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A new vertical farm will grow 3M pounds of mycelium a year for fungi-based bacon
- effnorwood 4y ago[dead]
- sudden_dystopia 4y agoBig mushroom fan. But isn’t all the sodium and crap they add to it to make it taste like bacon, mostly what makes bacon unhealthy to begin with? The saturated fat aspect is debatable or at least not completely settled. I don’t eat bacon much anyway so I definitely wouldn’t eat this on a consistent basis due to all the sodium but I’d try it for the novelty.
- presidentender 4y agoWhether it's any healthier doesn't really matter to me. I'm excited to be able to enjoy bacon without paying for the inefficiency of raising animals.
- c16 4y agoSadly fake meat is just as expensive if not more expensive than meat.
- oblak 4y agoAll fake meat products that I can find here in Bulgaria are considerably more expensive than meat. I an not saying impossible burger is more expensive than kobe stakes, though. It's mostly speculation, imho, as people are willing to spend more on these products. Some of these things are just as bad, if not worse, than cheap real meat. Back in the before going full veggies, I've tasted some horrible things that should be illegal. I am baffled people are willing to eat factory chicken, pork, etc. Shit is disgusting even if you don't care about the horrible lives of all the animals
- pvaldes 4y agoFortunately, in fact. This protects the rights of the majority that want bacon and not fakesomething silently replacing their food overnight. If the product is not meat, shouldn't be tagged as meat.
- _yoqn 4y agoFungus != meat
- horsawlarway 4y agoDon't really think that's going to happen. Pork is one of the cheapest meats you can raise. Just the spore costs to produce a lb of mushrooms can rival the total cost to raise a lb of pork (commercial pork can be as cheap as $64/CWT carcass weight - so $0.64/lb. Mushroom spore can be as high as $1.00 in spore costs to generate 1lb of mushroom). Processing the meat will raise costs, but it's hardly like mushrooms have low care/processing costs (If you don't know, they often require clean room levels of care to ensure proper spores without contamination). There's a reason white mushrooms (unsliced) goes for $4.49/lb at my local Kroger, and the boneless pork goes for $1.99/lb. I don't see this ever being cheaper.
- sibane 4y agoWhat do you mean by spore costs? Wouldn't most large scale farming operations work with liquid cultures based on live mycelium? Liquid cultures are easy to multiply and inject into pasteurized substrate with needles. Once the mycelium has taken over the growing medium, it also no longer needs to be kept in a fully sterile environment. I'm not at all convinced a pound of mushrooms is worth that much more than pork. Are you sure it's not the meat industry subsidies that are keeping the price down?
- VLM 4y agoThere don't seem to be subsidies for Pork. There was a "Small Hog Operation Payment" last century that paid $10 per hog for the first 500 hogs sold by a farm, according to wikipedia, but they got rid of that a long time ago. That is well under 10% the sale price of a hog. The problem mushrooms have is scale, much like spices. We can grow 20K acres of mechanized corn, but mushrooms are a little less mechanized. So its to be expected for mushrooms to cost as much as basil or cilantro per pound.
- binbashthefash 4y agoIt's the exact opposite where I'm at in the EU. I picked up 400 grams of king oysters from the market for 2 euros yesterday.
- KMnO4 4y agoI think their target demographic is vegetarians/vegans who are trying to reduce their footprint or use of animal products. > consumers will likely be willing to give it a shot—especially knowing that it’s easier on animals and on the planet. The ultra-health-conscious will still probably avoid it. Oreos are also vegan and not very healthy.
- helsinkiandrew 4y ago> I think their target demographic is vegetarians/vegans who are trying to reduce their footprint or use of animal products. Presumably that was a typo and you meant non vegetarians/vegans?
- HeyImAlex 4y agoI think it was more describing the rationale of the specific vegetarians/vegans; some do it more for health reasons, some for environmental/ethical reasons.
- novantadue 4y agoSeems a lot cheaper to grow mushrooms than raise pigs.
- brainzap 4y agonot sure man, mushrooms need food too. Pigs can eat waste, can mushroom eat waste?
- boomchinolo78 4y agoBacon is pretty unsaturated fat and thus quite unhealthy.
- VLM 4y agolipid hypothesis was disproven a long time ago.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- hombre_fatal 4y agoDoesn't seem like it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipid_hypothesis#Consensus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipid_hypothesis#Consensus
- nradov 4y agoStop spreading misinformation with that old myth. https://peterattiamd.com/how-did-we-come-to-believe-saturated-fat-and-cholesterol-are-bad-for-us/ https://peterattiamd.com/how-did-we-come-to-believe-saturate...
- hombre_fatal 4y agoFunnily enough the HN comment actually demonized unsaturated fat, not saturated fat. But that link doesn't seem to contain any information.
- kuprel 4y agoI don’t understand why vegans try to mimic things. I have no problem eating vegetables and mushrooms but I would never eat bacon made of mushrooms. The devil deals in deception.
