Meat production is a burden on all mankind. According to a joint study by the University of Oxford (UK) and the University of Amsterdam (Netherlands), the energy required to produce a ton of meat from livestock is between 26 and 33 GJ (gigijul). In addition, 367-521L of water and 190-230㎡ of land are required. The amount of carbon dioxide generated also amounts to 1.9 to 2.24 tons. It is not easy to reduce meat, which is a burden on the environment. Therefore, the importance of alternative meat using vegetable protein or cultured meat is gradually increasing. According to a study by ResinkX, a think tank that studies the ecosystem disturbance of technology, proteins produced by precise fermentation are expected to be 10 times cheaper than animal proteins by 2035.
(Picture from Unsplash)
Currently, the Grand Sports Market is a two-way street between Beyond Meat and Impossible Food. Beyond Meat is a major sports manufacturing company founded by Lee Sun-Brown in 2009. To cope with climate change, the University of Missouri's Fuhongxhe and Harold Huff licensed technologies, and in 2012, it marketed the Great Sports Chicken Strip through Whole Foods, a luxury supermarket. Currently, it supplies Dae-sports, which is produced using rice and peas, to franchises such as KFC, Subway, Carls Jr., and Dunkin' Donuts, as well as wholesale and retail companies such as Tesco, Whole Foods, and Safeway. Beyond sausage, beef, beef crumble (ground meat), and jerky (beef jerky) are the main products. It is a general assessment that it tastes better than the products of its competitor Impossible Food, but it is not cheap. Two 227g patties for hamburgers in Korea cost 13,000 won (100g, 5,720 won), similar to two-plus Korean beef sirloin.
Impossible Food was founded in 2011 by Patrick Brown, a professor of biochemistry at Stanford University in the United States. The heme produced using the leg hemoglobin gene extracted from the root of soybeans is added with taste and aroma to make a great sport. Since launching the company's first product, Impossible Burger, with Burger King in 2016, it has produced Impossible sausages, chicken nuggets, meatballs, and forks. Hem is a key ingredient in Impossible Food, but it is also an obstacle. Impossible Foods uses genetic modification techniques to produce heme. Therefore, it is impossible to enter the Chinese and European markets, which strictly prohibit GMOs. Currently, Impossible Foods supplies more than 20,000 grocery stores, including Wal-Mart and Kroger, and 40,000 restaurants, including Burger King and Disney World.
Meanwhile, domestic companies include The Planit, which studies alternative vegetable ingredients. Founded in March 2017, the food tech startup introduced a variety of alternative foods, including mayonnaise without eggs, crackers, and bibimbap simple meals using Dae-sports. The pure vegetable "It's Bear Mayo" on the market is already paying off. If you use 1kg, you can save 3.4 trees, 22 times more water, and 8.54의 of land than animal mayonnaise.
The Planit uses the power of machine learning to develop pure vegetable foods. It is a method of dividing more than 30,000 foods into molecules and analyzing them through machine learning to secure and combine more than 300,000 food ingredients. Yang Jae-sik, CEO of The Planit, said, "In order to get 1kg of beef, you have to feed more than 10kg of corn to cows. If you process beans yourself to create the taste and aroma of beef, you can solve many problems ranging from global warming to nutritional imbalance."
For example, the leftover soybean oil (soybean leaf) contains protein, but there are no ingredients such as amino acids and fat that taste like beef. It is supplemented with taste ingredients secured through machine learning. It is to analyze and supplement the food ingredient database, such as importing fat from cocoa butter and mixing it with olive oil. Meanwhile, the ingredients of shiitake mushrooms and potatoes are added to simulate the taste of beef. CEO Yang said, "One animal food has more than 100 ingredients in a molecular unit. "The Planit has a technology to find the content of each ingredient and then combine vegetable foods to replace it," he explained.
Proteins extracted from air are under development after major sports that utilize plants such as soybeans and rice. Startup Kibuddy has succeeded in converting into a protein called "air protein" using microorganisms in the air. In the 1960s, NASA scientists studied food procurement systems to feed astronauts. One of the targets was the nutrient bacteria hydrogen oxide that lives in the air and in the human intestine. The concept was that hydrogen oxide feeds on carbon dioxide and produces proteins, so using it can immediately create proteins for astronauts to consume on-site. If it became a reality, it was possible to convert the carbon dioxide that astronauts exhale into protein. A report containing these details was published in December 1967, but no further progress was made.
And more than half a century later, Lisa Dyson, a doctor of physics and director of Kibuddy, took the first step toward realization. It has developed a technology that ferments hydrogen oxide to produce proteins. The principle is to generate air protein with the same amino acid composition as animal proteins by supplying renewable energy to the components of air, namely carbon dioxide, oxygen, and nitrogen. Hydrogen oxide grows on carbon dioxide, a component of the air, so it can be converted into protein powder by scattering atmospheric fermenters.
The advantage of air protein is that if only vertical space is provided, protein production is possible indoors regardless of external requirements. It is free from environmental pollution problems because it eats carbon dioxide and produces protein. Air protein is a 99% pure protein containing nine essential amino acids and has twice as much amino acid as meat. It is also rich in minerals, including vitamin B, which is difficult to take in fruit and vegetables. Air protein can be processed and used as an alternative meat product as well as various foods such as pasta, cereals, and shakes. Currently, a subsidiary of Kiberdi has been established and is developing food.
Solein is also a protein produced through microorganisms like air protein and is being developed by Helsinki startup Solar Food in Finland. Water in the air is separated into hydrogen and oxygen by renewable electricity, and carbon dioxide, oxygen, and minerals are supplied to single-cell microorganisms, the main producer. Then, single-celled microorganisms eat and produce amino acids, carbohydrates, lipids, and vitamins. Finally, when moisture is removed and processed into fine protein powder, it becomes a solenoid. Single-celled protein obtained through 100% natural fermentation is neither vegetable nor animal, but compared to air protein, it is more popular. Solane contains 65 to 70 percent protein, 5 to 8 percent fat, 10 to 15 percent fiber, and 3 to 5 percent mineral, all nine essential amino acids needed by the human body, such as iron, fiber, vitamin B group, and vitamin A (beta carotene).
The concept of Solane was originally developed for the space industry in the 1960s, said Pash Vainika, an associate professor at the University of Lafenranta in Finland and CEO of Solar Food. As Solain aims for popular products, it can be used as an ingredient to sprinkle on bread and pasta, and it is predicted that protein produced using air will compete with soybeans in price soon. The amount of carbon emitted in the production process of Solane is about 1% of meat production, and it uses less water than conventional protein products, and is even more efficient than photosynthesis. In order to save the planet from climate change, agricultural-based food production methods must be changed, and the solenoid of stable supply, ethical, and environmental problems is the protein that can meet such demands.
Solane, which is orange because of beta-carotene, has a neutral taste and is similar to soybean protein, claiming that it can be replaced with protein in any food. On YouTube, there is already a video of Solar Food making pasta or bao (Chinese steamed bread) mixed with flour, and you can expect food such as meatballs. It has already been approved for food use in Europe and the UK and expects to produce 4 million meals at its factories by 2021. Currently, Solane has attracted 5.5 million euros (about 7.1 billion won) in investment, and considering the production price of electricity, it expects the production price to be similar to that of soybeans by 2025.
Finally, let's introduce an alternative vegetable egg. It Just added yellow turmeric to the protein extracted from mung beans to realize the color and texture similar to eggs. The main product is Just Egg Folded, which is optimized for scrambled eggs with a formulation similar to war liquid. The domestic market price per egg is not cheap at around 1,200 won, but it is not cheap, but the price is also expected to be lowered.
It is a non-GMO product without cholesterol, saturated fat, and artificial flavoring, as well as a much smaller amount of water in production than actual eggs. It sold about 6.3 million eggs in the U.S., Hong Kong, and Singapore, and recently entered China.
Writer: Yeyoung Jeon
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