39. The Benefits of Insect Proteins for Us, Our Pets, and the Planet with Wesley Cooper

In episode 39 of the Outdoor Minimalist Podcast, we get to talk about eating insects. While I’d love to do an episode on insect proteins in a human diet, today we are going to focus on insect proteins, our pets, and the planet. There is a lot to be said about dog nutrition and the impact our pet’s diets have on the environment.

To help make this topic a bit more palatable, I had the pleasure of chatting with Wesley Cooper, the co-founder of Neo Bites.

Neo Bites is a company on a mission to accelerate the shift towards sustainable animal nutrition through insect protein. Neo Bites is the product of Wesley’s desire to play a pivotal role in the fight against climate change. During his time working in the food and beverage industry in NYC, his life-long passion for sustainability led him to learn more about the climate impact of our chosen protein sources. It was during this time that he was introduced to insect protein, and Neo Bites came to fruition shortly after.

Use the code OUTDOORMINIMALIST for 10% off every Neo Bites order.

Neo Bites

Website: https://eatneobites.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eatneobites/?hl=en

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eatneobites/

The Pet Food Industry is Destroying the Planet: https://eatneobites.com/blogs/climate/the-pet-food-industry-is-destroying-the-planet

This transcript was edited to remove some filler words and phrases and is not verbatim according to what is spoken in the audio recording.

Meg: Well, welcome to the show, Wesley! I'm really excited to have you join me today. I know that you're an expert in all things insect proteins, which is really exciting to me. But before we get to that, I'm curious—how does outdoor recreation fit into your life? What kinds of things do you like to do outside?

Wesley: Yeah, absolutely. First of all, thanks for having me. I’m really excited to chat.Outdoor recreation—so, I grew up here in Austin, Texas, and spent a lot of time outdoors. I was in the Boy Scouts, I'm an Eagle Scout, and I went camping and hiking and did all kinds of things. I loved skiing—it’s still a big part of my life.

Meg: Cool! And that's not necessarily a part of your career, right? Have you ever worked in the outdoor industry?

Wesley: Correct—no, I haven’t. After I graduated high school, I was out of Boy Scouts at that point, and I ended up moving to the Northeast. I spent some time in New York City, which is kind of the opposite of the outdoors. But I’m back in Austin now, and I’m much happier to have nature close again. Still, I’ve never worked in any outdoor job.

Meg: Awesome. So, after moving from New York City back to Austin, you're now the co-founder of a company called Neobytes. Can you tell us a little bit more about the company—how it all started and what the general mission is?

Wesley: Sure, yeah. I've had a longtime passion for sustainability and always wanted to play a role in fighting climate change. When I began my career, I was in the food and beverage industry up in New York, working for different companies in the CPG beverage space like VitaCoco. Then I bounced over to some energy drink companies.

But I always knew I wanted to start a company and contribute to climate action. I was attending all these trade shows for the beverage company I worked for, and I came across cricket protein for human consumption at several of them. Once I learned more about the nutritional and environmental benefits, everything clicked for me. I became enamored and dove in.

At first, it was purely passion-driven—I had no idea about the true market opportunity in the insect protein space. I began playing around with cricket protein and recipes, all on the human food side initially. But it became clear that the psychological barrier for humans was just too great. No one in the Western world was ready to eat insects at the scale needed to be truly impactful.

So, I started looking at other industries where insect protein could be applied—and the pet industry popped up. I can tell you the true origin story of how I pivoted to pet food: I was on the subway in New York City and saw an ad for a fresh dog food brand.

I remember thinking how nutritious it looked, but from a sustainability angle, it felt problematic because they were competing with the human-grade protein industry. That’s what drew my attention to the pet food industry as a potential application.

Meg: That’s super interesting! So, what was your next step from there?

Wesley: I began testing a hypothesis: would dogs like the taste of insects? And would the psychological barrier be lower in the pet industry? And yes—dogs absolutely devoured insects. It was fascinating.

The psychological barrier was definitely less of an issue. Over time at Neobytes, we’ve learned that pet parents care primarily about their dog’s health, which totally makes sense. Sustainability is more of a nice-to-have. That’s the beauty of insect protein—it’s an incredibly nutritious source of protein. So, it became clear there was real potential here.

Meg: That’s really interesting. I feel like that’s how a lot of good ideas come to life—you have that "aha" moment like you did, and then you start exploring new avenues. So, when did Neo Bites officially form?

Wesley: Neo Bites as a company officially started under that name in—I think—February of 2020. We pivoted to pet food that spring, right before COVID hit. I moved back to Austin and launched the company officially that July of 2020. So we’ve been operating for coming up on two years now, which is kind of crazy.

