
was looking around and I was like, oh man, these
are great, and you know, look at that, you know
that looks like I don't know, it looks like it
could be like something like the movie step Brother or something. 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
(01:25):
didn't quite zone in on all of them were us.
He should have like clapped loudly beside his ear. Uh man,
I had a little scary thing today. What happened? If
I may, this is kind of part p s A.
This has nothing to do with cricket farming. But um,
we're getting our our basement water proofed because for thirteen
(01:50):
years it's been leaking water like really bad, so much
so that we have mold now oh yeah, black mold. Yes,
And we're also getting mold remediation and done at the
same time. So needless to say, that's a fun, fun
way to spend a lot of money. Um, but I
come home today and my carbon monoxide alarm is going
(02:12):
off because these yahoo's are using a gas powered concrete
saw in our basement. No, and it's like full on saying,
you know, get out of the house, and my animals
are in there, so 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
(02:33):
literally could have come home to dead animals man and
dead workman. Yeah those guys too. Wow, I'll bet they're
not the sharpest text in the box. Anyway. 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 for the gas, but like concrete dust is
really dangerous too. They're like, I don't care. I've got
(02:54):
Obama care. It was so weird, man, and just it
freaked me out to the point where Emily she wanted
to like fire the guy. Uh he wasn't even there,
like the you know, the foreman or the company. Yeah,
and she wanted to be like, man, if he doesn't
understand that this is dangerous, And he said, you know,
open up your windows, it'll be clear in fifteen minutes.
(03:15):
And it took two hours for that alarm to stop
going on. 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 grattis for you. Yeah,
(03:37):
it was, uh 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 You're okay. I just gotta
calm down here. That the sound of the crickets on
our miniature cricket farm here for soothing me. At least
(03:58):
I know they'd put me to sleep. I'm glad we
set that up. That was pretty good. That was one
of our better segways. Sadly enough. Thanks. Um. Yeah, we
are talking crickets, aren't we. Yeah, we covered into mafaji A.
Meant to look up when, but it was. It seems
like a long time ago, right, And that's eating bugs
and insects. But this is focusing specifically on crickets because
(04:23):
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, they're I mean, they're pretty
easy to raise. Uh, they don't require much space. You
can set up your own cricket farm at home. Um.
And really we should say the point of all this,
(04:44):
the whole reason anybody would want people to start raising
crickets at home is because the um, well, the the
earth is about to collapse and our food supply is
in in real danger. Right. So I've got some stats
for you, chuck. So, meat consumption per capita has um
(05:08):
increased into the developed world. Actually it's doubled in the
last thirty years, and that's thanks in no small part
to the rise of the brick countries Brazil, Russia, India,
and China, who have huge, massive populations. As they entered
capitalist um the capitalist global economy um, have generally become enriched,
(05:31):
and the more money they have, the more meat civilization
tends to consume, at least these days. Right. 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're ready for this one, I don't know. I'm
afraid to produce one pound of meat that's a half
(05:53):
a kilo basically of meat beef. Sorry, yeah, um, it
requires about four hundred 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, you know that the crops that you
(06:13):
feed to the cow, So there's double water consumption. But
one of the problem, one of the reasons cattle beef
requires so much um water is because you only consume
of the cow. So 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
(06:34):
delivery system is efficient, right, that's just water. Fifty one
of the greenhouse gases that are admitted on planet Earth
come from animal agriculture and um. One third of the
world's adequate or high quality crop land has been lost
(06:56):
to erosion or pollution in the last forty years. And
then 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 fifty six million
acres of land are used to grow crops in the
United States to feed animals. Four million are used to
(07:20):
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 from what I'm seeing. Um, other
(07:42):
people are saying, fine, you want some protein, I got
something for you, and it's crickets. Yeah, I'm kind of
a I'm not surprised, but it goes to show you
the population boom. If meat consumption is increased that much
in the face of probably more vegetarianism and v aganism
then ever before too. You know, well, that's kind of heartening,
(08:03):
like if if there does seem to be if I
guess if if societies follow, Yeah, 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. I'm kind of curious about the history because
it seems like in the like probably since the onset
(08:25):
of America until uh and then I'm just I'm talking
off the top of my head here, but until probably
the nineties, it seems 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
(08:47):
your society, right, well, like the fifties, it seems like
they would eat steak for lunch, right 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, give me the twenty ounce ribby for lunch.
It's just I don't know, I can't imagine that. But
in three martinis. I don't argue with that part. That
(09:11):
is pretty indulgent. Three martinis in a twenty ounce by
four lunch. I mean that was don Draper, you know. Yeah,
I never saw that show. I know, I never saw it.
It's 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
(09:33):
in at the end? No he did? Okay, oh that's
texting uh oh man. And then we talked about the
ending of that show. Greg, I actually never saw the
end of that one. You just told me about it. Yeah,
I think you stild it to yourself just to watch
the finale. Um. So this dude Kevin, Uh, how would
(09:54):
you pronounce that b B A C H, which is fine,
that's clearly Bach and h U b R. You just
don't often see two h's side by side. So anyway,
Kevin Bakuba Uh is a dude that is kind of championing,
not kind of very much championing this movement. In two
(10:15):
thousand seven, he went to Thailand and tasted crickets deep
fried crickets and Uh, he's from California, and he was like, Hey,
this is really good. He's been far out. They've been
doing this UM in Thailand since the late nineties. The
king established a big growing program for crickets and cricket
farms UM education in schools, like you know, this is
(10:38):
a good way to get protein in your diet. And
he said, I think this is the direction of America
should go. And I'm going to get in on the
the money side of it. Yeah, like the farming of it.
Apparently it's a twenty million dollar industry already. Not bad. No,
it isn't UM. And we should say that Bach cuber
(10:59):
Was is one of several um people who are into this, uh.
The idea of cricket farming, commercial cricket farming UM, and
he's definitely one of the o G s for sure.
His business was the first to get approval to sell
crickets as food in the United States. We got FDA
approval because the cricket industry actually is kind of old.
