Your Next Burger Could Be Made With Microbes

Fermentation is a natural process that humans have been hacking for millennia. Now, scientists are customizing the process to revolutionize the future of food with alternative proteins.
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When you hear ‘fermentation’, you may think of the spice of bubbly kimchi, the smell of rising bread, or the tang of a good beer. These techniques have been part of human life for millenia. But today, fermentation is being hacked for the food of the future.

Those tiny microbes are helping us solve the global challenge of how to produce more and more food for more and more people…and we’re not just talking about stuff like bread. Like one of my favorite bacterial genuses, Lactobacillus, let’s break this down. When microorganisms like bacteria or fungi do fermentation, they’re breaking down some kind of sugar, like glucose, into smaller building blocks—it's how they make energy for themselves. But we‘ve been harnessing that process since the dawn of civilization, using these bacteria—and their byproducts—to make tasty stuff for ourselves, too.

When it comes to food, there are three main types of this process:

Lactic acid fermentation, which is used to make things like yogurt, pickles, and sourdough bread.

Ethanol/alcohol fermentation, which is used to make things like wine, beer, and more.

Acetic acid fermentation, which makes things like vinegars and kombucha

When we talk about fermentation for the FUTURE of food, we mean something a little different.


#food #foodscience #microbes #science #seeker #elements

Read More:
Fermentation: The New Game-Changer For Alternative Proteins?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/briankateman/2021/06/07/fermentation-the-new-game-changer-for-alternative-proteins/?sh=326361aa3aff
All proteins have genes, which are specific sequences of DNA, and all organisms can understand the same genetic code. To create an animal-free version of milk proteins, the company introduced animal genes, which they found catalogued in online scientific databases, to another organism.

Fermentation can help build a more efficient and sustainable food system – here’s how
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/11/fermentation-can-help-build-a-more-efficient-and-sustainable-food-system-here-s-how/
But demand for food and protein is only going to grow. By 2050, projected demand for protein is set to nearly double globally as incomes rise and the population reaches an estimated 10 billion.

Biotechnology could provide an environmentally more sustainable alternative to egg white protein production
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/01/220107084417.htm
"According to our research, this means that the fungus-produced ovalbumin reduced land use requirements by almost 90 per cent and greenhouse gases by 31-55 per cent compared to the production of its chicken-based counterpart."
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