Newfangled #40: Is the future of food a fungus?
Cow-free Cheese is a thing
Fungi are the new scary organism. Where science fiction leads, the mainstream follows.
The Last of Us - the human race is almost wiped out by a fungal infection, turning people into zombies.
Star Trek Discovery is propelled by a ‘spore’ drive exploiting a mycelial network
Does this all sound like I’ve been sampling too many psychotropic mushrooms?
We’re in a climate emergency and what we eat contributes to that, from belching cows to deforestation for animal feed.1 So, what’s the future of food?
Could it be fermentation?
Some of our favourite foodstuffs are the product of fermentation: bread and it’s premium friend sourdough, yoghurt, beer, and wine … I’ve not yet learned to love kimchi or kombucha but according to Dr Tim Spector of Kings College, London these foodstuffs might be the key to a healthy gut.2
But new technology is here and precision fermentation may be the answer.
What is Precision Fermentation?
It’s making dairy proteins in a lab. So, you can eat cheese from animal proteins without the animals.
Does that feel like a brainteaser? There’s no trick unless you consider biotechnology to be a trick.
The challenge with the journey to plant-based diets is not adoption by those who are already vegan, it’s about broad adoption across the population. Hence, the origin of campaigns like “Meat Free Monday.” It’s an industry ripe for disruption (pun intended).
Plant-based cheese has historically been a poor substitute but start-ups like Formo3 are aiming to change the game. Sidenote: If you’re a fan of cheese-based puns, their website is an absolute delight. The key here is that it’s the same proteins as a dairy-based product, not a dupe. To use a scientific-sounding, non-scientific term, the product is “bio-identical.”
Microorganisms, generally types of fungi, have their DNA edited so that they produce whey-type proteins. Then, they brew up in vats, much like brewing beer. The proteins are filtered off, mixed with plant-based fats and then heated and acidified with enzymes to make a curd. The curd is then used in a way similar to if it was cow-based to create a range of cheeses.
The same type of process has been used for many years in Quorn, a mycoprotein, originally a vegetarian product but now a vegan version. This is the technology behind products like Gregg’s famed vegan sausage roll. Non-UK readers, Greggs is a legendary chain of bakeries, purveyor of steak-bakes and sausage rolls on the high street.
But there’s a Business Model Problem
It’s the usual one we talk about. Can these companies make money from it? Can they compete with ubiquitous cheap animal-based proteins? Can they grow the market to a sufficient scale to make the cost base work?
The plant-based “meat” movement is having a financial crisis, with venture capital firms getting cold feet about the sector.4 Partly due to rising inflation and interest rates and partly due to consumers returning to animal-based products.
To be successful in the sector, challenger brands need to scale up their technology in the chemical engineering sense as well as scale-up in the entrepreneur sense, which needs mid-sized equipment (not traditional dairy-scale production.)
But VCs are not backing fermentation-based processes and culture-based processes (bacteria) in preference to the plant-based meat alternatives that had attracted so much funding last year.
So, cheese without the cows, what do we think?
The Round-Up
What we’ve been reading?
Dive without Fear’s report on Life After Cheap Money which is food for thought.
Freezing Order by Bill Browder - a true life story that reads like a thriller.