Presumably we could do the same thing with fungus if we saw the economic/moral/sustainability incentives.
Edit: an article about ancient corn (https://blogs.ifas.ufl.edu/news/2023/01/24/uf-researchers-di...)
Teosinte is a small, grass-like plant that forms ears of six to eight kernels. Each kernel is encased in an acorn-like shell. These encased kernels grow on a thin stem, not the thick cob that characterizes modern corn. The whole ear is about two inches long, the kernels no larger than peppercorns.
About 10,000 years ago, the Indigenous peoples of what is now southern Mexico began selectively breeding teosinte. Over time, those acorn-like coverings retracted and formed a cob. Now exposed, the kernels were easier to harvest and could be bred for increased number and size, Koch said.I think dry mushrooms are about 30% protein by weight, which is in the ballpark of dry meat.
And less related, lacto ferment them. They're then outrageously good fried.
I think you are on more promising ground in your final remark. There are plenty of whole food plant-based sources of protein that are tested, economical and low-carbon, while possessing none of the health drawbacks of 'high tech' alternatives.
What do you mean? People love eating all kinds of mushrooms!
I'm not seeing the relevance.
See also:
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/feb/12/quorn-r...
The SWAP-MEAT trial concluded that processed alt-meat products improved health markers over animal meat: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32780794/
> Among generally healthy adults, contrasting Plant with Animal intake, while keeping all other dietary components similar, the Plant products improved several cardiovascular disease risk factors, including TMAO; there were no adverse effects on risk factors from the Plant products.
30g of Hemp Hearts (shelled hemp seeds) have 10g protein, 12g polyunsaturated fats (Omega 3 and 6), 1g sugar, and a bunch of other vitamins and minerals; but some brands have 2.3g Manganese (which 100% RDI) and Manganese toxicity occurs beyond 11mg (UL) and other brands don't have those nutrients listed on the nutrition facts label for their similar product: https://images.app.goo.gl/a2v9imfaWWyG5hSn8
Flax has a better Omega 6:3 PUFA polyunsaturated fats ratio, but only 2g protein out of 11g.
Manganese and MSG both have something to do with Glutamate, which apparently affects motivation; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35885204 :
>> High glutamine-to-glutamate ratio predicts the ability to sustain motivation: The researchers found that individuals with a higher glutamine-to-glutamate ratio had a higher success rate and a lower perception of effort.
Humans absorb only about 1% to 5% of dietary manganese. Infants and children tend to absorb greater amounts of manganese than adults. In addition, manganese absorption efficiency increases with low manganese intakes and decreases with higher intakes
https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Manganese-HealthProfession...
Another interesting tidbit from the links you provide, 90% of glutamine synthesis happens in muscle cells (from glutamate and ammonia). So in theory, building more muscle mass (while getting adequate dietary glutamine and glutamate) be beneficial for regulating glutamine-to-glutamate ratios. Although it doesn't look like this has been studied specifically as of yet.
On the other hand, over-training and extreme endurance training without proper protein intake leads to depletion of circulating glutamine levels. It is suggested that depleted glutamine may be the cause of increased risks of infection and chronic fatigue during periods of over-training (even in elite athletes).
Muscles burn Lactic Acid before they burn glucose.
FWIU LAB Lactic Acid Bacteria use Glutamate to control pH by GABA production.
And GABA, well https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CE%93-Aminobutyric_acid :
> [GABA] is the chief inhibitory neurotransmitter in the developmentally mature mammalian central nervous system. Its principal role is reducing neuronal excitability throughout the nervous system.
So, IIUC, when you feed LAB glutamate, you get GABA?
By convention, those three are the macronutrients. Dietary fibre is sometimes included, 100g of quorn mince has 7.5 g.
The Wiki article has a detailed breakdown of the protein fraction by amino acid, but only breaks fats out into 'saturated' and 'not', which is reasonably common.
> Omega-3s and Omega-6s would be listed under "Polyunsaturated Fats" if it were allowed to list them on the standard Nutrition Facts label instead of elsewhere on the packaging.
Maybe someone else should ask FDA to allow food labelers to optionally include a breakdown of PUFAs Polyunsaturated Fats into at least Omega 6 and Omega 3 next time there is a public comment register on Nutrition Facts labels. There may be more justifying research on Omegas' relevancy to health now?