(11:23):
Well it's not too old, but I saw anywhere between
fifty and seventy years old in the US UM. And
they're raised to say feed fish for commercial fish farming,
or to grind up as a protein supplement for um
livestock feed. So people have been raising crickets for a while,
or to feed to like reptiles, um to sell them
to pet stores. So there there was an established infrastructure
(11:47):
of cricket farming UM. But the making the transition from
selling it to feed to cows or fish or snakes
to selling it to people to eat directly, that's that
was a big step, and bok Huber was the first
one to take it in the US UM. I should
just say the reason I point out he's just one
(12:08):
of many is because this How Stuff Works article is
basically like here's my report on Kevin bok Huber's ted
ted talk. You know, yeah, I think just he he
definitely deserves you know, credit because he's leading the charge,
but so are other people as well. Yeah, he's wo
went throughout this thing though. Yeah. Um. And you know,
if you listen to the Intamafaji episode episode no, it's
(12:31):
it's episode. UM. 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 in 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
(12:54):
standard of the world regularly consumes insects as part of
their diet. I saw that there's a a Food and
Agriculture organization, the u N Organization reports said something it
was more like about a third of the populations rather
than eight percent, maybe like thirty which is still significant.
(13:16):
It is um and in in the West specifically, the
idea of eating bugs is not It's not commonplace, right,
And I actually saw a pretty good explanation for why. Um,
Like thirteen of the fourteen large livestock animals that are
(13:36):
domesticated are found in Eurasia and made their way over
to the America's and those things those animals provide not
just meat, but also things like milk, um, clothing, everything. Basically,
So since since these what you would call Western countries
(13:57):
had access to these domesticated animal most they never needed
bugs as a food source. And then secondly, since they
were raising domesticated animals, by definition, they had um a
sedentary um agricultural lifestyle, which meant that their exposure to
bugs was bugs as pests. So not only were bugs
(14:21):
not edible, they were something you that were just undesirable
on their face. 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
(14:45):
disgusting from your from your cultural group, for sure, but
that also means you can unlearn it too. Well, this
big cricket has anything to do with it. Uh, why
don't we take a quick break and gonna come back
and talked about a UN report that kind of changed
a lot of things about four years ago? Change, all right,
(15:26):
So I promised you a UN report. Uh, there was
a big kind of sea change. I don't know about
sea change. It was the beginning beginning of the sea change. Uh.
They issued a report called Edible Insects Colon Future Prospects
for Food and Feed Security, and it was basically just
(15:47):
championing um intoma fagy and all the benefits that surround it,
like how nutrient dense crickets and other insects are, the
fact that it's um socially sustainable, UM economically viable and friendly,
environmentally friendly, and it kind of, you know, kind of
(16:07):
paints it as like, hey, this this is the future,
or it could be part of the future at least
of getting protein into you know, Americans, right. And the
report itself didn't focus exclusively on crickets, but crickets feature
prominently in the report to the it was about. It
was about bugs in general and eating bugs in general UM,
(16:29):
and it was it made a pretty big splash. I
remember when it came out like that. It really hit
the news cycle pretty hard. But it also caught the
attention of that box cuber guy who said, all right,
I'm gonna I think I'm gonna get into this because
he had already been exposed to eating crickets in Thailand.
And then that when that UN report came out, he
I think um began his start up here in the
(16:49):
States of his commercial cricket farm start up. Yeah. It's
funny they have put in this article that it was
the most popular document in the history of the u N.
I didn't I didn't see that anywhere. I think that
was he said that at his ted report. Yeah yeah,
but um yeah, they definitely made a splash. I'll give
him that for sure. Yeah, he spoke at a ted
(17:10):
X Youngstown, Ohio, because that's where he's base, that's where
his company is, and I guess he he just made
up his own ted X probably. All right, So let's
talk about crickets. Um. 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. Uh. And there's
(17:34):
something called I guess efficient animals. Um, well, yeah, 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, in killing,
and eating an animal is on a spectrum. And you
(17:54):
know from cows, like you talked about, it's probably the worst.
I wouldn't 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 of a cow is
(18:15):
is edible and digestible. And I think the chicken is
about the most efficient animal protein right now, stuff like crickets.
So there's two different things here, right. So you've got
um efficiency in nutrient conversion, which is say, like if
you eat an apple, you can convert you know x
amount of the energy available in the apple into you know,
(18:39):
energy for yourself metabolism, right right, Yeah? That 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 efficiently
converted that app all into useful energy. Right. It would
(19:03):
be to be a magic apple and you wouldn't need
a poop shoot, um, but instead you do. Because there
is no such thing as percent efficiency in any animal, right,
But some are better than others, like you were saying,
and with a cricket, it's something like, um, they're like
twelve times more efficient at converting food into usable energy
(19:26):
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 but kilogram to kilogram or
pound a pound, it just takes one point seven kilograms
of feed to produce one kilogram of live crickets. Not
bad for a cow. It takes ten kilograms of feed
(19:50):
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 edible and digestible compared to the cows edible
and digestible, then you really have a if you're just
(20:13):
going pound to pound or kilogram to kilogram, and much
more nutrient dense, much more efficient, and then therefore much less,
much less wasteful um 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 um, crickets
(20:33):
aren't even the most efficient insect, you know, No, huh,
I'm not sure which one is. Actually, I think meal
worms are pretty efficient. You just said that because you're
eating a meal worm. Right, Well, I have a meal
worm farm. I was gonna ask you to buy in
on huh all right in my pocket. See is that
(20:57):
a meal worm farm in your pocket? It is I
pocket mulch uh. So, like we mentioned Mr bach Uba
is um. If he's not German, he should be Kevin
back Ruber. I think he's a He's Irish German. Maybe
it's spelled k v in though, so we're just inserting
(21:18):
vowels for me, right, like d n C E. What's that?
It's this band? Okay, probably the young person's band, I believe, so,
no wonder, I don't know, but he has one of
I think they're about and this has probably changed even
since this has written about twenty five or so cricket
startup farms here in the United States. Yeah, I couldn't
(21:40):
find the current number. Yeah, let's just say at least
twenty five, although all but they go under pretty quick,
you think, so. I could see I could see losing
your shirt on cricket farming right now, it's so it's
just so early, and and the market is so not there,
and the stuff that producing is so expensive. Well, and
(22:02):
their output right now is still really small. Um, in
the in the early years here. But you know, the
dream for for him and all these cricket farmers is
that that one day it will it will. I don't
think they have designs that will ever be like in
some parts of the world where it's on every menu
and every restaurant, but they would certainly like to see
(22:22):
cricket snacks in grocery stores and um menu offerings and
some some of the more wacky hipster restaurants at least. Yeah.
Did you do you watch Shirt Tank? Oh? You know,
I do? Okay, So did you see the one with
Rose Wang and Laura Dasario. I've seen them all, Okay.
