Food of the Future: Agricultural waste is used for growing synthetic meat.

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Eating meat is a way of life for many people. Meat is considered essential source of protein and contains many other nutrients. But it is also known that the breeding of poultry and cattle is inefficient and requires a huge amount of resources. Huge areas, water and fodder for livestock are given to pastures. In addition, cattle breeding harms the atmosphere. At the same time, the world’s population is growing relentlessly. Scientists estimate that by 2050 the world’s population will grow from the current 7.7 to 9.7 billion, and by the end of the century it will reach 11 billion people. Naturally, the issue of feeding a growing population becomes more acute.

That is why marketologists and statisticians predict in the coming years the growth of the market for artificial meat from laboratory, which is gaining fame on the wave of interest in responsible consumption. Startups around the world are creating a new industry, promising salvation for the environment without compromises on taste, composition and quality.

I believe humanity is doomed to abandon natural meat and replacement of animal products is becoming a common practice in modern society. Meat substitutes are created using protein synthesis, which involves combining amino acids to form a new type of protein. Scientists have come a long way in creating realistic substitutes for vegetable and animal protein. However, the future of meat synthesis is still unknown.

From my perspective, the best way to create realistic meat substitutes is biotechnology. Scientists are learning to synthesize different types of proteins from plants. But there is one problem: the production of a high-quality analogue of meat, which has the same taste and qualities, is now too expensive. But recently, a team of scientists from Singapore and China has made a breakthrough in this area. They have found a way to use food waste to grow meat, reducing production costs and helping to make cultured meat a potential food option for people in the future.

Muscle cells multiply easily and vigorously in nutrient media, but need a wireframe to give them a characteristic shape to become meat. Without it, the meat will most likely resemble a lump of mashed potatoes. Unique wireframes can be created using new 3D printing technology. However, it is difficult and expensive, as it requires the use of food and safe neutral substances. The use of collagen or gelatin destroys the idea of sprouts because they are extracted from the flesh of living organisms, and edible polymers are too expensive. Finding cost-effective edible ink for printing is one of the major challenges in the production of cultured meat.

In search of an alternative, scientists paid attention to agricultural waste in the form of barley and rye husks. Modern technologies make it possible to extract proteins, which, after processing, can be turned into the basis of “ink” for 3D printers and scaled to create the same framework for the growth of muscle tissue.This technology allows more efficient processing of products and significantly reduces the need for animal husbandry.

I believe that this method of printing using such ink has great potential for future meat synthesis. The husk that remains from the grains is not suitable for food and in fact it is thrown away. This is a cheap resource that can be used quite successfully. I believe that the ideal option in the future may be further development in this area, finding new sources that can serve as a framework for growing stem cells. This creates less harm to nature, reduces greenhouse gas emissions, since no animal dies for this food source, which is more ethical. In addition, this type of meat synthesis can help produce meat faster than traditional methods.

In conclusion, the idea of scientists pushed me to another idea: the way to our survival is the reuse and recycling of resources. In any field, whether it is the production of synthetic meat or any other. We are now at a stage of development where we can no longer be mere consumers and only take resources from nature, but must find and use other ways to meet our needs.

https://phys.org/news/2022-12-3d-printing-ink-cultured-meat-cost-effective.html

https://www.impomag.com/training-development/news/22605050/new-3d-printing-ink-could-make-cultured-meat-more-costeffective

Демографические изменения | Организация Объединенных Наций (un.org)

How challenging is it to produce vegan cheese?

Reading Time: 5 minutes

The answer to the question is: pretty hard. With the rise of veganism over the last couple of years, individuals eating a primarily plant-based diet have been the target of multiple companies, who have taken it upon themselves to produce vegan alternatives to a variety of ‘traditional’ animal products. Unfortunately, the available alternatives are more often than not a flop – with a weird, chewy texture, lack of taste, and an expensive price tag. Seeing as plant-based diets, even if applied in a limited capacity (reducing the intake of animal products throughout the week), are and will for sure continue to gain popularity, the demand for animal-free alternatives will also rise. Companies will inevitably need to step up their game, and come up with solutions which will satisfy the taste buds of customers. Let’s take a look at one of the game-changers of the ‘vegan technology’ industry.

