Researchers tested whether crickets could be raised on inexpensive mushroom-fermented corn stalks as an alternative to costly grain feeds. While the fermented stalks made iron more absorbable by the human body, the crickets actually grew worse on this feed compared to unfermented stalks. The study suggests that combining mushroom and cricket farming, while theoretically appealing for sustainability, may not work well in practice due to poor cricket survival and growth on spent mushroom substrate.