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Besides such uses in improving traditional agriculture, I believe that the future of protein production, which is needed to supplement plant-based food, does not stay in making fake meat from animal cell cultures, like many attempt to do today, in order to sell to rich vegans.

In my opinion, with animal cell cultures it is extremely unlikely to ever be able to produce proteins at a competitive cost. By competitive cost I mean that any such proteins should cost much less than chicken meat (per protein content).

What I believe to be the right solution, because this should be able to produce high-quality proteins at lower costs than from any animal source, is to use cultures of genetically-modified fungi, which produce some high-quality proteins, e.g. whey protein or egg white protein. There already exist genetically-modified strains of the fungus Trichoderma, which produce such animal proteins, instead of the enzymes that they normally secreted into their environment. Such proteins can be separated from the fungal culture medium by ultrafiltration, in the same way how one makes from whey or milk whey protein concentrate or milk protein concentrate.

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Onego Bio is using fungi to produce ovalbumin, one of the major protein in eggs. Their process seems stable, so it might play a big role especially in industrial food production pretty quickly

https://www.onego.bio/product

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It doesn't need to be cheaper than the cheapest meat to be competitive. If there's some social or moral incentive to avoid real meat, that adds value to plant based alternatives.

Fungi protein sounds cool though. I would totally add that to my diet. But I also think insects are an underutilized protein source, so I might be an outlier

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Even when your personal budget would allow spending more for food, a price that is higher than that of meat is a serious red flag, indicating that it is likely that such a substitute for meat has greater environmental consequences than producing meat.

There are 3 reasons for avoiding meat. One is the ethical reason, because during the last century meat production has transitioned everywhere to using methods that can hardly be considered anything else but continuous torture. There are also certain health risks associated with meat and there is also the reason that the real cost of meat may be greater than it appears to be, due to negative environmental consequences (i.e. pollution).

If some kind of protein extract or some kind of fake meat is more expensive than real meat (per protein content), you can be rather certain that the negative environmental consequences are worse than for real meat, because the higher cost is likely to be determined by the consumption of more energy and of various kinds of chemicals during the production of the meat substitute.

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Economy of scale and subsidies have a major influence on shelf prices. Is is a red flag to be a small producer and/or not profiting from public money? Some wouldn't cold-ban a product only based on it's price, especially if it's pioneering.

Being "certain that the negative environmental consequences are worse" seems an stretch from weak initial judgement.

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Higher cost doesn't always indicate negative environmental consequences. It could be (and seems likely to me) that harvesting one cow's worth of plant protein is more labor intensive which isn't necessarily bad for the environment. If you compare two soy crops, one that uses herbicides and another that uses manual labor to pull weeds, the latter will be more expensive and better for the environment
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Shrimp, crayfish and lobster are pretty much insects, adored by many.
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Those are at least big enough that you don't have to eat the shells. (Fun aside: Technically, the grouping is closer to the other way around: insects are classed under crustaceans these days.)
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>there's some social or moral incentive to avoid real meat, that adds value to plant based alternatives.

This is missing the key point that like 95% of people in the world are not vegans, don't find any moral issues with eating meat, and thus produce zero social pressure. Fungi burgers MUST come with an actual benefit for the majority of people. It needs to be seen as some combination of "Tastey", "healthy", "cost effective". If fungi burgers were $2/lbs and tasted pretty close to a beef burger, then people would flock to them. The problem with Impossible burgers were worse, more expensive, questionably "more healthy" and entirely relied upon the moral/social issues which only mattered in a few small slices of society.

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Having it be cheaper would make it a real game changer -- if "chicken nuggets" and "burgers" were functionally equivalent (nutrition, appearance, mouthfeel, etc) and cheaper, then we'd start to see serious changes in animal husbandry.

It will never go away but if it becomes more niche then it's likely that what is produced will be done so more humanely (branding and perception of quality)

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vegan options lack flavor/texture. cost isn't the main issue
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Not everyone craves the flavor/texture of meat, but everyone needs an adequate intake of high quality protein.

Including protein powder as a cooking ingredient does not do much for improving the taste of food (though the food definitely feels more satiating), but it ensures that it is healthy enough.

Even if I liked meat, I never felt any kind of addiction to it. There are many years since the last time when I ate meat and I feel no need to eat again, as long as I have a lot of other options for food that is tasty and healthy.

For several years I have not used any animal protein sources, but this forced too inconvenient constraints on what I could eat, so eventually I gave up and now I use in cooking some whey or milk protein concentrate powder, whenever it is necessary to increase the protein content. This has provided much more freedom in menu choice.