Definitely, but mushrooms and meat also go very well together..
And I am open towards engineered mushrooms, but I doubt they will result in meat. But maybe in something that can convince enough people to reduce their meat consumption by eating that instead.
Hen of the woods, fried with batter, is next level.
But I can also enjoy it without, yes.
Unlike many things that are referred to as a "good source of protein," mushrooms have a really great macronutrient profile:
100g of common button mushrooms = 3g protein, 3.3g carb, .3g fat
Compared to Lentils (which are the best of the standard foods labeled as "good source of protein") 100g = 9g protein, 20g carb,.4g fat.
The problem with lentils is that you have to eat a lot of carbs to get protein. The ratios are terrible for most other legumes, soybeans and nuts.
(1) https://ca.entomofarms.com/products/organic-cricket-powder
Could we please not discuss ridiculous conspiracy theories on hn? Reddit is already infected with qanon an the like, we don't need that rubbish here. Thank you.
The only reason we don't do it now was that it's kinda expensive compared to lab made dyes.
The part that people generally eat on a lobster is the muscles of the claws and the muscles of the abdomen. The rest is generally discarded. It similar to how most people don't tend to eat the hair of cows, but rather the meat from cow muscles.
I would claim that it is actually a large difference between eating a cockroach and a lobster.
I also tried some "chirps" which were chips made with cricket powder, and then the texture just wasn't right. Hopefully the right chef is out there to change my mind, but for now I'm team fungus all the way.
I seriously didn't think I'd have to justify this. Why does everyone single out americans anyway? Do you think the rest of the world is okay with eating insects? No way. We want to eat well too. We want to live well.
This, however - together with the opposition to walkable cities - I can't wrap my head around. How can eating an insect burger be worse than eating chicken nuggets?
I can assure you that they aren't standard restaurant fare in Europe, either.
Oh, I see: you saw a chance to bash "Americans", and took it.
> How can eating an insect burger be worse than eating chicken nuggets?
How many restaurants in your city serve "insect burgers"?
Yeah, that's what I thought.
Carry on.
In fact, south american countries seem to be somewhat famous for their meat. Brazil is one of the biggest producers and exporters of meat in the world and if it were up to me I'd burn down the whole amazon jungle to make room for more production.
In Europe, insect meat is still extremely rare, and where it is to be found, it is experimental and expensive. The latter will of course change through economies of scale once they reach a certain stage.
However, the public perception of insects as food is very different. I have never or heard seen a sulky "I will not eat ze bugs" comment in my language, the whole"globalists want you to eat bugs" conspiracy is mostly unknown, and would be seen as foolish.
I have not said that eating insects is the norm, but many here see it as part of the diet of the future, without that squeamishness that seems to be so prevalent in the US.
If I were to respond in the same tone as you, I would imply that you already knew that, but didn't want to let a chance pass to make yourself the victim, as Americans often like to pretend that all Europeans look down on you. However, I actually believe this is just a misunderstanding.
I know I probably won't get any information from you, since you now see me as a debate opponent instead of a discussion partner, but I was genuinely interested in the reason for the extreme opposition to insect food in the US. Maybe since English is my second language, which I learned in part by reading a lot of rather old books, my grammar and word choices are hindering me in making myself clear.
> as Americans often like to pretend that all Europeans look down on you.
No, most Americans don't even care about the opinions of Europeans. If we did, we'd have stayed in Europe.
> many here see it as part of the diet of the future,
What is "many"? Do you have a link to a credible survey saying that the majority (or even a large minority) of Europeans are willing to eat insects?
Ah, I was wrong then. It was not a misunderstanding, you are simply replying in bad faith.
Well, I hope your life gets better, to the point where you are at least partially at peace with your American identity, and no longer feel the need to write such embarrassing comments.
I hope you enjoy your cockroach burgers.
Assuming anyone in your country ever gets around to selling them.
I'm not gonna eat insects dude. I'm just not gonna do it. They could be the literal embodiment of protein and I still wouldn't eat them. There's just no way you can convince me to do that.
I don't care how much space, energy, water, whatever else is required for meat production either. That's what I want to eat. That's what I'm gonna eat.