So you saw the one with Chirps their snack, their
(22:45):
cricket based stack product, Chirps. I want to try it.
I do too. Um. I'm not like, 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, I I and I would try it
as well, and do you I don't know if you
remember not. But when we did that uh locust thing
for Science Channel, it's like the second time has come
(23:06):
up this month. Weirdly enough. Um, they made fried locusts
and I refused to eat them. And it wasn't because
I was grossed out. It was because I was sure
that I was going to have some sort of weird
allergic reaction to them, and I would have had, yeah,
and I would have had to have been, like, you know,
life flighted somewhere to a hospital and would have missed
(23:26):
my flight home. Um. That that is the only reason
I didn't eat them. It had nothing to do with disgust.
But in that u N report they address allergies and
they said that it's actually exceedingly rare that somebody has
an allergic reaction to an arthropod um or to an insect.
I should say, um, But the reason why I thought
(23:49):
so was because, yeah, I had had um, I 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. Well, I think it's very funny
that you, uh, I remember your shrimp. You're shrimp years
in that you had an allergic reaction to shrimp, but
(24:11):
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 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
(24:32):
dedicated to Yeah. I love shrimp. Man, good shrimp, like
season with old Bay, just simple stuff. Oh man, so good. Uh,
this is a great time to bring up one of
my big pet peeves. I know that cooking with shrimp
heads and tails on increases the flavor quite a bit. Yeah,
which is why they do it. Um. But it's one
(24:54):
thing if you get an appetizer with like the uh,
like a prawn with a head left on or something.
But if you like I get pasta dishes sometimes, oh
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
(25:16):
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 the reason probably why. All right, let's hear it.
There's something called keton which makes up the exoskeleton of
m of bugs, but it also makes up the shells
of crustaceans as well. UM and kiton. Supposedly, if you
(25:39):
don't have an allergic reaction to it, Kiton is apparently
good for it's it's said to be good for weight loss, UM,
digestion aids in digestion allegedly UM and I think it
has something to do with your blood pressure too. And
in other countries, non non non Western countries, I think
(26:02):
they prescribed kitan quite a bit as like a dietary supplement. UM.
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 I'm curious if if kitton actually does have
an effect, but it's possible. They're saying you should eat
the whole thing. Well, that's the shell. What I mean,
(26:26):
it's 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 so the cows come home. But I'm
not eating a shrimp tail. Yeah it sounds gross. Well,
it's just not like, uh, 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
(26:47):
whole thing shell and all antenna. Well yeah, but I
think that in the 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 him. Oh,
my friend, is that like a blue crab. No. I
think it's a special kind of crab that has parents
(27:08):
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 a soft shell crab. Okay, yeah,
I thought that was crab like spelled with the K
(27:30):
like fake crab. No, No, that like the little legs
are coming out at the end and everything. That's what
they call it a spider roll because it looks like
a little spider legs. And I'll try that and then uh,
like a soft shell crab sandwiches, I mean open the
bun and there's just like this crab staring at you. Yeah, going,
how's it going. You're gonna eat me in a second,
aren't you. Oh, I'm getting hungry now, and you want
(27:52):
to take a break real quick, well quickly before we
just should mention that they did get a deal on
Shark Tank with Mark Cuban. Right, we're contractually obligated to
munch and Mark Cuban, that's right. We get our kickback coming.
I would try chirps for sure. If the Trips people
are out there listening and you want to send us
(28:13):
some chirps, I will try them up, all right, So
let's take that break, Okay, So chuck, we said, um,
(28:41):
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 products they're making. Um, there's something called
cricket flour, which is ground up cricket meal 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.
(29:04):
It's very expensive, a lot of money. But it's really
ironic because crickets require so much less um space and
food and water, um and electricity. It's apparently the the
labor force that is the most expensive thing of any
(29:24):
commercial cricket farm because there 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, is the labor force that's
that's eating up most of them the revenue or profits
from cricket farming well, planning all those tiny people, those
(29:47):
three people, right, it's not easy. But there are startups
also that are that are trying to sell like home
cricket kits too, because that's part of the whole idea
where if you're gonna 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,
(30:09):
so crickets live about seven weeks. Um. I mean that
right there shows you a big difference between that and
like the beef industry. 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,
(30:32):
I saw that. The um 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, uh. And what they eat
is because I was kind of wondering that they eat
grain based feed, organic grain based feed, um, fruits and vegetables.
And they some of them will reach that breeding stage,
(30:56):
some won't, and if they do, they're gonna lay a
lot of eggs, like you know, several thousand eggs a
mommy cricket will lay in her lifetime. Yeah, so many
eggs in fact that they they typically just throw most
of them out, like they'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
(31:18):
to grow them. Um. So that you know there, I
think bok Hubert 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 really thought about that. That must be nice. Actually, yeah,
(31:40):
it can be. So they like hot human environments, or
at least warm, depending on your definition of hot. Hot
to me eight to ninety five degrees fahrenheit with about
a forty humidity level, and the whole process from soup
to nuts or from eggs to chirps is about fifty
six yeah. Um yeah. And if you you can do
(32:04):
this yourself at home, you just need basically two terrariums.
You need to put them near heat because that is substantial.
Eight to nine degrees is hot, waight, 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 to Those are the two most important
things with raising crickets. And the reason you have two
(32:26):
terrariums is because in the one where you have like
the thirty h initial crickets, say, um, you're gonna 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 soiled dish out and put it in the
other terrarium. And then that's where the eggs are gonna
grow and hatch. And um, when the crickets hatch, they're
(32:49):
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, And according to Aris Stottle,
it's about around here or maybe within the next week
or so, that they're the most delicious. Aristotle. Yeah, Aristotle
wrote in his Historia an Amalium. Actually he was writing
(33:11):
about cicadas that um, they're better when uh there before
their last mold. So I guess I wouldn't apply to crickets, No,
I would, because they did they they do more. He
also said that females taste best after copulation because they
are full of eggs after Aristotle has copulated, right or
after instead of a cigarette, just seed a pregnant female cicada.
(33:35):
Try this baby, right, It'll knock your socks off, I
bet Aristotle, pillow talk with something else or just be
like uh yeah, and he just keeps going on and
on about cicadas. Um, so harvesting. Uh, I mean, there's
no way around it. At some point, like any live
thing that you're raising, you're gonna have to kill it.
