Chapul ambassador Sarah Park set the stage in maintaining her on the move vegetarian. Cricket flour supplements the needed B-12, iron and protein.
Matt stopped eating meat days before we started dating. To be honest, I thought it was a phase. For the first few months he’d eat his diet, and I’d eat mine. He had set a goal to eat vegetarian for a summer, and I was ready to celebrate his accomplishment with a barbeque feast at the end. After a while, I realized that he was no longer doing this as an experiment—he had made a lifestyle change that I wanted to adapt to as well.
Then we married, and I stopped eating meat, mostly so I wouldn't have to cook two separate meals. On the upside, I thought, going full vegetarian would make feel healthy and strong. But my energy levels started to deteriorate. A few months went by and I noticed my mood was also changing. When competing as a cross country runner In high school I had struggled with iron deficiency. This felt similar.
I realized that my new vegetarian diet was missing essential vitamin B-12 and iron that my body desperately needed.
Vitamin B-12 is crucial for proper brain, blood cell, and nerve function. The catch is that it is only found in meat products or as a synthetic supplement. Although iron can be found in plant form, it’s difficult for some bodies (like mine) to absorb. I stopped giving myself the dietary parameter of being vegetarian and started experimenting with eating only small portions of meat as my body craved it, while also using nutritional supplements.
Another solution I wish I had known about sooner is cricket protein.
Cricket Protein? Yes, that’s exactly right. I squirmed the first time I heard of it as well. But once I got over the preconceived idea that it was creepy and started learning more about it, I discovered that crickets have more vitamin B-12 than salmon and more bioavailable iron than spinach. This was the solution I was looking for. Thankfully, Chapul does all the hard work for me by incorporating cricket flour into a protein powder that I can shake up and drink. It's an easy solution for my active lifestyle.
So I married a vegetarian who taught me how to eat a plant based diet that didn’t completely work for me. Because I was challenged by that experience, I did more personal research to understand what my body really needed and found a solution didn’t expect: cricket protein.