Coming Soon To A Grocery Store Shelf Near You: Mealworm Oil

You know what adds the perfect zest to a roach milk shake? A nice drizzle of mealworm oil.

Researchers are experimenting with the abundantly available insect for producing a margarine-like product. It’s yellow, with a similar nutritional makeup of 50-50 canola and soybean oil. It has no trans fats, and the solid mealworm fat is low in saturated fats, but is missing much of the healthy omega-3 fatty acid that other oils contain. The advantage is in the good it does the Earth, rather than the body: mealworms are readily cultivated and a sustainable source.

“It smells very mild … grassy. It’s not bad,” Daylan Tzompa-Sosa, a researcher at Wageningen University and Research Center, told the Washington Post. They weren’t allowed to taste test it themselves, for scientific integrity. Likely story.

[H/T The Washington Post]