Meg: Yeah, that’s awesome. I’m kind of curious to hear the specific mission, because I feel like you kind of summarized it through explaining how you came up with the idea and why you pursued it. But if you were to tell someone—what is the mission of Neo Bites?

Wesley: Yeah, so our mission as it stands—actually, our old mission—was: "To save the two things humans can’t live without: pets and planet Earth." That’s kind of changed over the years of operation. It’s now: "We’re on a mission to accelerate the shift toward sustainable animal nutrition through insect protein."

So obviously, our first mission still stands, but we’ve refined it to specifically target animal nutrition, and using insect protein as our North Star.

Meg: Yeah, it does feel like a more specific mission. It’s probably easier for consumers to be like, “Oh, okay, this is exactly what they’re doing.” That’s awesome.

So, when I think of sustainable proteins, I will say insect proteins have come up a time or two when I’m talking to people, but the most common one I hear about is plant protein. Everyone talks about plant-based, all that jazz—and there are even some plant protein-based dog foods on the market that seem to be doing a decent job of fulfilling dogs’ nutritional needs.

So my question is: why did you pursue insect protein versus plant protein in the sustainability realm?

Wesley: Yeah, sure. That’s a great question—and also the source of a massive debate in the pet food industry over whether dogs are omnivores or carnivores. And truthfully, we try to avoid that debate. There’s no definitive proof either way—it really just comes down to what you personally believe.

But, by and large, the majority of people believe that dogs need a source of animal protein. Insects are a source of animal protein, so we’re checking that box and sidestepping a very heated debate.

What excited me about insect protein over plant proteins is that insect protein is a complete protein source—it has every essential amino acid that dogs need. Plant proteins, on the other hand, usually require a bunch of different supplements to complete the amino profile.

Pound for pound, insects are truly one of the most nutritious sources of animal protein. They have more Omega-3s than salmon. They even have a naturally occurring prebiotic, which is great for gut health. No other animal protein has a naturally occurring prebiotic in it.

In terms of convincing vegetarian or vegan dog parents who are on the fence—most of them are focused on health and sustainability. Insects are a humane source of protein. They live a full life, for the few months that they’re alive, and then they’re dipped into hibernation before being roasted and milled into a powder. So, they don’t feel any pain when they’re put in a freezer to be frozen.

And for vegetarians and vegans who care about environmental impact, which is what got me excited in the first place—insects produce virtually no methane or greenhouse gases, and they require a fraction of the land, feed, and water to produce the same amount of protein. So, in my opinion, they’re truly the future of protein.

Meg: Yeah, well, I’ve definitely seen a bigger push toward insects—even on the human side. But like you said, there is that psychological barrier. So it makes sense to pursue that in the pet food industry because it can still have a huge impact.

And it’s also really interesting to hear you talk about vegan and vegetarian pet owners. I’m actually vegan, and that’s been a bit of a dilemma for me. But I didn’t know a lot about how insects are processed—so that was a fun fact to learn!

Wesley: Yeah! There are no legs or antennas in anything. The farmers we work with produce a powder, and when it comes to us, it honestly looks like protein powder. It smells kind of nutty—it doesn’t have any gross smell or weird character to it.

Meg: Earlier you mentioned cricket protein specifically. Is that a type of insect that’s known to have the best health benefits for people and dogs? Or are there other types of insects that you use?

Wesley: Yeah, so we started with crickets because that was the insect protein I was first introduced to. I didn’t do any research at the time—it was just what the Western world was accepting. Crickets are still the most accepted insect from a “yuck factor” standpoint; they’re considered the least gross.

But there are so many others. There are thousands of edible insects. Black soldier fly larvae is one we’ve started using in our products. Mealworms—while we don’t use them—are also a growing protein source in the animal feed and pet food world. You also see ants used in certain interior Mexican cuisines.

From a health perspective, they're all fairly comparable. Some have a higher fatty acid profile, etc., but they’re all very close in nutritional benefits. That’s the beautiful thing about them—there are so many options that the industry is truly scalable. Economically, environmentally, and health-wise, the benefits are pretty much the same across the board.

Meg: That’s awesome. I’m about to ask kind of a broad question—and you touched on a few aspects of it earlier—but a lot of dog food uses the same animals that humans commonly eat: beef, chicken, turkey, sometimes lamb, and all types of fish. There are even some novel proteins popping up now, like quail and rabbit.

