What are you gut-loading your feeder insects with?

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humantidy

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So I am curious, as a leopard gecko owner, I feed my pet gecko a variety of bugs – crickets, dubia roaches, giant mealworms, wax worms, horn worms, and phoenix worms. One of the things that is very crucial to the health of my gecko is what I feed his bugs. We call it "gut-loading". I gut-load my gecko's bugs by feeding them carrots, apples, bananas, broccoli, papaya, sweet potato, alfalfa sprouts and sometimes oranges (citrus can give a gecko the runs, LOL). I also feed them Repashy's Bug Burger and Superload. Anyway, there are actually some fruits and veggies that are bad for my gecko, that I must avoid feeding my feeder insects. 
 
So I guess my question is....are there any foods that should NOT be fed to a feeder insect before it's fed to a pet mantis? I'm asking this because I remember reading somewhere online to never feed your feeder insects carrots...that carrot-fed bugs can make a mantis sick. Do we know anything in regards to what's good for "gut-loading" the bugs we feed our mantids? I would imagine some foods are better than others. If there's a science behind it in dealing with geckos, I'd bet there is one for mantids as well.
 
For roaches I do dry feed that smells like alfalfa, then citrus fruit. Flies gut loaded with sugar water or honey. No true science behind it that I know of, but I think it’s good to gut load with sugary substances. Chitin, the backbone of the insect exoskeleton, is a polysaccharide (a chemical structure of many sugars connected) so to me it makes sense

 
I use bee pollen and honey, milk, yeast,etc. The great Yen gave e permission to use his name on it. I called it Yen's special blend.

 
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I provide my feeders with the optimal nutritional requirements of those feeders.  That, in turn, will provide the optimal nutrition for my pets.  No black magic or urban legends required.

 

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