
Cricket Juice Healthier Than Orange Juice? Many Insects Loaded with Antioxidants - sunnyP
https://www.studyfinds.org/cricket-juice-healthier-than-orange-juice-insects-loaded-with-antioxidants/
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tasty_freeze
I recently read the book "Oxygen, The molecule that made the world" by Nick
Lane. Roughly the first half talks about the geologic aspects of oxygen in
world history. The second half talks about biological processes relating to
oxygen.

One thing he gets across is that dietary anti-oxidant intake is often
ineffective, and in some cases can be harmful. Also, vitamin C isn't just an
antioxidant -- it it involved in a number of different reactions and having
too much can be as bad as too little. In fact it can be a pro-oxidant.

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notafraudster
My almost certainly incorrect chronology of events, cobbled together from pop
science headlines I've read:

1) Free radicals are bad because they cause oxydation (oxydization?) and this
is bad for our cells? 2) Thus, anti-oxidants are good, because they prevent
this process 3) People recommended more dietary anti-oxidants 4) It turns out
that ingesting anti-oxidants doesn't actually produce the antioxidants
necessary to combat free radicals, the same way eating dietary fat doesn't
create human fat. Dietary sources of anti-oxidants largely are not absorbed
and are useless. 5) Instead, we should look for foods that stimulate
production of anti-oxidants in... the liver? the spleen? Wherever those are
made in your body? But no one knows which foods are good for that?

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goodcharles
Also should add - some molecules like Nitric Oxide act as both an antioxdiant
and free radical.

The vitamin sellers often use the browning of a cut apple as an easy-to-
explain example of the effects of oxidation.

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gringoDan
Orange juice is essentially just sugar. Crickets are high-protein and low-
carb. This makes sense intuitively...though I think "cricket juice" may need
some rebranding.

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Dumblydorr
Apparently, milk companies lobbied to have almond and other forms of
alternative milk rebranded as "nut juice."

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eitland
Kind of makes sense.

It isn’t milk. It is good that big grocery isn’t allowed to mislead people so
easily, but I’m less convinced than I was before I typed out my comment.

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sthgrau
It isn't dairy, that is correct. Note however, that using the term 'milk' to
plant liquids has hundreds of years of history in the English language.

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eitland
Thanks, I wasn’t aware.

Happy I was a bit careful with that comment.

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cannonedhamster
Yeah it's only been recently since the nut and soy milk have started eating
into the profits of dairy farmers that they've started being all up in arms.
Look for vegan cheeses and vegi burgers to be the next targets. The also went
after mayonnaise substitutes as well. It's just a move to use the legal system
to student stifle free market competition.

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perl4ever
Well, there are a lot of products that are deliberately deceptive and
apparently not being regulated sufficiently, so I'm not so quick to say "free
market uber alles".

For instance, I noticed recently that a drink that said it contained "natural
flavoring" had sucralose in it. I guess sweet isn't legally a flavor maybe,
but from the perspective of a consumer, it's hard to tell if this sort of
thing is caused by finding clever loopholes or just by ignoring rules
completely.

You can't fall back on "just read the label" when you're given a mixture of
contradictory, inaccurate, or ambiguous information that is training you to
ignore the label.

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neaden
Juice isn't actually healthy due to it's high sugar content.

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superpermutat0r
No ingredient is healthy or unhealthy. Diet can be that or not. Having more
vitamins, or other stuff means nothing. Body thrives on variability not on
some optimality based on nutrient amounts.

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izzydata
Can there not exist some concoction of every possible nutrient the body needs
in ideal proportions to where you would never need to consume anything else?

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ChuckMcM
Soylent certainly thinks so.

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ChuckMcM
Do insects count in vegetarian diets? They are an excellent source of protein.

I tried some "cricket flour" brownies (which like most edibles taste like
brownies). Their sales pitch was the yummy taste of brownies, twice the
protein content of eggs. Presumably targeting the muscle building folks.

Conceptually it shouldn't be a big deal, but it is. Bugs as food being perhaps
the biggest marketing challenge you can come up with.

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capkutay
At first i wanted to say of course insects count against being vegetarian. But
then I thought about it...vegetarians don't want to eat living things, but
technically plants are alive too.

Is mass farming vegetables as inhumane as mass-farming cows, pigs, chickens
etc? probably not.

But mass farming insects may not be anymore inhumane than the life wild
insects are already accustomed to (living in tight, dark spaces).

From a sustainability standpoint, there's no question that getting your
protein from insects is better for the environment than cows/pigs/chickens.

But some people are vegetarian just because they're generally grossed out by
eating bloody flesh...so just from that angle i'd say insects are not
vegetarian.

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slothtrop
There are 'non-sentient' animals like mollusks. I'd hazard insects are,
generally, dumb enough that cruelty is further removed. We kill house insects
all the time, for no reason other than they bother us.

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kwoff
Long ago I read something that questioned why we get so angry (or whatever
emotion) that we kill insects like that so easily. Why end its life? I don't
remember where I read it, but decades later I still think of that whenever I
either kill a bug or think of killing one. I'm not claiming to be a saint or
anything, and I'll still go on a rampage with a fly-swatter.

Last night I was sitting outside reading, and something touched my skin in the
wrong way I guess, and I instinctively looked around and reached down and
smashed it, like in a split second. It was a millimeter long green baby
grasshopper-looking thing. I was alone, but I apologized (to nobody) for
killing it.

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RenRav
Plain water is probably healthier than orange-flavored sugar juice.

I'm interested in a future where farming insects for the protein and such is
normal. I'm sure 90% of people don't even know that 'whey' protein is from
milk. Give cricket powder a better name and then sell it cheap, if it's
nutritious then it should catch on.

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cannonedhamster
There's been a single recent study that came out with the claim that any drink
with high sugar can increase your overall cancer risk and sugar may impact
tumor growth. Unlike the study is repeated though it's just a single study
that could be an aberration.

Rebranding like hamburger and pork but only not chicken and water creature
like fish, clams, etc. It's weird, but it would probably work.

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perl4ever
"sugar may impact tumor growth"

Well, everything needs sugar. Cancer cells are full of water too, aren't they?

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HocusLocus
Drink cricket juice if you're thirsty! It has Water Molecules(tm)

Eat the shrimp AND the shell (bugs)!

Every time I read about something disgusting that is touted because it has
'antioxidants' I ask myself, can't we synthesize antioxidants in the
laboratory? I'll take mine from a Pyrex beaker, thanks.

