ex-idaho

There is a new product just introduced to the US from Britan called Quorn. Some of you may be familiar with it already. I heard a brief story on NPR about the other day.

The product is marketed by the makers as derived from mushrooms. It is a vegetarian product by the way. Anyway, it is supposedly made from mushrooms but that isn't exactly true. It is actually made from a underground fungus. The discoverers of this fungus were looking for a environmently freindly product for the growing vegetarian/vegan market. They figured out a way to grow this in petri dishes on a large scale. Now it is being turned into every type of product imagineable. Chicken nuggets, ground beef, lasagna, meat loaf, chicken and beef patties and many others. They did a taste test between a vegetarian and a person with a more typical diet. They both like the product (they had the chicken nuggets) and said they were very similar to the real thing.

But here is the thing. This is the reason that this could be the future of food. To be able to grow this fungus you don't need anything but a dark space, some glucose and a petri dish. Right now we have to clear vast plots of land in order to have grazing room for livestock and the acreage for grain and other crops. Even it we did manage to move the world to a largely vegetarian diet vast tracts of land would still need to be cleared for the planting of soy beans.

Of course selling this to a American market in love with their beef will be a hard sell. I am just as guilty as anyone else. It is very promising that we may have a cheap, nutricious product that could feed the starving in drought stricken countries where other forms of food production are not an option. Of course a certain amount of processing is required to make this an edible product.<a href="http://www.quorn.com/us/index.htm" target="_blank">The Quorn product line</a>

[ March 24, 2002: Message edited by: idaho ]</p>

The AntiChris

Merely for information:

Vegetarians and anyone concerned about animal welfare need to be aware that Quorn contains egg albumen from battery hens.

Chris

theyeti

Where do you think the glucose is going to come from?

theyeti

eh

Well in the future, human bodies will probably be replaced by much better ones. We may have bodies that have a more efficient means of getting energy. Why not design something that can get enough energy out of one injection of some liquid per day? Ahh nevermind, it's sci fi set waaaayyy off in the future.

Boro Nut

..and the batteries themselves are made using whale liver oil, and are tested on endangered butterflies.

Boro Nut

lpetrich

I checked on the UK site, available from <a href="http://www.quorn.com" target="_blank">http://www.quorn.com</a> and I found out some more interesting details:

The fungus grows in strands in the soil, like many fungi; the Quorn site compares it to mushroom fungi, which grow in the same way. Mushrooms are not the "main" body of mushroom fungi; they are sprouts sent above the soil surface for distributing spores.

The species: Fusarium sp. (Schwabe) ATCC 20334

The fungus is grown in a giant fermentation vat in a continuous process, and it is separated out with a centrifuge.

The "mycoprotein" described in the site is the whole fungus; its growing in strands may be how it creates a fake meat texture.

As to where the glucose to feed it comes from, it's probably made from the starch in wheat or corn or some other food grain. An alternative way to make glucose is to digest cellulose, which is much more available; I'm not sure how well-developed that is. In fact, it might even be possible to grow fungi that digest cellulose.

Using cellulose means that one can use essentially any plant biomass; imagine a pasture that is periodically mowed to collect some grass for its cellulose.

It will be interesting to see how fast this foodstuff catches on; one important question is how cheap it can be made. Can it undersell typical meats?

And will it inspire imitators?

Corwin

Like everything else, it's going to come down to 'how much like meat is it?'

Veggieburgers.... Veggimite... Tofu.... They've all been miserable failures in the consumer market.... mostly because they aren't meat. (They're vile too... but the main point of failure is that they try to replace meat with a dramatically inferior substitute. The people who make them are idealogues and expect people to put up with that fact just to 'not be eating meat.' Won't fly.)

ex-idaho

You know i had a Boca burger last night and it was good. Tasted just like a burger. It was a little dry, sort of like it had been slightly over cooked.

There are plenty of good vegie products on the market. You just have to get beyond any bias that you may have and stop expecting a meat substitute to recreate the meat experience

Corwin

If it doesn't 'recreate the meat experience' why would I possibly be interested in it?

To put it another way.... why would I eat a 'meat substitute' that doesn't feel and taste like meat when I can get, well.... meat?

Boro Nut

Nobody likes sprouts though, so maybe thats why they say its mushrooms.

Boro Nut