So for me, if instead of having to buy protein extracted from whey or milk (which costs about the same as chicken meat, i.e. many times cheaper than protein concentrates extracted from plants, which must use much more complicated processes than the filtration of whey or milk) there would be the option of buying similar protein from a fungal culture, that would be enough to cover all my needs.

From other comments that I have seen about the fake meat products, I am pretty sure that there are many others like me, who do not care whether they eat meat or not, as long as they eat some good food.

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You're missing out on an infinity of great food - great for anyone, vegan or not. Just think of all the Chinese, Latin American, Indian, etc. food that is vegan. Think of many appetizers even in mostly-meat restaurants. And there are world-class restaurants that serve vegan dishes

Eliminating beef, fowl, and fish leaves a universe of foods including all fungi, fruits and vegetables, grains, nuts, and legumes. It also includes all spices and herbs.

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Double that. I'll also recommend to try some fungi/bacteria pre-processing as it bumps the taste:

Kimchi & Sauerkraut to wet the appetite.

Don't use salt, use Miso. The darker the better.

Tempeh is awesome and comes with soy (nutty), lentil (strong taste like aged meat), chickpeas (floral), beans (melty), or other legume/cereal/nut. Can include spices and seed for extra taste and crunch.

Nuts cheese tastes "cheesy" in a similar way similar to their diary version (Roquefort, Cheddar, Blue, Camembert, Brie...) depending on the ferment, without the "milky" taste. Nut taste instead, obviously but that can be offset with other oils/fats.

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I actually really like "milky" tastes - has there been much progress on replicating the flavour?
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IMHO the Chèvre (goat) [0] and Morbier (bleu) [1] from Jay and Joy are very close. They also comes a bit cheaper in non-organic version [2]. I mostly buy from those guys but the curious may try a few from their local brands: when talking about cheese every recipe is has it's subtlety.

0 https://www.jay-joy.com/collections/affine/products/le-jeann...

1 https://www.jay-joy.com/collections/affine/products/jil-from...

2 https://www.lesnouveauxaffineurs.com/

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Vegan Chinese food? Ah, if you are vegan and go to China you need to be careful because there isn’t much vegan food, although plenty of veggies and they even have a few vegetarian restaurants in recent years.
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Wherever you are, the local Chinese food is an adaptation - there is Indian Chinese, for example. But tofu, for example, has a long history in China, and you can find vegan food in Chinese restaurants in many places. I expect most people on HN don't eat their Chinese food in China.
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Ok, that makes sense. You’ll find tofu art in China as well, but it usually doesn’t pass the vegan threshold unless you go to a fancy Singaporean chain (Pure Lotus was the only one I knew of in Beijing). Even then it feels wrong, tofu really shouldn’t taste like chicken.
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It also includes pork, and bison, and venison, and frogs, and snails, and rabbits, which are all quite tasty.
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>Just think of all the Chinese, Latin American, Indian, etc. food that is vegan.

What? Outside of Indian food, which does have many vegan options, but the best food is usually still non-vegan (lots of dairy and butter used). Chinese and Latin American food is almost never vegan. Chinese love meat, and you would have to be a buddhist monk to actually find vegan food in China. Even with a lot of cheap plant protein options, like tofu, most things use some meat for flavor. Latin America loves cooking in animal fats.

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You can find vegetarian food in (non-Tibetan) monasteries, it isn’t clear if it’s vegan since the Chinese aren’t strict about that.
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> Chinese and Latin American food is almost never vegan.

I've seen plenty of vegan food in restaurants serving those cuisines, so that's not true. Why is it important to you to insist that vegan food is somehow difficult?

If you just mean 'in China', that's irrelevant to this conversation - only a small proportion of people here eat their Chinese food in China. But I acknowledge, lots of people on HN like to demonstrate their worldliness by making sure we know they've been to China, relevant or not.

> the best food is usually still non-vegan (lots of dairy and butter used)

It's a bit hard to make a definitive statement about what is 'best'. Personally, I much prefer Indian without all the ghee. That vegan food exists in many varieties is an objective fact, however.

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Someone making Vegan food in the style of Chinese or Latin American food by changing how its normally made, does not mean that its part of that food category by default. Its a new separate category. Sure you can make and eat plenty of Vegan chinese dishes, but it will taste different without the pork and seafood which is almost omnipresent in Chinese food.
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There are plenty of vegan restaurants in Europe too. Does not mean that European cuisine is vegan.
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In my lifetime the conversation has shifted from mineral farming with chemical fertilizers to managing microbes to microbes doing the managing.

There is a case to be made for many species of plants effectively being a previously unidentified manner of lichen. Created on mineral soil much the same way lichen grew on rocks.

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