So when comparing all these types of protein, can we dive a little deeper into the environmental impacts? Not just versus other animal proteins, but also in comparison to plants and insects? You already covered health a bit, so feel free to touch on that, but I’m really curious about the environmental side here.

Wesley: Sure, yeah. If we're looking purely at greenhouse gas emissions, beef is just insane. The livestock industry as a whole accounts for more than 36% of total U.S. methane emissions. And methane is a greenhouse gas that’s over 10 times more potent than CO₂ at warming the planet.

Insects, like crickets, produce virtually no greenhouse gases. It’s not even remotely comparable.

As for resources, I can give you actual figures:To produce 1 kilogram of beef protein, it takes 22,000 liters of water. Crickets? Just 2 liters.Beef requires 10 times more feed than crickets to produce the same amount of protein.And land use? Beef requires about 150 times more land than insects.

We can even go further—when looking at the percentage of edible weight:With cows, you can only consume about 40% of the animal. With crickets, it’s 100%—no waste.

Even the farming process is wildly different. There are serious environmental issues tied to traditional livestock farming. In contrast, insect farming operates on a kind of circular economy. Insects can live off food waste. They become a food source themselves, and their waste—called frass—is an incredibly nutrient-dense soil, great for composting and fertilizer.

So, comparing livestock agriculture to insect agriculture? They’re not even in the same league.

Meg: Yeah, it really sounds like it. And honestly, in a lot of environmental conversations about animal agriculture, the biggest comparison point is always beef. Which makes sense—people eat a lot of beef, and animals eat a lot of beef-based products. It seems like it’s by far the most environmentally damaging.

Wesley: Right.

Meg: But I also feel like when people start trying to make a shift—whether it’s in their own diets or for their pets—they tend to switch to chicken or turkey. Do you have any thoughts on how those compare?

Wesley: Yeah, I mean, they are truly the lesser evil—chicken, turkey, even pork. But they’re still far more resource-intensive than insects.

Water usage is probably the biggest resource drain. For example, to produce 1 kilogram of chicken protein, it takes 2,300 liters of water. Again, compare that to just 2 liters for crickets.

So yeah, compared to beef, chicken, pork, and turkey are definitely better. But compared to insects? Still not even close.

But the biggest wow factor is really when you directly compare beef to insects. It’s a staggering difference.

Meg: Switching gears a little—when I think of pet food, most people picture kibble. It’s the most accessible, usually the most affordable, and definitely the easiest way to feed our dogs.

But kibble has a lot of ingredients, and there’s always debate around how healthy it is—not just because of the protein, but also things like carbohydrates and how it's processed.

Can you weigh in on the health concerns with kibble? Like, how it's processed or even what’s actually going into it, like meat meal and so on?

Wesley: Yeah, absolutely. This is one of my favorite dinner conversations, honestly.

The way I got involved in this, the more I learned about what is really in our pets' food, just baffled me. I can list off the many problems here. I'll start with the way it's processed. So, traditional kibble is cooked at really high temperatures. It introduces carcinogenic compounds, which are known to cause cancer.

These compounds are fine in small amounts, compared to our breakfast cereal—it goes through the same extrusion process. But when it's something you consume twice a day for your entire life, it's clearly a ticking time bomb before your cat develops some sort of health issue related to it. Dog cancer rates are really high.

This is one of the things that frustrates me the most about the industry: cancer rates are not something that's been tracked over time. Professionals who are trying to cover up these stats always point to the fact that there's no proof that they've been rising because they haven’t been tracked.

But when dog cancer rates are so high, and the food we've been feeding them for the past 50 years is this highly processed kibble, it's pretty clear what the problem is.

Moving on to the ingredients: by and large, traditional kibbles are packed with cheap fillers, sometimes even artificial preservatives. 4D meat is probably the biggest thing I can point to here as the problem. 4D meat stands for dead, dying, diseased, or downed.

This can literally include roadkill, carcasses left over from human meat processing plants, dead zoo animals, etc. It's awful and it's considered unfit for human consumption, rightfully so, but it's been given the green light in pet food.

People don’t really understand what they're feeding their pets, and with all of these factors lined up, it's just mind-boggling to know that people actually feed those to their animals.

The fresh food market has obviously been growing with companies like The Farmer's Dog. They're doing a great job at solving the health problems in the industry, but they're pretty inconvenient. They're messy, they're really expensive, and then on top of that, they're obviously really unsustainable because they're using human protein sources.

There's a growing offering of gently cooked and dehydrated dog foods that I'm a pretty big fan of. I actually feed my dog one of those right now because Neo-bites doesn’t currently offer a full table food. We will do something along those lines down the line when we do release the food.