(33:57):
And instead of um, 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 they get cold, they
start to get a little chili, their temperature drops, and
they go into what's called a dia pause um, sort
of a hibernation like state. And then pretty much after
(34:21):
that they go it is sure as chilian here and
then they're gone and frozen. Yeah, apparently they eventually free solid.
So they spent about twenty four hours in the freezer
and then they're ready to be sold either ground in
to say like a powder or baked into a fried snack,
or sold to somebody else. But that's that. And I
(34:42):
was like, do they wake up then if you if
you heat them up in a pan, But apparently after
twenty four hours and they're frozen solid, they're they're dead,
but to them it's just like going to sleep forever.
Yeah what Um? I kind of wonder when I was
reading this, I was like, how do veacons and vegetarians
feel about eating in sex. Supposedly it does not count
as vegetarian. Well, it depends on who you ask. Um.
(35:05):
I didn't get any like there is no official rule book. Um,
there's not. I don't think so. But basically, I just
went to a bunch of vegan and vegetarian websites and
looked to see what people said and it it kind
of ranged from well, sure, allied insects and this is
a much better way to to get protein in your
(35:26):
body than animals, um, 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
many livestock all one word. I mean they are a
live there, a living animal. So I guess it's a
(35:51):
personal choice. That sounds like yeah, just like you know
vegetarians eat fish sometimes too. Uh, well, that'd be a pesctarian, right,
I guess. But I've met plenty of vegetarians. They're like,
I'm a vegetarian and I eat fish, leave me alone.
And that's an ego. Technically you're a pescutarian and then
you get punched in the face. Right. Uh. So eating
(36:12):
crickets um, Some people say sort of nutty. Some people
say it's a little sweet, like sweet corn. I'm I
would like to know for myself. I wish we could
have gotten her 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 soilon. Yeah, with a soilon, soilon, we'll do
(36:34):
a follow up soilon. Um. So there's this lady, Daniella Martin,
and she has a travel show and a well it's
an insect cooking and travel show called Girl Meets Bug.
Very cute. Um and we should say the chirps. Ladies
called crickets the gateway bug also that was kind of funny,
(36:55):
uh and puny. And Daniella says that she started eating
crickets and kind of became fascinated with insects in general
when she was in Mexico and Yucatan, and it kind
of became, I don't think, obsessed, but just super interested
in this as a as her protein of choice, and said,
(37:16):
you know, I started cooking him up with the little
a little butter, little onion, 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,
(37:36):
even when you hear stories of these creepy cannibal people,
think you should cook it in butter with a little
salt and onion and garlic. Yeah, I think that one
guy who advertised on like Craigslist cannibal he yeah, he's
saw tatd with yeah onion, you're right, huh, Yes, I
think it was. I would say what he ate penis
(37:58):
that he did, and that was a very disturbing case.
Sure so, um, she says, Uh, Crisping him in the
oven is another besides you know, grinding them in the powder,
cooking them up like broiling him in the oven. Don't
overcook it. Olive oil with garlic, salt, throw them in
about two fifty about fifteen minutes and a little sea
(38:20):
salt on top maybe, and you're gonna have a crunchy, delicious,
nutrient rich snack. Yeah. And you want to clean them
off too if you're cooking them from raw, I mean
they're they're bugs. Uh, that's it's something you want to do.
What do you do just like wash them in the calendar?
I guess so yeah. Um, but I think like if
they're already prepared, you're probably okay. Um. Because one of
(38:43):
the big things that that that like bok Hubert did
by getting f day approval, like now you can't just
raise crickets on just anything, like they have to be
fed food that is okay for humans. The two um,
which is something that the cricket farming industry is running
up against because one of the big things proponents are
(39:04):
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 if you 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. Um. But apparently AFTERDA
(39:27):
he's like, now you can't feed things food waste your
nut job. You're gonna eat it eventually, so there's big
rules against it. But that 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, it's just
(39:49):
it'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 can add about a hundred and twenty hundred and
twenty one calories um. You've got about five and a
half grams of carbs, twelve point nine grams of protein
(40:12):
that is substantial um, seventy five point eight milligrams of calcium,
and nine and a half milligrams of iron. That's also
pretty substantial. Just from a hundred grams. I think they
estimate that's about twenty to twenty two crickets um, like
a handful and a half. Nice. That is, that's pretty good.
(40:33):
And and the idea that if you are just raising
cricket yourself. You can feed them your own kitchen waist
and then eat the cricket yourself. There's also, right right,
there's also um very low barriers to entry into cricket farming.
So if you're um, if you're not a wealthy person
(40:56):
and you need to make some extra money, you could
conceivably raise cricket 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, let's cricket farming. Everybody
go make it happen. And in the meantime, you can
look at this article on how stuff works dot com.
(41:17):
And since I said that it's time for a 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 alert to that. Hey, guys, just listen to
the episode on accents. I'm happy you brought up Kevin
Spacey's accent from House of Cards because I have a theory.
(41:41):
Spacey plays a character Frank Underwood, grew up poor in Gaffney,
South Carolina, but then went on to the Citadel and
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 twang are full
accent that he'd have from Gaffney. Spacey's playing Frank Underwood,
(42:05):
who was 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, enjoyed
dissecting his Carolina accent, And actually I don't have much
of an accent myself, except with words like a lawyer
and oil. Jerry just left because my brother, who's ten
(42:27):
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 light
zone instead of turned the lights on, or naked instead
of naked. If you're saying naked, length to dry bamboo
and say again again. I sort of wish I sounded
(42:49):
more like the rest of my family. But what a
considerate thing for my big brother could have done when
he was a teenager 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, Um, and
thank you also for the spoiler about Kevin Spacey becoming
president on House of Cards. If you want to get
(43:09):
in touch with us like she did, you can tweet
to us. So that's y SK podcast. I'm also at
josh um Clark. You can hang out with us on
Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know. You can
hang out with Chuck at Facebook dot com, slash Charles W.
Chuck Bryant. You can send us an email to Stuff
Podcast at how stuff Works dot com and has always
joined us at our home on the web, Stuff you
Should Know dot com For more on this and thousands
(43:35):
of other topics, is it how Stuff Works dot com
Welcome to Stuff you should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh W.
Chuck Clark. There's Charles Malcolm Bryant, and there's Jerry the
(00:22):
whiz Roll. And it sounds like an Aaron Cooper poster
gone bad. Yeah already. Yeah, we'll have like the swirling
face like the weird people in Jacob's Ladder. It's funny.