I don't eat chicken nuggets either. I eat meat and assorted vegetables. Properly cooked.
The fact that this would accelerate global warming which will hit third world countries the most aside, why do you feel so strongly about this? I'm also not a vegetarian and I love a good steak, especially when it's served rare, but this does not form a part of my identity, so it's hard for me to understand.
That's why it's an indignity to be reduced to eating insects. You can bet your house the billionaires of this world won't be eating them.
Feel strongly about it? A couple years ago in my country a president was elected partly by promising citizens they would be able to eat fine meat regularly again. He's a communist so of course he didn't deliver, and it looks like people are starting to feel the misery of it.
Also, global warming is not really a concern to me. Other countries have been destroying the planet for literal centuries and getting rich off it but when it's our turn to exploit our land we can't? I reject that notion.
People love to talk about the "externalities" of meat production. As far as I'm concerned, the biggest externality of all is the cost of my country not being rich and prosperous and developed. You know, like the former british empire with their famous steaks, now mostly represented by the US. They might want to factor that externality in before they talk to us about climate nonsense.
Also, you do need some fat and carbs in your diet to, you know, live.
What of them you need, you can make it, gluconeogenesis and such. Proteins on the other hand...
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7341377/#:~:tex....
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/basics/diabetic-ketoacidosis.ht...
Absolutely agreed that fat and carbs are part of a balanced diet, but many foods and cuisines have poor macro nutrient ratios and, as hiddencost states, it is all about the ratios.
FWIW, I have been massively successful in eliminating "dadbod" and getting to a super healthy weight by using this diet for several years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nR1juKxIRM
The TLDR is ~.8grams of protein per pound of body weight, small portions of carbs and fat and half your plate should be low calorie vegetables.
(Plus tofu is fine here)
It’s like when people regurgitate that “add rice to beans for a complete protein” meme without realizing that rice is less dense in every amino acid, and beans have every amino acid in similar qualities, and you can simply eat more protein dense plant sources if you need more protein.
I eat 550g extra firm cooked tofu and 230g tempeh daily. Plug that into cronometer and show me the plant based amino acid hole.
The fact that these protein extracts are more expensive than meat, per protein content, should be a strong clue that their real environmental impact is also worse, even if their producers avoid to document it.
I am aware of only a single method of protein extraction that can provide separated protein that is cheaper than chicken meat and which requires no chemicals that could leave residues in the protein and which uses little energy (but it requires an additional non-negligible water consumption). This is the extraction of gluten from wheat flour, by making a dough and washing it.
For the (relatively few) people who have gluten intolerance, this unique method is not applicable, but in many parts of the world (i.e. where soy is expensive) it is the only way that I know of that can be used for achieving a vegan diet that is less expensive than eating meat. Without gluten, a lower protein cost than for meat could be achieved only by combining vegetable protein sources like lentils with chicken eggs.
Once you look at production at scale, these products dominate animal ag environmentally:
> a study published in Nature 2022 found that replacing 20 percent of per-capita ruminant meat, such as beef, with fermentation derived microbial protein, such as mycoprotein, could cut global deforestation and carbon dioxide emissions by 50% in addition to lowering methane emissions.
Also,
> it is the only way that I know of that can be used for achieving a vegan diet that is less expensive than eating meat.
I don't understand this. Even ChatGPT can come up with a solution to your question if you care to figure out how to eat a sufficient vegan diet without soy/gluten.
e.g. Legumes are cheaper than meat. For the sake of looking at real numbers, 1000 calories of cooked lentils has 80g protein (all of the EAAs) and 67% of the day's nutrients. Also, you'd have to substantiate why optimizing for protein is the only thing you seem to care about given that (1) you can reach the high end 1.6g/kg protein with this food and (2) there are dozens of other nutrients that matter.
But searching for these hypothetical cases where someone can't eat neither soy nor gluten just so you can finally launder in a chicken egg and go "A-ha!" seems to be a red herring that doesn't track anything in this conversation. Okay, now let's pretend they are allergic to chicken eggs, too. Ho hum.
A typical value would be to eat at least 1700 kcal of lentils to provide enough methionine (you need 543 g/day of lentils to provide enough methionine for an 170 lb human).
Even eating only 1000 kcal of lentils would not be considered pleasurable by most people, for whom such a quantity would be too much.
