We already knew that a diet based on junk food is bad for people and crows. Now a study shows that the health of cockroaches also suffers when the critters eat an unbalanced diet.
In fact, roaches fed a poor-quality diet matured more slowly and were fatter than those fed a well-balanced one. Females who ate badly also were less willing to mate than their well-nourished peers. LiveScience reports:
[Researchers] picked young female cockroach nymphs and divided them into two dietary groups. Half were fed a good-quality balanced diet of protein-rich fish food and high-carbohydrate oatmeal, while the rest were raised on fish food only. Both groups were allowed to eat as much as they wanted….When the nymphs became adults, the team switched the diets of some animals.
Half of the cockroaches raised with good quality diet lost their oatmeal, while half of the bugs fed poorly were promoted to a good-quality diet. Eighteen days after the switch, the diet control ended and some of the surviving cockroaches were dissected. The effects of unbalanced meals continued throughout the cockroaches’ lives, even for the few that were switched to good-quality food.
So now we know that even roaches can suffer from a poor diet. The question is, will it do us any good?
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Image: flickr / Neil T
July 7th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
Can we get unlimited access to an unbalanced diet for all roaches? Seems like the humanitarian thing to do.
I’m all in for the dissection part too….
July 8th, 2009 at 8:13 pm
[...] effected by an unhealthy diet. Didn’t I mention this was a study on cockroaches? My bad! (Read More —>) Easy AdSense by Unreal Share and [...]
July 13th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
[...] Content: Discoblog: Worried About Swine Flu? Perhaps Your iPhone Will Save You Discoblog: Small Comfort: Cockroaches, Too, Get Fat on an Unbalanced Diet Discoblog: Why Do Some People Never Get Fat? Scientists May Have the [...]
September 22nd, 2009 at 5:20 pm
fat diet…
Your topic Does This Blog Make Us Look Fat? ” Blog Archive ” Printables for Dieters was interesting when I found it on Tuesday searching for fat diet…
September 30th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
wow now the animals are catching up to us. is this a race to see who can be the biggest first this is stupid we should all be fit or at least able to run what will happen if we had to go back to the way it use to be in the prehistoric times!!!!