We had a office visitor a couple of weeks ago
and I don't think you were here, and the in fact,
I know you weren't here because you would have been
in here, but there was. There's our great step Brothers,
(00:42):
you know the movie Step Brothers. For those of you
out here out there, there's a promo of John c
Riley and Will Ferrell with as like with an Olan
Mills type U you know post photograph and Aaron Cooper
are our buddy from Kansas who does our great photoshop stuff.
Uh made us into I was John c Rally and
(01:03):
your Will Ferrell and the guy came in and I
was looking around and I was like, oh man, these
are great, and you know, look at that, you know
that looks like I don't know, it looks like it
could be like something like the movie step Brother or something. 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
(01:25):
didn't quite zone in on all of them were us.
He should have like clapped loudly beside his ear. Uh man,
I had a little scary thing today. What happened? If
I may, this is kind of part p s A.
This has nothing to do with cricket farming. But um,
we're getting our our basement water proofed because for thirteen
(01:50):
years it's been leaking water like really bad, so much
so that we have mold now oh yeah, black mold. Yes,
And we're also getting mold remediation and done at the
same time. So needless to say, that's a fun, fun
way to spend a lot of money. Um, but I
come home today and my carbon monoxide alarm is going
(02:12):
off because these yahoo's are using a gas powered concrete
saw in our basement. No, and it's like full on saying,
you know, get out of the house, and my animals
are in there, so 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
(02:33):
literally could have come home to dead animals man and
dead workman. Yeah those guys too. Wow, I'll bet they're
not the sharpest text in the box. Anyway. 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 for the gas, but like concrete dust is
really dangerous too. They're like, I don't care. I've got
(02:54):
Obama care. It was so weird, man, and just it
freaked me out to the point where Emily she wanted
to like fire the guy. Uh he wasn't even there,
like the you know, the foreman or the company. Yeah,
and she wanted to be like, man, if he doesn't
understand that this is dangerous, And he said, you know,
open up your windows, it'll be clear in fifteen minutes.
(03:15):
And it took two hours for that alarm to stop
going on. 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 grattis for you. Yeah,
(03:37):
it was, uh 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 You're okay. I just gotta
calm down here. That the sound of the crickets on
our miniature cricket farm here for soothing me. At least
(03:58):
I know they'd put me to sleep. I'm glad we
set that up. That was pretty good. That was one
of our better segways. Sadly enough. Thanks. Um. Yeah, we
are talking crickets, aren't we. Yeah, we covered into mafaji A.
Meant to look up when, but it was. It seems
like a long time ago, right, And that's eating bugs
and insects. But this is focusing specifically on crickets because
(04:23):
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, they're I mean, they're pretty
easy to raise. Uh, they don't require much space. You
can set up your own cricket farm at home. Um.
And really we should say the point of all this,
(04:44):
the whole reason anybody would want people to start raising
crickets at home is because the um, well, the the
earth is about to collapse and our food supply is
in in real danger. Right. So I've got some stats
for you, chuck. So, meat consumption per capita has um
(05:08):
increased into the developed world. Actually it's doubled in the
last thirty years, and that's thanks in no small part
to the rise of the brick countries Brazil, Russia, India,
and China, who have huge, massive populations. As they entered
capitalist um the capitalist global economy um, have generally become enriched,
(05:31):
and the more money they have, the more meat civilization
tends to consume, at least these days. Right. 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're ready for this one, I don't know. I'm
afraid to produce one pound of meat that's a half
(05:53):
a kilo basically of meat beef. Sorry, yeah, um, it
requires about four hundred 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, you know that the crops that you
(06:13):
feed to the cow, So there's double water consumption. But
one of the problem, one of the reasons cattle beef
requires so much um water is because you only consume
of the cow. So 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
(06:34):
delivery system is efficient, right, that's just water. Fifty one
of the greenhouse gases that are admitted on planet Earth
come from animal agriculture and um. One third of the
world's adequate or high quality crop land has been lost
(06:56):
to erosion or pollution in the last forty years. And
then 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 fifty six million
acres of land are used to grow crops in the
United States to feed animals. Four million are used to
(07:20):
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 from what I'm seeing. Um, other
(07:42):
people are saying, fine, you want some protein, I got
something for you, and it's crickets. Yeah, I'm kind of
a I'm not surprised, but it goes to show you
the population boom. If meat consumption is increased that much
in the face of probably more vegetarianism and v aganism
then ever before too. You know, well, that's kind of heartening,
(08:03):
like if if there does seem to be if I
guess if if societies follow, Yeah, 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. I'm kind of curious about the history because
it seems like in the like probably since the onset
(08:25):
of America until uh and then I'm just I'm talking
off the top of my head here, but until probably
the nineties, it seems 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
(08:47):
your society, right, well, like the fifties, it seems like
they would eat steak for lunch, right 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, give me the twenty ounce ribby for lunch.
It's just I don't know, I can't imagine that. But
in three martinis. I don't argue with that part. That
(09:11):
is pretty indulgent. Three martinis in a twenty ounce by
four lunch. I mean that was don Draper, you know. Yeah,
I never saw that show. I know, I never saw it.
It's 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
(09:33):
in at the end? No he did? Okay, oh that's
texting uh oh man. And then we talked about the
ending of that show. Greg, I actually never saw the
end of that one. You just told me about it. Yeah,
I think you stild it to yourself just to watch
the finale. Um. So this dude Kevin, Uh, how would
(09:54):
you pronounce that b B A C H, which is fine,
that's clearly Bach and h U b R. You just
don't often see two h's side by side. So anyway,
Kevin Bakuba Uh is a dude that is kind of championing,
not kind of very much championing this movement. In two
(10:15):
thousand seven, he went to Thailand and tasted crickets deep
fried crickets and Uh, he's from California, and he was like, Hey,
this is really good. He's been far out. They've been
doing this UM in Thailand since the late nineties. The
king established a big growing program for crickets and cricket
farms UM education in schools, like you know, this is
(10:38):
a good way to get protein in your diet. And
he said, I think this is the direction of America
should go. And I'm going to get in on the
the money side of it. Yeah, like the farming of it.
Apparently it's a twenty million dollar industry already. Not bad. No,
it isn't UM. And we should say that Bach cuber
(10:59):
Was is one of several um people who are into this, uh.
The idea of cricket farming, commercial cricket farming UM, and
he's definitely one of the o G s for sure.
His business was the first to get approval to sell
crickets as food in the United States. We got FDA
approval because the cricket industry actually is kind of old.
