Friday 22 January 2010

The Friday Fungus: Vegetarian? Don't eat mycoproteins, eat real mushrooms!


There’s always been one thing about vegetarianism I don’t understand – why some veggies seem dedicated to searching for something that, to paraphrase Douglas Adams, tastes almost, but not entirely, completely unlike meat. My advice – if you’re going to be a vegetarian for whatever reason – is to eat mushrooms instead. One’s like chicken-of-the-woods (pictured above) are substantial, protein-rich and so much tastier that artificial meat substitutes. And you can grow your own!

Which brings us to the vexed matter of mycoproteins – industrially-produced meat substitutes derived from the mold-like fungi fusarium venenatum. And, more or less, this is how it is turned into a meat substitute:

Fusarium venenatum A3/5 was first chosen for development as a myco-protein in the late 1960s. It was intended as a protein source for humans and after 12 years of intensive testing, F. venenatum A3/5 was approved for sale as food by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food in the United Kingdom in 1984. Today, myco-protein is produced in two 150,000 l pressure-cycle fermenters in a continuous process which outputs around 300 kg biomass/h. The continuous process is typically operated for around 1,000 h.” Wiebe, Applied Microbiology & Biotechnology, 58/4

What vegetarians also need to know is that the actual meat substitute is only possible through use of egg albumen – so you can’t feed mycoprotein-based products to your vegan mates. In the USA a vigorous campaign a few years ago against the leading mycoprotein product Quorn suggested that it can cause violent stomach disorders. This piece by science writer Charles Hirschberg in Vegetarian Times sums up the selective and partial nature of this campaign and concludes that there’s no evidence suggesting any health risks associated with mycoproteins – or at least none that compare, for example, to the risks linked to eating nuts for some people.

My beef with mycoprotein isn’t that it’s bad for you but that it makes boring meat-substitute products when there is a great choice of natural foods out there for the vegetarian.
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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Less calories than the meat substitutes too.

JC said...

Thanks for the article. Yes, I prefer unprocessed protein sources. Thanks for more about mycoprotein.