- Qem 4y agoProbably most vegans are converts, raised by meat-eating families, that later decided to adhere to a meat-free diet. The problem is, once your taste-sense and food preferences are conditioned in childhood, it's hard to change them as a adult. So people seek alternatives compatible with what they are used to.
- brnt 4y agoActually, I have found this difficulty is exaggerated. I moved country twice and maried from another still: all involved significant changes to my diet. Yes, there is a mental hurdle, but like learning languages, by doing it repeatedly, it gets easier. Also, the rewards are exploring tasty new food universes!
- Klonoar 4y agoFood is more than just nutrition; it’s culture and art and probably more. Substitutes are important for these reasons as they allow people to enjoy without violating their diet/ethics concerns/whatever. They’re not harming anyone by existing so I frankly don’t see why this complaint comes up in every thread on the internet. Just don’t eat it if you don’t want it, meat isn’t going away.
- coffee_beqn 4y agoIt’s also really hard for most people to think of what to cook at the end of a long day. Meatballs and potatoes is the first thing that pops to my head and turning that into brussel sprouts and potatoes sounds unappetizing but impossible meatballs and potatoes is quite close especially if I add a sauce. I guess that’s the cultural imprint. I do also care about the animals and the environmental impact and it’s just extremely naive to think that a large part of humanity would switch from meat-based diets to tofu and steamed veggies. People are lazy and like tasty easy things.
- nradov 4y agoEven the sodium in bacon isn't necessarily unhealthy. The issues with sodium causing hypertension and metabolic disorders are due to complex interactions involving genetics as well as intake of water, fructose, and other nutrients. So we can't say that "sodium = bad", or even that people should limit themselves to a particular maximum level of sodium intake (within reason). https://peterattiamd.com/rickjohnson2/ https://peterattiamd.com/rickjohnson2/
- VLM 4y agoWith healthy kidneys the half life of salt in the body is about half a day, maybe less. Even with destroyed kidneys, excess will be emitted in sweat, assuming the patient exercises enough to sweat... The chronic high blood pressure problem comes from destroyed kidneys being unable to excrete the salt fast enough. Bacon being a rather low carb food (as long as you don't maple glaze it or whatever, which admittedly is delicious...) the problem kind of takes care of itself in that lower carb foods tend to be higher sodium but the lower carb levels result in less damage to the kidneys, and healthy kidneys are not bothered by sodium ... The worst case scenario would be "foods" that are both salty and high carb, which is mostly junk food and fast food.
- boringg 4y agoThe sodium isn't a problem. It's the saturated fat + the nitrates.
- vanattab 4y agoWhy is the clear paid marketing spam on hn
- roflchoppa 4y agoWe like mushies
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- beeboop 4y agoI mean the source is a press release: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220725005271/en/MyForest-Foods-Expands-MyBacon-Distribution-to-Massachusetts-as-it-Scales-Production-with-the-Opening-of-New-Vertical-AirMycelium-Farm https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220725005271/en/MyF... which is advertising in its nature. But I think there's decent conversation happening here which is basically the threshold for posting something on HN
- kentosi 4y agoScrolling down shows that it's not available that widely yet. Damn. https://myforestfoods.com/mybacon https://myforestfoods.com/mybacon
- inkcapmushroom 4y ago> Mushroom roots are technically called mycelium... I think it's a better model to think of the mycelium as the entire tree, including roots, trunk, and leaves, and the mushrooms are just the fruit. After all the mushroom is just a reproductive organ for the fungus.
- serverlessmom 4y agoI agree with this too, I think that the point of the article was to make it as easy to understand for people who aren't as familiar with our fungal friends.
- _yoqn 4y agoI am not eating bugs, fungus and highly processed fake "meat" in the future. I will literally move to a rural farmland to get real food before I buy into this ridiculous movement.
- djbusby 4y agoStart shopping now!
- _yoqn 4y agoI watch a lot of survival/catch/clean/cook videos on youtube just in case.
- smt88 4y agoWho cares? You're a single person and no one is forcing you to eat bugs, fungi, or fake meat. These products are for the many millions of people who prefer an inexpensive alternative to meat.
- jokethrowaway 4y agoOh, but they will. They've already started: https://thecountersignal.com/uk-school-children-to-be-fed-bugs/ https://thecountersignal.com/uk-school-children-to-be-fed-bu...
- hombre_fatal 4y agoThis is pretty off-topic, but reading more about Christopher Bear and the research group, the children aren't forced to eat it.
- AirborneUnicorn 4y agoFor obvious reasons, I don’t think this is a reliable source for such a claim by any means.
- 4y ago
- Symmetry 4y agoThere's a charity, ALLFED, that I donate too that investigates techniques for keeping as many people alive as possible if we can't have agriculture for a few years due to supervolcano or comet strike or nuclear winter. One of the promising approaches is to turn our now dead forests into calories via fungus. So it's good to see people investigating the wood chip to fungus route at an industrial scale.