(11:23):
Well it's not too old, but I saw anywhere between
fifty and seventy years old in the US UM. And
they're raised to say feed fish for commercial fish farming,
or to grind up as a protein supplement for um
livestock feed. So people have been raising crickets for a while,
or to feed to like reptiles, um to sell them
to pet stores. So there there was an established infrastructure
(11:47):
of cricket farming UM. But the making the transition from
selling it to feed to cows or fish or snakes
to selling it to people to eat directly, that's that
was a big step, and bok Huber was the first
one to take it in the US UM. I should
just say the reason I point out he's just one
(12:08):
of many is because this How Stuff Works article is
basically like here's my report on Kevin bok Huber's ted
ted talk. You know, yeah, I think just he he
definitely deserves you know, credit because he's leading the charge,
but so are other people as well. Yeah, he's wo
went throughout this thing though. Yeah. Um. And you know,
if you listen to the Intamafaji episode episode no, it's
(12:31):
it's episode. UM. 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 in 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
(12:54):
standard of the world regularly consumes insects as part of
their diet. I saw that there's a a Food and
Agriculture organization, the u N Organization reports said something it
was more like about a third of the populations rather
than eight percent, maybe like thirty which is still significant.
(13:16):
It is um and in in the West specifically, the
idea of eating bugs is not It's not commonplace, right,
And I actually saw a pretty good explanation for why. Um,
Like thirteen of the fourteen large livestock animals that are
(13:36):
domesticated are found in Eurasia and made their way over
to the America's and those things those animals provide not
just meat, but also things like milk, um, clothing, everything. Basically,
So since since these what you would call Western countries
(13:57):
had access to these domesticated animal most they never needed
bugs as a food source. And then secondly, since they
were raising domesticated animals, by definition, they had um a
sedentary um agricultural lifestyle, which meant that their exposure to
bugs was bugs as pests. So not only were bugs
(14:21):
not edible, they were something you that were just undesirable
on their face. 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
(14:45):
disgusting from your from your cultural group, for sure, but
that also means you can unlearn it too. Well, this
big cricket has anything to do with it. Uh, why
don't we take a quick break and gonna come back
and talked about a UN report that kind of changed
a lot of things about four years ago? Change, all right,
(15:26):
So I promised you a UN report. Uh, there was
a big kind of sea change. I don't know about
sea change. It was the beginning beginning of the sea change. Uh.
They issued a report called Edible Insects Colon Future Prospects
for Food and Feed Security, and it was basically just
(15:47):
championing um intoma fagy and all the benefits that surround it,
like how nutrient dense crickets and other insects are, the
fact that it's um socially sustainable, UM economically viable and friendly,
environmentally friendly, and it kind of, you know, kind of
(16:07):
paints it as like, hey, this this is the future,
or it could be part of the future at least
of getting protein into you know, Americans, right. And the
report itself didn't focus exclusively on crickets, but crickets feature
prominently in the report to the it was about. It
was about bugs in general and eating bugs in general UM,
(16:29):
and it was it made a pretty big splash. I
remember when it came out like that. It really hit
the news cycle pretty hard. But it also caught the
attention of that box cuber guy who said, all right,
I'm gonna I think I'm gonna get into this because
he had already been exposed to eating crickets in Thailand.
And then that when that UN report came out, he
I think um began his start up here in the
(16:49):
States of his commercial cricket farm start up. Yeah. It's
funny they have put in this article that it was
the most popular document in the history of the u N.
I didn't I didn't see that anywhere. I think that
was he said that at his ted report. Yeah yeah,
but um yeah, they definitely made a splash. I'll give
him that for sure. Yeah, he spoke at a ted
(17:10):
X Youngstown, Ohio, because that's where he's base, that's where
his company is, and I guess he he just made
up his own ted X probably. All right, So let's
talk about crickets. Um. 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. Uh. And there's
(17:34):
something called I guess efficient animals. Um, well, yeah, 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, in killing,
and eating an animal is on a spectrum. And you
(17:54):
know from cows, like you talked about, it's probably the worst.
I wouldn't 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 of a cow is
(18:15):
is edible and digestible. And I think the chicken is
about the most efficient animal protein right now, stuff like crickets.
So there's two different things here, right. So you've got
um efficiency in nutrient conversion, which is say, like if
you eat an apple, you can convert you know x
amount of the energy available in the apple into you know,
(18:39):
energy for yourself metabolism, right right, Yeah? That 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 efficiently
converted that app all into useful energy. Right. It would
(19:03):
be to be a magic apple and you wouldn't need
a poop shoot, um, but instead you do. Because there
is no such thing as percent efficiency in any animal, right,
But some are better than others, like you were saying,
and with a cricket, it's something like, um, they're like
twelve times more efficient at converting food into usable energy
(19:26):
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 but kilogram to kilogram or
pound a pound, it just takes one point seven kilograms
of feed to produce one kilogram of live crickets. Not
bad for a cow. It takes ten kilograms of feed
(19:50):
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 edible and digestible compared to the cows edible
and digestible, then you really have a if you're just
(20:13):
going pound to pound or kilogram to kilogram, and much
more nutrient dense, much more efficient, and then therefore much less,
much less wasteful um 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 um, crickets
(20:33):
aren't even the most efficient insect, you know, No, huh,
I'm not sure which one is. Actually, I think meal
worms are pretty efficient. You just said that because you're
eating a meal worm. Right, Well, I have a meal
worm farm. I was gonna ask you to buy in
on huh all right in my pocket. See is that
(20:57):
a meal worm farm in your pocket? It is I
pocket mulch uh. So, like we mentioned Mr bach Uba
is um. If he's not German, he should be Kevin
back Ruber. I think he's a He's Irish German. Maybe
it's spelled k v in though, so we're just inserting
(21:18):
vowels for me, right, like d n C E. What's that?
It's this band? Okay, probably the young person's band, I believe, so,
no wonder, I don't know, but he has one of
I think they're about and this has probably changed even
since this has written about twenty five or so cricket
startup farms here in the United States. Yeah, I couldn't
(21:40):
find the current number. Yeah, let's just say at least
twenty five, although all but they go under pretty quick,
you think, so. I could see I could see losing
your shirt on cricket farming right now, it's so it's
just so early, and and the market is so not there,
and the stuff that producing is so expensive. Well, and
(22:02):
their output right now is still really small. Um, in
the in the early years here. But you know, the
dream for for him and all these cricket farmers is
that that one day it will it will. I don't
think they have designs that will ever be like in
some parts of the world where it's on every menu
and every restaurant, but they would certainly like to see
(22:22):
cricket snacks in grocery stores and um menu offerings and
some some of the more wacky hipster restaurants at least. Yeah.
Did you do you watch Shirt Tank? Oh? You know,
I do? Okay, So did you see the one with
Rose Wang and Laura Dasario. I've seen them all, Okay.
So you saw the one with Chirps their snack, their
(22:45):
cricket based stack product, Chirps. I want to try it.
I do too. Um. I'm not like, 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, I I and I would try it
as well, and do you I don't know if you
remember not. But when we did that uh locust thing
for Science Channel, it's like the second time has come
(23:06):
up this month. Weirdly enough. Um, they made fried locusts
and I refused to eat them. And it wasn't because
I was grossed out. It was because I was sure
that I was going to have some sort of weird
allergic reaction to them, and I would have had, yeah,
and I would have had to have been, like, you know,
life flighted somewhere to a hospital and would have missed
(23:26):
my flight home. Um. That that is the only reason
I didn't eat them. It had nothing to do with disgust.
But in that u N report they address allergies and
they said that it's actually exceedingly rare that somebody has
an allergic reaction to an arthropod um or to an insect.
I should say, um, But the reason why I thought
(23:49):
so was because, yeah, I had had um, I 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. Well, I think it's very funny
that you, uh, I remember your shrimp. You're shrimp years
in that you had an allergic reaction to shrimp, but
(24:11):
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 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
(24:32):
dedicated to Yeah. I love shrimp. Man, good shrimp, like
season with old Bay, just simple stuff. Oh man, so good. Uh,
this is a great time to bring up one of
my big pet peeves. I know that cooking with shrimp
heads and tails on increases the flavor quite a bit. Yeah,
which is why they do it. Um. But it's one
(24:54):
thing if you get an appetizer with like the uh,
like a prawn with a head left on or something.
But if you like I get pasta dishes sometimes, oh
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
(25:16):
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 the reason probably why. All right, let's hear it.
There's something called keton which makes up the exoskeleton of
m of bugs, but it also makes up the shells
of crustaceans as well. UM and kiton. Supposedly, if you
(25:39):
don't have an allergic reaction to it, Kiton is apparently
good for it's it's said to be good for weight loss, UM,
digestion aids in digestion allegedly UM and I think it
has something to do with your blood pressure too. And
in other countries, non non non Western countries, I think
(26:02):
they prescribed kitan quite a bit as like a dietary supplement. UM.
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 I'm curious if if kitton actually does have
an effect, but it's possible. They're saying you should eat
the whole thing. Well, that's the shell. What I mean,
(26:26):
it's 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 so the cows come home. But I'm
not eating a shrimp tail. Yeah it sounds gross. Well,
it's just not like, uh, 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
(26:47):
whole thing shell and all antenna. Well yeah, but I
think that in the 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 him. Oh,
my friend, is that like a blue crab. No. I
think it's a special kind of crab that has parents
(27:08):
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 a soft shell crab. Okay, yeah,
I thought that was crab like spelled with the K
(27:30):
like fake crab. No, No, that like the little legs
are coming out at the end and everything. That's what
they call it a spider roll because it looks like
a little spider legs. And I'll try that and then uh,
like a soft shell crab sandwiches, I mean open the
bun and there's just like this crab staring at you. Yeah, going,
how's it going. You're gonna eat me in a second,
aren't you. Oh, I'm getting hungry now, and you want
(27:52):
to take a break real quick, well quickly before we
just should mention that they did get a deal on
Shark Tank with Mark Cuban. Right, we're contractually obligated to
munch and Mark Cuban, that's right. We get our kickback coming.
I would try chirps for sure. If the Trips people
are out there listening and you want to send us
(28:13):
some chirps, I will try them up, all right, So
let's take that break, Okay, So chuck, we said, um,
(28:41):
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 products they're making. Um, there's something called
cricket flour, which is ground up cricket meal 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.
(29:04):
It's very expensive, a lot of money. But it's really
ironic because crickets require so much less um space and
food and water, um and electricity. It's apparently the the
labor force that is the most expensive thing of any
(29:24):
commercial cricket farm because there 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, is the labor force that's
that's eating up most of them the revenue or profits
from cricket farming well, planning all those tiny people, those
(29:47):
three people, right, it's not easy. But there are startups
also that are that are trying to sell like home
cricket kits too, because that's part of the whole idea
where if you're gonna 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,
(30:09):
so crickets live about seven weeks. Um. I mean that
right there shows you a big difference between that and
like the beef industry. 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,
(30:32):
I saw that. The um 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, uh. And what they eat
is because I was kind of wondering that they eat
grain based feed, organic grain based feed, um, fruits and vegetables.
And they some of them will reach that breeding stage,
(30:56):
some won't, and if they do, they're gonna lay a
lot of eggs, like you know, several thousand eggs a
mommy cricket will lay in her lifetime. Yeah, so many
eggs in fact that they they typically just throw most
of them out, like they'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
(31:18):
to grow them. Um. So that you know there, I
think bok Hubert 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 really thought about that. That must be nice. Actually, yeah,
(31:40):
it can be. So they like hot human environments, or
at least warm, depending on your definition of hot. Hot
to me eight to ninety five degrees fahrenheit with about
a forty humidity level, and the whole process from soup
to nuts or from eggs to chirps is about fifty
six yeah. Um yeah. And if you you can do
(32:04):
this yourself at home, you just need basically two terrariums.
You need to put them near heat because that is substantial.
Eight to nine degrees is hot, waight, 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 to Those are the two most important
things with raising crickets. And the reason you have two
(32:26):
terrariums is because in the one where you have like
the thirty h initial crickets, say, um, you're gonna 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 soiled dish out and put it in the
other terrarium. And then that's where the eggs are gonna
grow and hatch. And um, when the crickets hatch, they're
(32:49):
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, And according to Aris Stottle,
it's about around here or maybe within the next week
or so, that they're the most delicious. Aristotle. Yeah, Aristotle
wrote in his Historia an Amalium. Actually he was writing
(33:11):
about cicadas that um, they're better when uh there before
their last mold. So I guess I wouldn't apply to crickets, No,
I would, because they did they they do more. He
also said that females taste best after copulation because they
are full of eggs after Aristotle has copulated, right or
after instead of a cigarette, just seed a pregnant female cicada.
