Cockroach milk researcher: It's healthy, but I wouldn't drink itCockroach milk can't be part of your Starbucks order just yet. It's unlikely it ever will. Still, in the pursuit of dairy-free super foods, people can't stop talking about it. Potential health benefits of cockroach milk surfaced in 2016, when researchers said the milk of a pregnant cockroach packs more protein than cow's milk (and any milk besides buffalo milk). Thank Barbara Stay, a now-retired professor of biology at the University of Iowa, for that. Stay began milking "lovely" diploptera punctata cockroaches in the 1950s. She believes she's the first person to ever milk a cockroach. Stay replaced embryos with filter paper inside pregnant cockroaches to soak up the nutritious milk the insect provides it's developing young. It takes 24 to 48 hours to produce barely "half of a drop" of cockroach milk, she told USA TODAY. That process is not exactly primed for mass consumption. "Goodness me, you wouldn’t want to milk cockroaches," Stay said. "The only way for this to be produced is to introduce the gene into an organism that could make it quickly in a tank. "She said the process might work in yeast, but even that is unlikely anytime soon. While she's milked the insects for decades, Stay said she never tasted cockroach milk and doesn't plan to. "Cow’s milk is good enough for me," Stay said. Ashley May is a lactose-intolerant writer who will stick to soy milk over bug varieties. Follow her on Twitter: @AshleyMayTweets