Crickets Contain High Quality Protein

​We all need protein. It’s the juice that keeps us healthy in that the body uses it to build and maintain muscles, organs and other tissue. In fact, the average human body contains 75-percent protein. It is pretty easy to find in food sources and typically is broken down into two different kinds of proteins: complete and incomplete.
 
The complete proteins come from animal sources where incomplete proteins are available from plant sources. There are a variety of high-protein foods that come from both sources but one that is continuing to gain more and more attention is protein coming from insects. That’s because a diet containing insects is packed with a lot of extras.
 
Entomology researcher Dr. Arnold van Huis of Wageningen University in the Netherlands says that insects provide an excellent source of nutrition. His studies show that insects are in many cases more nutritious than animal meat with crickets providing twice the protein of beef when measured ounce for ounce.
 
But that’s not all.
 
Cricket protein is actually one of the better types of protein as it also contains all nine essential amino acids that your body requires. This means that a diet that contains crickets can be good for your heart as a study recently at Harvard revealed that adding more magnesium to your diet may reduce your risk of heart disease by up to 22-percent.
 
Crickets contain five times as much magnesium – ounce for ounce – than beef.
 
The extra magnesium can provide additional benefits such as dropping your risk of developing type 2 diabetes by about 33-percent. That’s according to researchers in Japan. Oh, and crickets also have more than three times as much iron as beef does which your body uses to assist muscles.
 
But why such high numbers on insects such as crickets?
 
The way insects are consumed holds the answer. A normal snack of roasted crickets or mealworms means that the crunchy little critter is ingested whole. In other words, muscle, bones and organs are all part of the snack and that delivers zinc, calcium, iron and more to your system. When conventional protein is served, it is usually just the muscle.
 
To find out more about entomophagy – eating insects as a meal – check out my eBook “The Foodie Guide to Farming Insects for Protein” which provides more information on the nutritional value of this alternative source of protein. There are also details on how to start your own cricket or mealworm farm and a few simple recipes to get you started.