WASHINGTON 鈥� If you want a healthy gut, new research shows you can skip the probiotic pills, and instead, chow down on some crickets.
A recently published in the journal shows that consuming crickets can help support the growth of good gut bacteria, which scientists influences, even improves, health conditions and health outcomes.
Nearly people around the world eat insects, and that number will likely grow as the global population inches toward 9 billion by 2050 and consumers look to more sustainable food sources.
According to the , edible insects need six times less feed than cattle and emit less greenhouse gases and ammonia than conventional livestock.
Valerie Stull, the lead author on the published paper, said insects are nutrient dense and high in protein, and unlike eggs, chicken or beef, they contain fiber, predominantly in the form of chitin from their exoskeletons.
Diets rich in fiber are shown to improve health in a number of ways, including reducing one鈥檚 risk for cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
But fiber also feeds the gut.
鈥淒ietary fibers are those indigestible dietary carbohydrates that we eat and our body doesn鈥檛 absorb, but they鈥檙e actually the primary food or energy sources for the microbes in our gut,鈥� said Stull, an incoming postdoctoral researcher at the Global Health Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
鈥淪o basically the fiber that we鈥檙e getting in our diet is shaping the growth of microbes in our gut.鈥�
In the double-blind, randomized crossover trial, Stull and her team fed 20 healthy, college-aged men and women a breakfast that either contained 25 grams of powdered cricket meal or didn鈥檛 for two weeks. Then, all the participants ate a normal diet for two weeks, followed by another two weeks of cricket cuisine. The researchers analyzed blood and stool samples before, during and after the study to look at the impact of the insects on gut health.
Stull said there were no dramatic changes in the gut bacteria, 鈥渨hich is actually pretty good because the study wasn鈥檛 very long and we didn鈥檛 change people鈥檚 entire diets.鈥�
鈥淪o if we had seen something super dramatic, we might have been a little worried,鈥� she added.
What the researchers did find was an increase in the abundance of one probiotic species, Bifidobacterium animalis, which Stull said has been associated with a number of positive health outcomes and is even available commercially as BB-12.
Still, she said more research is needed to better understand the direct relationship between edible insects and the good bacteria in our bodies.
鈥淭he microbiota in our gut, there鈥檚 a lot of research that demonstrates that it responds to changes in our diet, to nutritional cues in our diet, and those bacteria go on to generate hormonelike signals that influence our physiology, our nutritional status, our metabolism, our immune system 鈥� even our overall well-being and mental health can be influenced by the microbiome,鈥� Stull said.
鈥淪o what we eat really matters.鈥�
True, it may be a few more years before you can pick up grasshoppers at the grocery store, but insect protein is crawling more into the mainstream. Diners at Jos茅 Andr茅s’聽 restaurant will find sauteed grasshopper tacos on the menu, and retailers are packing their shelves with and .)
And Stull said food culture can change quickly 鈥� just look at sushi trends.
鈥淭wenty to 30 years ago, really no one in the U.S. was eating sushi or raw fish, but now it鈥檚 quite posh, it鈥檚 popular, you can get sushi at a gas station in Nebraska,鈥� Stull said.
鈥淚t鈥檚 amazing how quickly our cultural food tradition has changed around sushi.鈥�
If the idea of biting into a bug still causes you to squirm, Stull suggests testing the waters with cricket powder, which 鈥渋s actually really great to bake with or to add to a smoothie in a morning, just like you would a soy powder or a whey powder.鈥�
