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She is sure, she is true, she is straw is straw,
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she is true, is true, she is praise, pray, she
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is p she is you.
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Hello, everyone, welcome to today's Word of Mom Radio. Here
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on the Word of Mom Media Network. I'm your host,
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Dori Di Carlo, and you know we are here week
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after week, show after show, breaking those myths that mompreneurs
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and business women, especially those of us building our businesses
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from home, that we're just dabbling in between bake sales
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and getting our nails done. We're not. We are smart,
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we are savvy, and we are sharing the wisdom of
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women in business and in life. And I'm looking forward
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to bringing today's guest into our author's ali. Mary Boone's
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book research has taken her place as many people have
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never been just deep in the Union River, to count
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salmon inside a cricket barn, and perhaps most daring of all,
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the front row of a Justin Bieber concert surrounded by
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screaming teens. Mary has written seventy plus nonfiction books for
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young readers, most recently Pedal Pusher, School of Fish and
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Bugs for Breakfast. Two more books are set for the
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release in twenty twenty six. Flying feminist and unfathomable twenty
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but wild but true stories of the Sea. Mary and
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her family live in Tacoma, Washington, with a stubborn Airindale
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Terrier named Ruthi Bader.
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Love that name.
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I could keep going, but I'd rather bring Mary in.
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So with all that being said, welcome to Word of
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Mom Radio.
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Thank you.
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I'm so glad to be here.
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I am really looking forward to sharing your journey. And
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I have to ask you what first drew you to
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writing nonfiction for kids. I know in reading about you
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you have a journalism background, and that helps shape the journey.
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Oh for sure. I always I was going to write
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Nancy Drew mysteries. I always thought I was going to
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write the next Junie B. Jones. But it turns out
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after you're a journalist for a very long time, making
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things up is difficult. I have worked so hard to
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relay facts and I'm really really great at research that
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I finally decided to lean into my strengths. And I
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think part of my initial resistance to nonfiction was that
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the nonfiction I read when I was growing up was
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kind of boring, and I didn't want to write those
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boring books. So I set out to write non boring nonfiction,
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and I think I'm succeeding one little nonfiction book at
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a time.
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And that's how you do it. It's like how do you
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eat an elephant one bite at a time. How do
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you decide what topics you're going to tackle in your books?
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It needs to be something I'm interested in, because a
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book is a long term relationship. You're spending so much
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time on research and writing and revision that it needs
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to be something I care about, and so that's definitely
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a factor in deciding what I'm going to write about. Also,
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how can I make this relatable to kids? Is this
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something kids would also care about? Or is this just
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something a middle aged woman and Tacoma Washington cares about.
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So especially if there is something that as I'm doing research,
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I just can't wait to tell my friends and family
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about some fact I've uncovered. Then I think those same
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facts often catch kids' attention and I can't wait to
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share them.
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So that's what makes it kid worthy for you, I think.
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So, especially when I can figure out a way to
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put it in terms that they understand. For example, when
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I wrote Bugs for Breakfast, I had no intention of
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ever eating insects. Let me tell you this is all
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about enimie, which is the practice of eating insects. I
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went on a trip to Vietnam I ate bugs. I
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came home and thought, I never to need to do
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that again. That was just something I did. Check it
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off my list. But that sense of curiosity, like why
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are they eating bugs? And where else are they eating bugs?
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And how long are they eating bugs? I know there
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are kids out there who are equally as curious as
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I am, and I want to answer those questions, get
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them thinking about additional questions. And if the kid's not curious,
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I want to maybe turn on that switch and get them,
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get them to start wondering about the world around them.
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I have to say that when my daughter was in
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Cambodia and Vietnam, she backpacked across that whole part of
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the world for almost five months and bride crickets were
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her favorite.
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Yeah, I think crickets. They call it the gateway bug.
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But yeah, crickets and crickets there are a lot larger
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than crickets being raised for food here in the United States.
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But you know, eating one little bug, come ob, you
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know led me on this trail of research.
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You know.
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It's so funny because I remember her saying that I'm
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looking at all these bugs, mom, and he just have
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like it's a whole fort of bugs. And then I said,
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all right, win in Rome?
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Do is the Romans?
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And I stood, she goes in, crickets are really my favorite.
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It was like, well, it's get to know that you've
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found your favorite bug because and again you know, I know,
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when you are on survival trails, the first thing they
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tell you ants protein and stuff like that. So I
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remember my son one time dropped his lollipop in a
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pile of ants, and in the two seconds before I
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could grab it, he just had that thing in his
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mouth and there he was. And that's all I kept
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saying to myself, Okay, a lot of protein, I'll pick
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the bug.
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Out of his teeth. It's one of the things that
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they teach, you know, the military about survivor or if
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you're taken prisoner, or you're left out on a hike somewhere,
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is which bugs are edible and which aren't, and how
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to play it safe out there if you don't know
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for sure.
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It's really crazy, but it's true as a reader, because
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I'm such an avid reader nonfiction can really be tricky, yes,
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and finding that way to balance accuracy and storytelling, because,
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like you said, as we were growing in a lot
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of them not it was just boring. So how have
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you been able to adapt this to keep kids engaged
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in the stories?
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Oh?
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Wow, that's such a great question. And I hope that
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I'm doing it because I really I focus as I'm
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doing research on the wow facts, the things I can't
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wait to tell other people, and I keep post it
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notes that I then want to make sure that I
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get into my books as I'm writing them. But I
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just I always ask myself, why would this matter to
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a kid? Or what would a kid? What would fourth
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grade Mary have found fascinating about this? The new book
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I just researched about the oceans, there's a whole story
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in about concrete ships. Now, fourth grade Mary would have
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had a hard time figuring out why concrete was a
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good material for ships, why it was necessary. But I
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also would have wanted to know how did they make
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it float because every time I've seen a concrete block
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thrown in the ocean, it just sinks to the bottom.
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So just trying to figure out what their questions are
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going to be anticipate and then presented in an interesting,
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relatable way. I try to be conversational and, like I said,
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anticipate their questions.
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In looking back at things that you've written, Mary, are
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there some of those wow facts that still stick with
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you that wow, I can't believe this or that.
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Sure, I grew up on a fall, so I thought
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I knew all about traditional farming. But when I was
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researching bugs for breakfast, one of the issues related to
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eating insects is that there's so much more sustainable than
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traditional proteins. So, especially when I go talk to kids
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in schools, I always ask does anybody here like a
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cheeseburger or a hamburger? And all their hands go up,
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or a lot of them, And then I asked them
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to guess how much water do you think it takes
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to raise one pound of beef? One pound of beef?
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Do you have any idea, not a clue? Eighteen hundred
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gallons of water to produce one pound of beef. It
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was a fact I didn't even believe because, like I said,
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I had a farming background. I grew up on a
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farm in Iowa. But we have to remember we're feeding
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and watering that cow for eighteen months before it's taken
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to market. It's got to eat and drink every single day.
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And then we're not eating the entire cow. You know,
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you're not eating its hoofs, it's hide, its head, its tail.
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You're only eating a certain percentage of that cow. So
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when you figure out the water usage to produce a
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pound of beef, it's eighteen hundred gallons. And if you're
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producing a pound of cricket powder or cricket protein, it
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takes one gallon. Same protein levels in each of those foods,
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but the water required to produce each is so vastly different.
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I live in Washington, and initially kids they're like, Oh,
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we have all the water you can. You know, it
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rains here all the time. Well, it doesn't rain here
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all the time, and there are droughts all over this country,
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all over the world, and we've got to start thinking
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about proteins that maybe require less water, less resources to produce.
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So that when I start talking to kids on that level,
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a lot of times adults would be like, oh, there'll
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be water. But kids are really into the environment and
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they want to save this planet. And good for them,
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because a lot of adults we've made a mess of things,
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we need them to fix it. So they're very tuned
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into that. That's just one wow fact that has that
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I still think about all the time.
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All Right, here's my question, how do you get people
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to go Cricket protein would be much better for me
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to be adding to my things. You know, that's where
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I'm seeing that big wall to climb.
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Oh sure, for sure, and if not, cricket. So there
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are a couple of answers to that one. When I
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do presentations, I always take bugs for people to try.
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I have jars of roasted bugs that they can try.
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But I also always make cricket cookies. And I make
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a mean cricket cookie, and I make cricket cookies. And
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then I make cookies that don't have crickets in them.
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Ground up.
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It's cricket proteins, so you can't see any legs or
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any And I ask them if they can tell the difference,
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and they are so shocked that they can't to tell
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the difference. I usually have them vote, which when do
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you think had crickets cricket protein in it? Nine times
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out of ten they're wrong, They're just wrong. They cannot
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taste the difference. So getting them just to try it
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and a cookie is a good first step, But then
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telling them if they're not going to try crickets, then
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what we've got to start thinking about alternative sources of protein.
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Is it going to be help, is it going to
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be lab raised meats? What are we going to do
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to feed our growing population? So I just want to
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get people. I don't necessarily need people to start eating crickets,
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but I need them to start thinking about what the
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alternatives could be.
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Lab raised meat. It's so funny we were just talking
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about it the other day that when we were growing up,
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we did not have to worry about genetically modified boots.
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We didn't have to worry about them injecting our chicken
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and things like that to make them bigger. It's always
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amazing to me now how careful you need to be
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reading labels matter, because the stuff that my feeling is
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if I can't just go and buy it, then I
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shouldn't have it. Like people gargum. People don't realize that
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gargum is just a thickener and it's a peckner that
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you can use, especially if you're few have aluten in tolerance,
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and it's something you can buy on the shelf, but
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there's a lot of stuff in our food that you
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can't because it's fid and creative again, even something creative
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like this being able to look at alternatives, because let's
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face it, think we're just such an indulgent country.
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We are well and I love to talk about to
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kids who By the way, when I do school presentations,
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I usually will say to the principle at the end,
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I'd love to have some kids come up and try insects,
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And the principle will almost always say, well, we can
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do that, but nobody's going to want to. And at
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the end of every presentation when I ask about three
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quarters of the hands go up in the air and
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we have a hard time choosing who gets to do it.
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So kids are really really open to trying new things.
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I have found that girls are generally more daring than boys,
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and then the boys become more daring when they see
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how open the girls are. But I just love to
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get them thinking about if they're not going to eat crickets,
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could they be the person who comes up with alternatives.
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You know, living here in Washington State, we've got the
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world's largest help farm and kelp is a great source