Example of a plant-based creamy cheese made by Prfect Day – look at that texture!

One of the products which (speaking from personal experience) is especially hard to replicate in a plant-based way is cheese, which has a distinctive and hard to copy taste and texture. To highlight just how big of a deal cheese is, it has been estimated that by 2030 the global vegan cheese market will triple in value to $7 billion. Rising to meet the demand and the challenge of replacing traditional cheese with a plant-based product is Ryan Pandya and his company Perfect Day. Pandya is a graduate chemical and biological engineering, so when in 2014 he was appalled at the existing alternatives to cheese, he decided to take action. He wanted to find what was the ‘magic ingredient’ in animal milk which couldn’t be found in plant-based alternatives. “Coming at it from a scientific perspective, you can’t help but realise that there’s no magic in cows or in milk,” he says. “It’s just chemistry and biology. So it stands to reason that if you had an almond milk that had whatever ingredients are in cow’s milk, and you make it act like cow’s milk, you would have a vegan version of milk.”

Pandya eventually identified the magic ingredients as casein and whey protein, which ensure that milk and milk-based products (for instance cheese, obviously) have a creamy texture and its distinctive tangy taste. Casein in particular (which has such a variable structure that there’s a lack of consensus over what it actually looks like) is the coagulating component that causes real cheese to stretch, melt and bubble so deliciously.

Fermentation is the new alchemy (according to Perfect Day)

Taking a closer look at the technology behind Perfect Day’s plant-based products, at the heart of the process is fermentation – the company makes dairy proteins from plant sugars. Fermentation is, in a nutshell, a way microorganisms convert food into energy in an environment with no oxygen. The method of fermentation Perfect Day uses is known as precision fermentation, allowing the company to make super specific, highly pure ingredients. In the process, microflora convert sugar into whey and casein, dairy proteins that are useful to food makers for their top-notch nutrition, functionality, and versatility.

Perfect Day utilises fermentation tanks (or bioreactors) to provide microflora with the adequate conditions to make lots of protein. The fermentation tank is filled with so-called ‘growth media’, a liquid containing plant-based sugars that microflora thrive on. Then, the growth media is inoculated with microflora. The environment inside the bioreactor is controlled by adjusting the temperature, pressure, pH, and stirring action to give the flora the perfect conditions to eat, grow, and multiply. As they consume sugar and increase exponentially, they also pump out copious amounts of our desired protein. The fermentation process ends when the flora stop multiplying and the sugar is all used up. The protein is separated from the microflora and then dried, and results in an extreme pure protein powder ready for use by food makers.

The fermentation process is actually the last step in Perfect Day’s process. Before microflora (called Trichoderma) undergoes fermentation, it receives the ‘recipe’ for making the specific whey protein which can be found in cow’s milk. The scientist at Perfect Day identified before starting the whole process which specific protein carries the properties we want, and utilised a widely accessible database (UniProt) of a cow’s sequenced genome to get the recipe for this specific protein. Then they “copied” the genetic information regarding the wanted protein and “pasted” it into the genome of microflora Trichoderma. The microflora understands the instructions and incorporates the DNA into its own genome. Then a process called homologous recombination takes place, which basically means that the flora searches the broken segments in its own DNA, and when it finds a gap with ends that match the connector’s ends, the flora fills the gap with that connector. Then the new gene is permanently incorporated into Trichoderma’s genome.

As you can see, the process of Perfect Day is fascinating and quite “simple” on paper. I especially appreciate the company giving such details of their process, so that such tech nerds as us can take a closer look at it.

Perfect Day is one of many companies currently innovating in the field of so-called vegan technology. Another fascinating example of a company in this field is Revo Foods, an Austrian startup who is producing 3D-printed smoked salmon, which was developed using new technology based on 3D food printing to recreate the texture and appearance of seafood. During the process, ingredients such as pea protein, algae extracts, and dietary fibers are combined to create a base that is high in protein, omega 3, and B12. Pretty cool, huh?

I look forward to following not only what next steps companies like Perfect Day and Revo Foods take (Perfect Foods recently announced they are working on replicating cow’s milk fat), but also to actually trying out the products they offer. I wonder if the products are as good as they look (take a look below at more of Perfect Day’s cream cheeses).