Roach milk the next bug thing

Think twice before killing the next cockroach you find in your kitchen — you might be giving up a good meal.

In news that the world has been waiting for, a team of scientists at India’s Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine discovered cockroach milk is packed full of nutritional goodies.

While it doesn’t have nipples, the Pacific beetle cockroach (the only kind that gives birth to live young) feeds its babies by lactating protein-dense crystals packed with fats, sugars and amino acids.

According to research published in the journal for the International Union of Crystallography, on a pound for pound basis, the crystals pack three times the energy of buffalo milk, which was the previous top contender for producing a protein with the most calories.

“It’s time-release food,” project lead Subramanian Ramaswamy said. “They can be a fantastic protein supplement.”

Ramaswamy is a biochemist at the Bangalorebased institute and told the Washington Post that one of his colleagues first tried the crystals after losing a bet stemming from a drinking game.

If you can suspend your gag reflex, apparently the taste isn’t too bad.

“He said it doesn’t taste like anything special,” Ramaswamy said.

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