🍏 "Mighty Mycelium"

Podcast’s Essential Bites:

[3:53] IIM: "With fungi, in particular, working with fermentation, we can rapidly grow our ingredient, which is mycelium, in a matter of days, as opposed to weeks or months for certain plant-based proteins and years in comparison to animals, of course. So it's a very fast process for creating foods, but foods that are also extremely healthy. [The] rapid process [...] allows us to have a very scalable mode of producing greater quantities of food in the future, which is also, of course, important given the fact that our human population is growing, and there's going to be a very high demand for foods and proteins in particular in the future."

[4:35] IIM: "Another reason [that speaks for fungi] is really around sustainability in comparison to plant proteins. [...] When I look at what we're doing and how we're using fungi and fermentation to create a whole food ingredient, a single ingredient, that can create that texture that allows us to kind of bypass some of the processing, and even some of the energy and land and water footprint that it takes to create plant-based products, I think we have a major competitive advantage. [...] We're trying to understand how we can really create a future proof solutions for creating food in the future."

[15:48] IIM: "Solid-state fermentation is in comparison to [...] liquid-state fermentation, when you're working with solid substrate [...] for producing your mycelium. [...] You can use a lot of different types of biomass or bio material to act as a substrate. What we use [...], in the ideal sense, are upcycled side streams from agrifood producers. [...] You could think of essentially any byproduct from the cereal grain industry. And why that is actually quite key and important is because [...] we can upcycle essentially residues from other industries, thereby making the process [...] more circular than if we were just using standard commodity inputs."

[22:44] IIM: "We're trying to create center of the plate replacements. [...] It's a fine line that you actually need to balance because we don't want to work with GMOs and create a meat alternative that bleeds, because I think not all consumers want that. And we also know that consumers don't always want something that says or claims to be like meat, because the moment that they try it, they're maybe instantly disappointed. On the other hand, if you're trying to create something completely new, you're kind of going into this unknown territory. So I understand why so many companies anchor themselves to meat products, because it gives consumers something to relate to."

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