Mmmm, Fungus. It’s the Next Big Thing in Fake Meat
Fast-growing networks of
mycelial filaments can replicate meat’s texture—without meat’s carbon
footprint. Just add flavor and fry it up.
MEAT IS MURDER—OF Earth's climate, at
least. More than a quarter of the planet's ice-free land is inefficiently used
for grazing, a third of all farmland grows food for animals, and livestock are
prodigious belchers of greenhouse gases. Global demand for meat
is spiking at exactly the moment it'd be really good for all of us to eat less
of it.
Alas, meat is also
freakin' delicious. High-tech plant-based replacements aspire to replicate its
proteinaceous umami yumminess and texture, but pea-based Beyond and soy-based
Impossible face technical challenges. So maybe it's time to look to a whole
other kingdom of life for meaty not-meats: fungus.
Fast-growing meshworks of
mycelial filaments can replicate meat's texture, and it'll eat pretty much any
carbon source, including waste from various industrial processes. Decades ago,
British-based Quorn was the beginning of this idea, but this year the number of
startups planning to put fungus-based alternative proteins in stores and on
plates is mushrooming.
Prime Roots
Aspergillus Oryzae
You've already eaten
Berkeley, California-based Prime Roots' substrate. It's better known as koji,
the fungus that gets the starches in rice and soy ready for fermentation into
sake and soy sauce, producing all sorts of meaty flavors along the way. Prime
Roots grows a particular variety of koji and adds fats and flavors for eatin'.
Meati Foods
Proprietary Mycelial
Strain 'Rosita'
Boulder-based Meati pored
through libraries of filamentous fungi used to make other stuff—citric acid,
antibiotics—to find one that could grow directly in bioreactors. The resulting
harvest is good enough to fry up in vegan butter and garlic all on its own.
Sustainable Bioproducts
Fusarium Spp
Found in a Yellowstone hot
spring, the fast-growing fungus that underpins Sustainable's products grows in
open trays, no bioreactor required. Then it's just a matter of drying,
pressing, and adding flavor.
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