Meatless Meat Is On The Horizon – You’ll Be Surprised Where It Comes From

...The idea was inspired by NASA. In the 1960s they explored how to convert the carbon dioxide breathed out by astronauts into food and create a closed-loop carbon cycle onboard spacecraft for long trips. It was never commercialized – as we haven’t yet made it to Mars – but Dyson saw the Earth as much like a spaceship, with limited room and resources. So she and co-founder John Reed investigated the research. NASA identified a class of single-celled microorganisms called hydrogenotrophs, which Dyson calls “nature’s supercharged carbon recyclers”. These little organisms feed on CO2 and, with the help of hydrogen from water, convert it into food by synthesising the gas into cellular material. It’s just like using fermentation to make foods like sauerkraut, yoghurt and beer. “There’s so many different things you can do,” Dyson explains. “Basically you have different microorganisms – use different inputs and you get different outputs.” Kiverdi uses a bioreactor to produce the air protein with the hydrogenotrophs, which are fuelled by renewable energy or biomass. The CO2-reducing bacteria are extremely industrious; what takes plants months can take them a matter of hours. Therefore, Dyson estimates, they could produce 10,000 times more food per land area and use 2,000 times less water than soybeans. The “air protein” is rich in vitamins and minerals and has a full complement of amino acids, making it a complete protein. It's also very concentrated, starting out with 70-80% protein compared to 30-50% in soy. In more good news for vegans, it contains vitamin B12. This is timely news for meatless meat restaurants struggling to meet growing demand for popular alternatives that still taste like meat. Impossible Foods, one of two rapidly growing industries in this space, is running out of its Impossible Burgers sought by thousands of fast-food and chain restaurants. Beyond Meat, the other major supplier, has hit shaky ground recently, but some experts say it has done extraordinarily well overall with 800% stock growth and predict the meatless meat market could reach $100 billion...MORE