- AftHurrahWinch 4y agoVery interesting! https://allfed.info/ https://allfed.info/
- serverlessmom 4y agothank you for this! I'm saving this link to check out later!
- dsimmons 4y agoWhy do we need bacon? I just want the mushrooms without paying an arm and a leg! For context, I live in the city and don't have a reliable way (or space) to grow them myself, or else I would. I'll be honest, these kinds of skeuomorphic alt-meats never make sense to me. That said, I'm someone who eats healthy by default and doesn't consume a lot of meat, so I understand that I'm not the target audience. But if you think someone living in rural America and eating bacon regularly is going to convert to this stuff, you're kidding yourself.
- CameronNemo 4y agoIf they can actually capture the taste, smell, and texture of bacon I would be highly interested. I'm mostly plant based at this point (except for awkward situations like family events...), but the other day I oversmelt some bacon and boy did those cravings kick in. Nothing like it. I doubt mushrooms can really capture the bacon experience, though.
- johnday 4y agoNon-meat eaters are behind skeumorphic meat alternatives for the same reason car detractors are generally in favour of electric cars. Moving people away from the old sources weakens the entrenched power of those who benefit from the old way (factory farms and fossil fuel companies, respectively), massively helping with one first-order problem (animal cruelty and carbon emissions, respectively) and opening the way towards further improvements that would have been blockaded by those entrenched powers.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- tintedfireglass 4y agoThe point of not eating meat is that meat is not that healthy in our modern lifestyle. replacing real meat with mycelium meat won't make a difference as fat is fat and protein is protein
- 4y ago
- wbc 4y agoHas anyone tried this? How close is the taste to real/meat bacon?
- Symmetry 4y agoFor me, I'd be happy with it if it can fulfill the same role in recipes even if it doesn't taste quite the same. Beyond Burger doesn't taste exactly the same as hamburger but if I didn't know it was plant based I'd have thought it was some sort of ground ruminant and it still results in good chili.
- asdff 4y agoI'm not sure you'd be able to render out much tasty fat from fake bacon like you can real bacon that has a ton of fat content
- Symmetry 4y agoYeah, the critical test is whether they can get the umami from the mushrooms and the smoke flavor into the coconut oil they're adding. It might be that the flavor doesn't travel with it in which case the product won't be any good in a lot of use cases I care about.
- t_mann 4y ago> The strips get salt, sugar, coconut oil, beet juice, and liquid smoke added to them, and presto—they’re ready to be packaged and sold as MyBacon. Unfortunately, that's my impression of most meat replacement products I've come across so far - they're what I would consider mostly junk food. Highly processed, low in naturally occurring nutrients and rich in salt and additives (liquid smoke??). I'd much rather have plain mushrooms, even over normal bacon, which I find super easy to cook and delicious even with very little seasoning.
- ForrestN 4y agoLuckily that is readily available! The idea of these products is to prompt people to switch from bacon, not from mushrooms. I'm quite confident this is better for you (and the world, and certainly the poor tortured animals) than regular bacon.
- swores 4y ago> I'd much rather have plain mushrooms, even over normal bacon That's great for you, but it's not true for a huge number of people. For those people, who aren't happy to choose plain mushrooms over bacon, a mushroom-based product just has to be as (un)healthy and as tasty as real bacon to already be a big improvement in reducing animals farmed and (hopefully, depending on the tech used, but almost certainly especially as these production methods scale up and get improved upon) also be much more eco friendly than eating animals. If they can go a step further and make something as tasty as bacon (again, subjectively, in the eyes of people who don't choose mushrooms over bacon) that's also healthier than real bacon, great! It's just not as simple as only looking at healthiness vs ideals.
- t_mann 4y agoThat's true, typical smoky bacon is quite processed as well, I guess that's what I don't like about it.
- aliqot 4y agoI get a pork belly, salt cure with regular salt, then cold smoke and slice. There is more process in chopping the wood than making the bacon. Where do you guys get this stuff?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- midnitewarrior 4y ago> fungi-based bacon No.
- jakzurr 4y agoLove mushrooms. Love bacon. This is making my mouth water. Dunno what the problem could be, guess it just sounds yukky? If small amounts aren't bad for ya, I'll try it for sure.
- cgrealy 4y agoMorally, I am 100% behind this. If we can reduce the carbon footprint of food, we should. However, everyone's morals have a limit, and mine is eating mushrooms. Nothing against people who like them, I just can't stand them.
- brnt 4y agoI used to be like you; then I learned that I was badly trained in their preparation (cultural background). Now I know how to deal with them, I love 'em.
- cgrealy 4y agoI have previously made an effort to acquire a taste for them, partially because I'm aware how important they will be in the future (at least, if all the sci-fi I've read is to be believed!). But nope, it's not the preparation, it's the ingredient.
- boxmonster 4y agoThis is going to put a lot of pigs out of work
- youor 4y ago
- runnr_az 4y agoBaquon?