SUSTAINABILTY

The Ultimate Next-Generation Meat Substitute

Air Protein‘s’ fermentation technology to make food from thin air

Illustration used with rights from Piyaset on iStock

If you read Factfulness, you’ll be hit by how much our quality of life has improved across the globe in just a couple of generations, and how much, by continuing to rise in terms of population and consumption, we are putting much more strain on the planet, with regards to fossil fuels and to the food supply, with more and more demand for meat.

Indeed, the richer we become, the more animal products we eat:

Meat consumption is associated to GDP, from Our World in Data

Hence, we will need to increase food production by 70% by 2050 to feed 10 billion people.

Cattle ranching is the cause of 80% of deforestation and in the books There Is No Planet B and We Are the Weather, Jonathan Safran Foer and Mike Berners-Lee argue, along with very serious statistics from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations at hand, that animal agriculture is responsible for at least 51% of greenhouse gas emissions. That is way more than all cars, trucks, planes and trains on the planet, combined.

The authors of this FAO report already stated 15 years ago: “it implies that replacing livestock with better alternatives would be the best strategy for reversing climate change”. Indeed, the prestigious scientific journal The Lancet published a paper highlighting the need to reduce by at least 90% cattle consumption in order to prevent a climate catastrophe.

“It implies that replacing livestock with better alternatives would be the best strategy for reversing climate change”

How a NASA technology brings new hope in the race against climate change

Back in the 1960s, NASA developed a technology to grow food in a spaceship, taking up little space, producing food quickly, and recycling the carbon produced by the astronauts’ breathing.

This technology involves microorganisms called hydrogenotrophs that can use hydrogen from water. Fed with carbon dioxide, oxygen and nitrogen from air, and water mixed with mineral nutrients, they can produce a protein-rich meal with an amino acid profile similar to what you can find in animal protein, and oils similar to citrus and palm oil, with huge potential in the food and cosmetics sectors.

The “closed loop” carbon cycle of hydrogenotrops, with courtesy of Air Protein

“Earth is actually like a spaceship and on Earth we do need to recycle our carbon better” says Air Protein founder and CEO Lisa Dyson in her Ted Talk.

The advantages of this technology

While fermentation is a natural process that’s nothing new, these particular natural recyclers have been understudied and present huge potential:

• They grow in a matter of hours or days, instead of months for current crops;
• They grow in the dark and in any season, allowing vertical agriculture all year long, and enabling the production of 10 000 times more food than soybeans across a period of a year, for the same surface (no need to remove rainforest anymore!)
• When compared to beef, they use 1.5 million times less land and 15 000 times less water;
• They take up CO2 from air instead of emitting high quantities of methane and greenhouse gases;
• They are completely free of any use of pesticides, herbicides, hormones or antibiotics.

“The process to create this new form of protein uses elements found in the air and is combined with water and mineral nutrients. It uses renewable energy and a probiotic production process to convert the elements into a nutrient-rich protein with the same amino acid profile as an animal protein and packed with crucial B vitamins, which are often deficient in a vegan diet.”

What’s next?

In January 2021, Air Protein received 32 million USD funding and the company said they would use the money to start an innovation lab, to accelerate product development, to submit files to the FDA, and to start the commercialization of the products.

The objective is to “create the most sustainable meat available and significantly reduce the burden on our planet’s resources that is being caused by our current meat production processes”.

“I believe that microbes can be a part of the answer” said Lisa Dyson.

I agree, and we’re not alone. According to a report from the Good Food Institute, just in 2020, 1.5 billion USD was invested in alternative protein, of which nearly a third is using fermentation.

To Air Protein, keep up with the great work, you have consumers ready and eager to try your sustainable and nutritious food from the future.