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Cricket flour: Coming to the baking aisle near you?
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Salmon, spinach, acai and beets may soon have to make way for a new superfood bugs. - photo by Jessica Ivins
Salmon, spinach, acai and beets may soon have to make way for a new superfood bugs.

While the thought of consuming the creepy, crawly creatures may have you gagging, consider this: Theyre actually every health advocates dream. Packed with protein (twice as much as beef), B12, iron and omega-3s theyre also low in fat and cholesterols, which is precisely why Americans should consider integrating insects into their diets.

At least thats the argument of environmentalist Pat Crowley, founder of Chapul, the maker of Original Cricket Bar. His product was the first insect-based nutritional product in the U.S., and his mission now is to introduce the companys signature cricket flour into mainstream grocery stores.

You can use (cricket flour) as an all-purpose flour to make muffins, pancakes and cookies, but the day when youll go to your neighborhood grocery store and pick up pre-packaged foods like pasta made with cricket flour is right around the corner, he told Yahoo Health.

Cricket flour is made from slow-roasted bugs that have been ground into a fine powder. Crowley said while the idea of eating a cricket may psych some people out, they likely wouldnt even know it was used in their food if it wasnt pointed out to them.

The hardest part is getting people to overcome that psychological barrier of putting the bar in their mouths, Crowley said on the companys website. If you can get past that, theyre pretty tasty.

At this point, Chapuls cricket flour can only be found in about 500 stores, but Crowley expects to see his product on the shelves of 5,000 stores before the end of the year, according to Yahoo.

The U.S. is late to the insect delicacy train 80 percent of the worlds population already consumes edible bugs as part of a regular diet.

There are over 64 other countries that eat insects as part of their diet, Chapul nutritionist Lindsay Lapaugh told CBS San Francisco. So people that have traveled around the world dont look at it in any kind of weird way.

The best part, Crowley believes, is the sustainability factor.

Crickets are the most environmentally friendly source of complete protein and are 10 times more efficient in covert grain and grass into edible protein than cows and pigs, Crowley said.

Since agriculture absorbs 92 percent of all fresh water consumed globally, we think change starts with what we eat, reads Chapuls mission statement.
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From the book 'Outliers' comes proof that good health is more than just genetics
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Friends Jim Young, left, Mike Natale, Jeff Natale and Ryan Kiernan were on Greenwich High School football team together and Jim and Mike were captains. Jim, who was the youngest in Sherry Young's family, was welcome in the homes of the other three boys who still had siblings around and grandparents near. - photo by Sherry Young
As I look back on my life and the lives of others, both personally and in the reading I have done, I am convinced of the necessity of positive human contact in our lives. We are doubly blessed when we are able to make good friends or are a part of a family where we are accepted and loved.

Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers tells of a time in the 1950s when Dr. Stewart Wolf met a physician who practiced in the area of Roseto, Pennsylvania. Roseto was settled by a group of Italian families from Roseto, Italy, who re-created their life again in America.

This was in the 1950s before drugs and measures to prevent heart disease became important. In their conversation the physician said, You know, Ive been practicing for 17 years. I get patients from all over, and I rarely find anyone from Roseto under the age of 65 with heart disease.

Wolf was surprised by these words as, It was impossible to be a doctor, common sense said, and not see heart disease.

Wolf enlisted the aid of a sociologist and friend John Bruhn to help him. They found, There was no suicide, no alcoholism, no drug addiction, and very little crime. They didnt have anyone on welfare. Then we looked at peptic ulcers. They didnt have any of those either. These people were dying of old age. Thats it.

They checked into diet, genetics and possibilities of something in the foothills of eastern Pennsylvania but nothing made sense.

What they found was that Rosetans visited one another, stopping to chat in Italian on the street, say, or cooking for one another in their backyards. (Researchers) learned about the extended family clans that underlay the towns social structure. They saw how many homes had three generations living under one roof and how much respect grandparents commanded. They went to Mass at Our Lady of Mount Carmel and saw the unifying and calming effect of the church. They counted 22 separate civic organizations in a town of just under 2,000 people. They picked up on the particular egalitarian ethos of the community, which discouraged the wealthy from flaunting their success and helped the unsuccessful obscure their failures.

What they found eventually convinced the medical establishment to look beyond the individual and understand the culture people are part of their friends, families and town they came from. They determined that the people we surround ourselves with and the values of the world we inhabit have a profound effect on who we are.

Likely, this study could have been done with other ethnicities. However, my family's experiences with the Italian families in Connecticut ring true to the study. Our hungry and growing sons, especially our youngest son, Jim, who was left home alone with two beady-eyed parents, all had some memorable experiences being fed and loved in the Cos Cob multigenerational families. Proof of the African proverb, It takes a village to raise a child.

We live in an age when the contact we have with people often is on the internet, and many of us live among strangers. Unless we make the effort to reach out, we will become isolated, especially as we age. The Rosetan study is proof that reaching out and communicating may be good for our health.
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