Food & Drink

Cockroach milk is the superfood the world’s been waiting for

Think twice before killing the next cockroach you find in your apartment.

A team of scientists at India’s Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine discovered that cockroach milk may be the greatest superfood of them all.

The Pacific beetle cockroach (the only kind that gives birth to live young) feeds it’s babies by lactating protein-dense crystals, which pack fats, sugars, amino acids, and more than four times the nutrition of cow’s milk.

“It’s time-released food,” project lead Subramanian Ramaswamy told The Times of India. “They can be a fantastic protein supplement.”

But don’t swap out your smoothie’s almond milk just yet. Despite it’s nutritional value, cockroach milk is extremely high in calories.

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