(33:35):
Try this baby, right, It'll knock your socks off, I
bet Aristotle, pillow talk with something else or just be
like uh yeah, and he just keeps going on and
on about cicadas. Um, so harvesting. Uh, I mean, there's
no way around it. At some point, like any live
thing that you're raising, you're gonna have to kill it.
(33:57):
And instead of um, 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 they get cold, they
start to get a little chili, their temperature drops, and
they go into what's called a dia pause um, sort
of a hibernation like state. And then pretty much after
(34:21):
that they go it is sure as chilian here and
then they're gone and frozen. Yeah, apparently they eventually free solid.
So they spent about twenty four hours in the freezer
and then they're ready to be sold either ground in
to say like a powder or baked into a fried snack,
or sold to somebody else. But that's that. And I
(34:42):
was like, do they wake up then if you if
you heat them up in a pan, But apparently after
twenty four hours and they're frozen solid, they're they're dead,
but to them it's just like going to sleep forever.
Yeah what Um? I kind of wonder when I was
reading this, I was like, how do veacons and vegetarians
feel about eating in sex. Supposedly it does not count
as vegetarian. Well, it depends on who you ask. Um.
(35:05):
I didn't get any like there is no official rule book. Um,
there's not. I don't think so. But basically, I just
went to a bunch of vegan and vegetarian websites and
looked to see what people said and it it kind
of ranged from well, sure, allied insects and this is
a much better way to to get protein in your
(35:26):
body than animals, um, 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
many livestock all one word. I mean they are a
live there, a living animal. So I guess it's a
(35:51):
personal choice. That sounds like yeah, just like you know
vegetarians eat fish sometimes too. Uh, well, that'd be a pesctarian, right,
I guess. But I've met plenty of vegetarians. They're like,
I'm a vegetarian and I eat fish, leave me alone.
And that's an ego. Technically you're a pescutarian and then
you get punched in the face. Right. Uh. So eating
(36:12):
crickets um, Some people say sort of nutty. Some people
say it's a little sweet, like sweet corn. I'm I
would like to know for myself. I wish we could
have gotten her 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 soilon. Yeah, with a soilon, soilon, we'll do
(36:34):
a follow up soilon. Um. So there's this lady, Daniella Martin,
and she has a travel show and a well it's
an insect cooking and travel show called Girl Meets Bug.
Very cute. Um and we should say the chirps. Ladies
called crickets the gateway bug also that was kind of funny,
(36:55):
uh and puny. And Daniella says that she started eating
crickets and kind of became fascinated with insects in general
when she was in Mexico and Yucatan, and it kind
of became, I don't think, obsessed, but just super interested
in this as a as her protein of choice, and said,
(37:16):
you know, I started cooking him up with the little
a little butter, little onion, 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,
(37:36):
even when you hear stories of these creepy cannibal people,
think you should cook it in butter with a little
salt and onion and garlic. Yeah, I think that one
guy who advertised on like Craigslist cannibal he yeah, he's
saw tatd with yeah onion, you're right, huh, Yes, I
think it was. I would say what he ate penis
(37:58):
that he did, and that was a very disturbing case.
Sure so, um, she says, Uh, Crisping him in the
oven is another besides you know, grinding them in the powder,
cooking them up like broiling him in the oven. Don't
overcook it. Olive oil with garlic, salt, throw them in
about two fifty about fifteen minutes and a little sea
(38:20):
salt on top maybe, and you're gonna have a crunchy, delicious,
nutrient rich snack. Yeah. And you want to clean them
off too if you're cooking them from raw, I mean
they're they're bugs. Uh, that's it's something you want to do.
What do you do just like wash them in the calendar?
I guess so yeah. Um, but I think like if
they're already prepared, you're probably okay. Um. Because one of
(38:43):
the big things that that that like bok Hubert did
by getting f day approval, like now you can't just
raise crickets on just anything, like they have to be
fed food that is okay for humans. The two um,
which is something that the cricket farming industry is running
up against because one of the big things proponents are
(39:04):
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 if you 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. Um. But apparently AFTERDA
(39:27):
he's like, now you can't feed things food waste your
nut job. You're gonna eat it eventually, so there's big
rules against it. But that 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, it's just
(39:49):
it'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 can add about a hundred and twenty hundred and
twenty one calories um. You've got about five and a
half grams of carbs, twelve point nine grams of protein
(40:12):
that is substantial um, seventy five point eight milligrams of calcium,
and nine and a half milligrams of iron. That's also
pretty substantial. Just from a hundred grams. I think they
estimate that's about twenty to twenty two crickets um, like
a handful and a half. Nice. That is, that's pretty good.
(40:33):
And and the idea that if you are just raising
cricket yourself. You can feed them your own kitchen waist
and then eat the cricket yourself. There's also, right right,
there's also um very low barriers to entry into cricket farming.
So if you're um, if you're not a wealthy person
(40:56):
and you need to make some extra money, you could
conceivably raise cricket 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, let's cricket farming. Everybody
go make it happen. And in the meantime, you can
look at this article on how stuff works dot com.
(41:17):
And since I said that it's time for a 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 alert to that. Hey, guys, just listen to
the episode on accents. I'm happy you brought up Kevin
Spacey's accent from House of Cards because I have a theory.
(41:41):
Spacey plays a character Frank Underwood, grew up poor in Gaffney,
South Carolina, but then went on to the Citadel and
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 twang are full
accent that he'd have from Gaffney. Spacey's playing Frank Underwood,
(42:05):
who was 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, enjoyed
dissecting his Carolina accent, And actually I don't have much
of an accent myself, except with words like a lawyer
and oil. Jerry just left because my brother, who's ten
(42:27):
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 light
zone instead of turned the lights on, or naked instead
of naked. If you're saying naked, length to dry bamboo
and say again again. I sort of wish I sounded
(42:49):
more like the rest of my family. But what a
considerate thing for my big brother could have done when
he was a teenager 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, Um, and
thank you also for the spoiler about Kevin Spacey becoming
president on House of Cards. If you want to get
(43:09):
in touch with us like she did, you can tweet
to us. So that's y SK podcast. I'm also at
josh um Clark. You can hang out with us on
Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know. You can
hang out with Chuck at Facebook dot com, slash Charles W.
Chuck Bryant. You can send us an email to Stuff
Podcast at how stuff Works dot com and has always
joined us at our home on the web, Stuff you
Should Know dot com For more on this and thousands
(43:35):
of other topics, is it how Stuff Works dot com
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Josh Clark
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