Meg: Yeah, there's definitely a lot to unpack when it comes to dog food. But there are a couple of other questions I had about certain ingredients, and if you can't answer them, then that's okay, but I feel like you're the most likely to know.

Wesley: Sure, let's do it.

Meg: So, something that I think has kind of started to change—well, first of all, it seems like pet food is not nearly as regulated as human food, right? Like, the regulations are different, the health codes are different, all of that jazz.

Wesley: Yeah.

Meg: You talked a little bit about the dead and downed meats and stuff like that. But previously—I don’t think this is happening anymore, at least I hope not—but I’ve heard before that some dog foods were recalled or they had to change the recipes and stuff like that because they had been using euthanized animals, and then like that drug was going into the food and making dogs sometimes die. Is that real?

Wesley: Yes. That’s kind of what drew attention to 4D meat, that came along with, you know, the roadkill and dead zoo animals. It just found its way into the mix, and the industry is horribly regulated. I'll call out the FDA here. It’s recall-ridden.

There’s only a handful of manufacturers, like Purina and Blue Buffalo, who share facilities. If one line is recalled, chances are another line has been tested as well and went undetected. So, there will be those who defend the pet industry and call it not recall-ridden, but if it happened at the scale that it does in the human side, it would be international news for how horrible it is. So, yeah, that is real. But the euthanized piece is not as common.

Meg: Yeah, I didn’t think so. Yeah, that was maybe just more of like a sensational thing.

Wesley: I think so.

Meg: In comparison to the other recalls that were happening. And then I definitely got into the habit when I became plant-based of reading my own food ingredients a lot more closely. And then I started doing the same for my dogs. I do believe that dog foods list the ingredients according to the amount of the actual weight of that food.

So, if they list, say, beef first, then by weight, technically, that is supposed to be the number one ingredient. But then I’ll often see them list several types of grains after.

So, I’m trying to think of an example. So, you could do like brown rice, and then rice bran, and then another—like, I don’t know—maybe white rice or something like that. But it’s all rice, right? But it’s listed three times. So, then technically the rice is the number one ingredient. So, they're kind of like splitting things up really confusingly.

Do you have any tips for like reading pet food ingredients? Like, number one, things to look for?

Wesley: Yeah, that's a great question. The science behind the marketing of pet food is sad. Obviously, profit comes first for a lot of these companies, and they can split up different types of one ingredient to get around that and pack it with fillers rather than actual nutrition.

I think my tip for dog owners is to just get familiar with what's actually inside. I bet if you read the back of your dog's food, especially if it's traditional kibble, you wouldn't fully grasp what you're actually giving your dog. I bet there are a majority of ingredients in there that you'd be confused about. My advice to that is just run the other way and wait for new lights to launch food if you can't find something else.

It's pretty standard across the entire industry; it's just common practice to fill the kibble with fillers and then put "chicken" as the number one ingredient on the front of the bag. I think that's probably my unfortunate best tip I could give.

Meg: Well, it's good to be more in the know and more aware of those things, because I think until people are more aware of those specific issues and what exactly is going into the food, then they can't really make those changes.

So right now, Neobytes, you guys make a couple of different food toppers and also treats. The food toppers are great, by the way. One of my Huskies is kind of picky, and it makes him want to eat his food more. What was the intention behind adding those food toppers—to add them on top of things like kibble to kind of boost the nutritional value?

Wesley: Yeah, exactly. So we started with the treats in July of 2020 to introduce insect protein into the consumer's mind, and then we did have a food shortly after that. That’s when we learned very quickly just how hard it is to convince people to leave this super sticky product they've been feeding their dog.

Their parents probably fed them these big kibble brands, and those companies have done a great job at keeping customers on board. It’s a really big challenge for startups like Neobytes to earn their trust and win their business over. So, the toppers were a decision we made to boost the nutrition of the typical dog diet through these traditional kibbles, while also introducing insect protein.

We wanted to work into the consumer’s daily habits so they can physically see the benefits of insects. Whether it makes your Husky more excited at mealtime, that’s awesome. Hopefully, you’ll start seeing some true physical health benefits too. We've had some amazing feedback on dog skin and coat after being on our toppers for a while.

There’s a growing number of breeds out there that have insane digestive issues, and our digestive aid topper has been a big solution for those dogs. It's been amazing to see. Sorry, I derailed the question, but we are building to have a food in the future that captures all of the benefits of insect protein and whole food ingredients, processed in a gentle way that won't introduce these carcinogens.