When you choose a diet, ensuring that you will enjoy that food is as important as not exceeding the kcal threshold and as exceeding the nutrient threshold.
Legumes are cheaper than meat (but not by much, chicken meat is only about 50% more expensive than legumes, per protein content), but you cannot eat only legumes and they cannot be the only important source of protein, you need at least a second source.
I care for protein because this is the main difficulty when you do not want to eat meat. Anything else can be easily obtained from vegetable sources or from supplements. I am annoyed when I see people who write vegan propaganda, while at the same time attempting to minimize the protein problem. I have been trying for years to become vegan, but without success, because I could not solve the protein problem, and almost all the vegan advice that I have seen has been completely useless, because it looked like it was written by people who did not care whether they pay $5 or $50 for a meal, or whether they waste 5 minutes for cooking or they waste an hour. Eventually I have solved the problem, but only after personal experiments and I would have liked very much to have wasted much less time with this.
I have no problem with gluten, so for myself gluten is a major source of protein. Nevertheless, if I had gluten intolerance, where I live, in Europe, the only alternative for achieving a 2000 kcal daily energy intake without meat and dairy (and without eating a diet that no free human would accept, like eating only lentils, water and a capsule of vitamins and minerals) would be chicken eggs (as a supplement for legumes).
At least here, protein extracts are typically 5 times more expensive than chicken meat (per protein content), so using them as a staple food would seem stupid.
You have not provided any alternative to what I have said and I bet that ChatGPT would give an answer that is either wrong or irrelevant.
Currently there is no evidence of any kind. The costs of meat production are well known, but the costs in energy and chemicals for the production of various kinds of protein extracts are not known, because they are "proprietary".
I nobody is able to offer for sale low-cost protein extracts for human consumption we can only assume that the production costs are high, i.e. that each pound of protein extract requires a large amount of energy and/or chemicals.
> a study published in Nature 2022 found that
Searching the Internet right now, I have found a non-paywalled copy of that study: "Projected environmental benefits of replacing beef with microbial protein".
Nevertheless, exactly like I have expected, that study is useless. It does not contain what the abstract says.
It contains what seems to be an accurate analysis of what would be gained if the production of meat would be reduced, by using an alternative source of protein.
Nevertheless, to compute the net benefit, we also need a computation of the production costs for the protein provided by the alternative source. Such a computation is missing from the article. There is no information about the energy consumption and about the chemicals consumption that would be required by the alternative sources.
Some forms of microbial fermentation can provide high-quality protein, perhaps even without any harmful substances that must be removed, but the protein has a low concentration in the growth medium. Separating the protein from the water and from the waste products of the fermentation would need much energy.
In the more distant future, growing a bioengineered multicellular organism, like a fungus or a parasitic plant, seems a much more viable path, because such an organism can grow a big edible fruiting body, with whatever nutritional composition and texture is desired. Such an edible fruiting body can be detached and used for cooking with minimal processing, without additional energy consumption.
Raw lentils, as you buy them, have about 22% to 25% of protein, i.e. about the same as lean meat. However, while the rest of the meat is mostly water, the rest of the lentils is mostly starch.
Therefore, if you have a sedentary life style, lentils cannot provide a too big fraction of your daily protein intake, i.e. above 40% to 50%, otherwise they would provide too many calories.
Raw mushrooms have a high content of water and chitin, so their nutritional content is very low per mass, like also for most parts of vegetables, except seeds. Among non-animal sources, only the seeds (e.g. of cereals or legumes or nuts) or the oily fruits like olives or avocado, have high nutritional content per mass in their raw, unprocessed state.
For instance eating 167 g per day of lentils would provide a significant part of the daily protein intake and it will cover the daily necessities for all amino-acids except methionine. For a similar nutritional intake you would have to buy and eat more than 1.5 kg of mushrooms, which would be quite a challenge and it would also be much more expensive than eating meat.
Nevertheless, while for now mushrooms could not be a staple food, I agree that the future of food is in capturing solar energy and using it to synthesize some simple organic molecules, like glycine, by capturing carbon dioxide and dinitrogen, and then using those to feed bioengineered fungi or parasitic (i.e. non-photosynthesizing, like mistletoe) plants, which could produce the equivalents of any kind of animal or vegetable food that is eaten today.
If you're going to respond with six paragraphs to every post, at least indulge us with some numbers when you make claims about food which you seldom seem to do even though you appear in every nutrition thread on the forum.
2000 calories of cooked lentils provides 156g protein which is over even the 1.6g/kg protein high-mark for a 200lb guy who still has more calories to spare. 930 calories of cooked lentils provides 72g protein which is the 0.8g/kg minimum threshold in less than half of the day's calorie budget.
A quick google search says a 200lb sedentary male needs 2150 to 2550 calories per day to maintain.
All computations are easy and precise in terms of raw ingredients, because you know precisely which ingredients have been used as the starting point for cooking the food.
For lentils I know very well the values because I eat them frequently and if I do not control the amount of ingredients that I use for food I gain weight immediately.
For instance, the lentils that I use have 23% protein and 3120 kcal/kg.
The values that you give for a 200 lb sedentary male seem too big.
I am a male of average height and I weigh 170 lb. There was a time when I had much more than 200 lb (up to 250 lb), but then I was definitely obese and it took a great effort to come back to 170 lb.
Now, at 170 lb, if I eat more than 1900 to 2000 kcal per day I gain weight very quickly, even if I do around a half of hour of intense exercises per day. This is consistent with most studies that I have seen, where 2000 kcal per day was considered as the typical energy intake for a sedentary life.
The lentils have a better protein/kcal ratio than most non-animal alternatives. Nevertheless, you cannot eat only lentils and you cannot even use only lentils as the principal protein source, because they do not have enough methionine. To get enough methionine from lentils you need to eat e.g. 550 g/day, i.e. 1716 kcal, which does not leave enough room for the kcal provided by the rest of the food that you need.
If you replace a part of the lentils with cereals, those have a much lower protein content and after also adding the rest of the food that is required for other nutrients it becomes impossible to get a sum that is not much greater than 2000 kcal.
You can get a sum of 2000 kcal without meat or dairy and without expensive protein extracts by getting some protein from freerange chicken eggs, or, for a 100% vegan diet you can extract at home gluten from wheat flour.
For instance, for myself, an adequate daily protein intake within a vegan diet can be provided by 167 g of lentils + gluten extracted from 500 g of wheat flour (I prefer to not extract pure gluten, because that needs too much time and too much water, so I remove only about 75% of the starch, which needs less than 5 minutes of washing, and with the washed dough I make a bread that is highly enriched in protein in comparison with standard bread).
Also, regarding what you have said in your comment, it is true that I tend to reply to most nutrition threads. The reason is that I have neglected my health and I have been obese for many years. Then, after many failed attempts I have eventually succeeded to reduce my weight from 250 lb to 170 lb and then I have maintained the latter value for more than a decade and I have improved my health tremendously in comparison with my previous state. To achieve this, I had to study much of the existing nutrition literature and it took me years of experiments of cooking various kinds of food in order to find choices for an optimum compromise between how much time I waste for cooking, how much I enjoy the food and how well the food satisfies the nutritional requirements. For many things that I have found after many failed experiments I would have been very happy to find useful advice before wasting time with that.
Challenge one: you need a truly huge volume of the uncooked stuff to get a meaningful amount of protein out. Lentils are way more compact.
Challenge two: when one cooks greens or shrooms, they tend to add a lot of oils and other stuff that destroys that ratio.
The proposal on offer here solves this for shrooms by preparing a packaged patty based on them (like today's extant Quorn product). This is cool and I'd love to see it, but it's not like they're trying to replace soy/lentils (which certainly have "good enough" protein content) as agricultural staples that you can harvest and eat with minimal preparation.
At least twice a week... mostly raw fish. I tend to eat some raw beef when I eat steak, but that is pretty rare.
Sure, you eat bushels, you get as much protein as say a big mac. Not gonna go there; almost nobody is gonna sacrifice their juicy burger for a quart of spongy fungi. Give up already.
If we can engineer a fungus to produce just the right amino profile, or whatever nutrition you're looking for, then you have a self perpetuating stock that should be much lower tech and simpler to manage than trying to grow muscle tissue in a "petri dish".
Heck, we could just be eating more mushrooms, they already are a pretty good source of protein.