Meg: Yeah, that's great. Something that I had already been doing—and that I'm kind of phasing out now that I use the Neobytes topper—is I was adding fish oil of some kind to the top, because I know that omegas are really beneficial.

You kind of mentioned that earlier, and I think that specifically makes me more on board with insect proteins, I guess, because a lot of times we think it's either just fish or, I guess, kelp that you're going to be able to get omegas from.

But from my understanding, from what you've been saying, insects also have those.

Wesley: Yeah, exactly. They are packed full of Omega-3s primarily, but they also have a great Omega-6 profile as well. That’s obviously super beneficial for skin and coat, but it's also great for brain development, the immune system, etc.

Yeah, the common knowledge is fish oil, but I can give dogs bad breath. It's also just not as sustainable, and pound for pound, like I said, insects have more Omega-3s.

Meg: Okay, so I have another question. In general, I mean, you've talked really in depth about the environmental impacts and how insect protein is a lot better than other animal proteins. But then, in other parts of your processing—when you're making the treats and the toppers—how do you kind of manage the impact of production in general?

Wesley: Yeah, great question. So, we made the conscious decision to own our production process. Everything is made in small batches here in Austin, Texas, and that gives us a lot of oversight and control.

There isn't waste, there's not a lot of transportation from facility to facility to fulfillment center to store to the end customer's home. Everything is made, packed, and fulfilled right here in our facility, so there's no waste. For a while, all of our products were more or less made to order. We don't sit on a lot of inventory.

And we're actually America's first carbon-negative pet food company. That means a lot to some people, while for others, it just doesn't matter. But that was part of our internal mission to be as sustainable as possible and work towards operating within a circular economy.

We have an amazing partner who's facilitating our carbon-negative status and has connected us to a couple of partners who we offset through. But that's really made possible through our use of insect protein. We also use post-consumer recycled packaging plastic still, but we are working to improve that and switch over to aluminum or glass as a potential option later too.

Meg: Wow, that's really cool. Yeah, I think being climate-negative is really awesome. And if people aren't really sure what being climate-negative is, they can go back to one of my older episodes.

It's called What Does Being Climate Neutral Mean? and it's with the CEO of Climate Neutral, so he talks all about what that actually means and how companies like Neo Bites achieve that.

But before I guess we kind of wrap things up, what are any other last little tidbits or advice that you have for pet parents who are looking to improve their dog's health as well as lower their pets' environmental footprint?

Wesley: Yeah, educate yourself on what's actually in the food. If you're curious about an ingredient, Google it. Chances are, it's probably not good if it's in a traditional kibble. And in terms of environmental impact, I think holding the companies that you choose to purchase from accountable is probably my biggest recommendation.

We are taking it upon ourselves to do that despite our customers asking for it, but I would say the majority of pet food companies out there are putting profit first, unfortunately. And pets' health and the planet's health are definitely taking a backseat, which is extremely unfortunate.

So, I was just really transparent—we're using plastic bags, but we're working to move away from those, even though it's going to be more expensive for us. So I think just challenging companies you purchase from to do better is probably my biggest tip.

Meg: Yeah, and I think that the mention of the plastic bags is a good one because oftentimes it's easy to fixate on the packaging of certain materials. But I think, especially when it comes to things like food that we're eating or that our pets are eating, a lot of times the actual impact of the ingredients of those foods is higher than the packaging itself.

So there's pros and cons, obviously. I'm not advocating for plastic in this instance, but in the zero-waste realm, we hyper-focus on packaging, and I don't necessarily think that should hold a lot of people back, is what I'm trying to say.

Wesley: Yeah, definitely.

Meg: So, how can people learn more about Neo Bites, get some more resources from you guys, and maybe try some of your treats or toppers?

Wesley: Sure, yeah. So you can obviously head to our website, eatneobites.com, or follow along on social media @eatneobites. We're very active on Instagram, and we're slowly building up our TikTok presence as well. We recently launched on Amazon, so if you're an avid Prime shopper, that's a great way to find us.

We're largely not in stores outside of the Austin area, but we're developing some partnerships on Thrive Market and a handful of other e-commerce wholesale platforms. But I would say our website or social media is probably the best way. We do offer samples of our toppers and treats—you just have to pay for shipping. It's a great way to try our products risk-free and see how your dog likes them.

Meg: Awesome! Well, I will share all the links to your website and the socials in the episode notes, so if people want to check those out, you can go look there. But thank you so much for being on the show, Wesley. I learned a lot.

Wesley: Awesome, thanks for having me, Meg.