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It is nice that they recognize that the main problem for all non-animal pure protein sources is how to achieve a price not greater than the price of animal prot

It is nice that they recognize that the main problem for all non-animal pure protein sources is how to achieve a price not greater than the price of animal proteins, such as chicken meat or chicken eggs. Unfortunately, neither in this article, nor on the company site, https://www.onego.bio/bioalbumen https://www.onego.bio/bioalbumen is there any kind of estimated price for their "Bioalbumen". Until a competitive price is announced, any such hopeful press releases are irrelevant. At the right price, I would certainly prefer to buy ovalbumin extracted from fungi, as this would simplify a lot the problem of composing a vegan diet that contains enough protein, but without providing an excessive energy intake and without being more expensive than a meat-based diet.

wezdog1 3y ago
A vegan diet is really not as hard as people make out to get protein from for the average person.
- kelipso 3y ago
  All I can think of is tofu and protein powders. Everything else, you have to eat a ton of carbs or fat to get to enough protein.
  - adrian_b 3y ago
    I agree. Where I live, in Europe, tofu and protein extracts are many times more expensive than meat, e.g. 5 times more expensive than chicken breast per their protein content (chicken breast is only twice more expensive than lentils, both having the same protein content). Therefore neither tofu nor protein extracts are a rational choice for a vegan diet. I have made countless experiments in the attempt of composing a vegan diet that would not make me gain weight very rapidly and which would also be no more expensive than a meat-based diet. At the prices from here, I have found only a single solution. I make at home a special kind of bread that is highly enriched in protein, with up to 50% protein. This is made by washing away most of the starch from the dough, enriching the dough in gluten. While it is possible to extract almost pure gluten from wheat flour, the so-called "seitan", this requires more time and more water than I am willing to spend every day. For the protein-enriched bread that I make, about 5 minutes of dough washing are enough. Fungal ovalbumin would be a good alternative for this process, but I doubt that we would see it at a decent price any time soon.
    - lupire 3y ago
      The solution for that is for the government to stop preferentially subsidizing meat production.
  - delecti 3y ago
    Your statement is only true accidentally. A vegan diet does tend to be lower in protein, so you'll end up eating more carbs and fat, but still getting "enough" protein because most people on a western diet get too much protein. If you're a professional athlete trying to be vegan, then sure, you'll end up with a weird diet to meet those absurd protein needs, but omnivorous professional athletes tend to have weird diets too for the same reason.
    - zer8k 3y ago
      > If you're a professional athlete trying to be vegan, then sure, you'll end up with a weird diet Professional athletes that are actually vegan are 4 sigma outliers. For most normal humans it's not possible to even be a more-that-casual athlete in any competitive sport eating plants. Animal meats contain more than just protein including things like iodine, creatine, vitamin D, etc. A quick google brings up numerous studies on the nutritional deficiencies of the typical vegan diet you would need to rely on external supplementation for. Keto diets and other fad diets are also not great for the competitive athlete. If you're vegan because you don't want to eat animals there's nothing wrong with it. When the vegans start pointing to the outliers as evidence "it can be done" it's just a deep cope to make everyone as miserable as them.
      - nicpottier 3y ago
        I'm vegan and athletic. I get about .7g/lb of protein a day which by most any measure is enough for anybody save people doing steroids. People approach veganism as "take out the meat", which leads to nutritional deficiencies. You can't do that, you basically have to reboot the way you eat. I tracked all my food for months when switching to learn what mix of foods gave me the nutrition I needed. Now it is habit and pretty easy. The only new thing I supplement with is vitamin B12 and a protein shake after workouts. (I did the protein shake before being vegan so no change there) It isn't miserable at all, we love how we eat.
      - xenospn 3y ago
        Your comment makes no sense. I know plenty of professional vegan athletes. None of them are outliers and they’re all perfectly healthy.
  - seanwilson 3y ago
    Look into beans, chickpeas, TVP (textured vegetable protein, it's processed soy), seitan (wheat based, you can make it from vital wheat gluten powder), tempeh, nuts and seeds for high protein and cheap sources (seitan and TVP in particular) that are minimally processed compared to fake meat products. Also, look into how much protein is actually recommended per day to be realistic about how much carbs and fat on top is fine to eat. It's not like people eat meat/dairy without a serving of fat and carbs next to it, so it should be fine to get some extra fat and carbs from protein sources then rebalance elsewhere on the plate. My understanding is if you eat enough calories with an okay diet without thinking about protein, you'll hit the recommended (non-athlete) amounts without trouble and will easily exceed them if you throw in a couple of high protein sources.
    - kelipso 3y ago
      I'm getting the feeling your recommended protein amount is insanely low or only for super sedentary people... From that list, only TVP, seitan, tempeh has enough protein ratio. Nuts, legumes, seeds have very low protein amounts compared to carbs/fat. You'd pretty much have to eat some kind of fermented soy product every day to get enough protein through semi-normal meals, which is workable I guess though very boring.
      - ein0p 3y ago
        The key tell with folks who don’t lift is they don’t know that to can be somewhat difficult for even a meat eating lifter to hit 2g of protein per kg of lean mass without also consuming a concentrated source like whey. All this “beans” stuff sounds pretty hilarious to me.
        kelipso 3y ago
        Yeah when I was starting and heard about beans, legumes, nuts as good sources of protein and then actually looked at the protein ratio...I'd have to eat just a ridiculous amount to get a decent protein intake.
      - seanwilson 3y ago
  - mitthrowaway2 3y ago
    Lentils are great too. What do you think protein powders are made of? Chickpeas are another delicious and inexpensive option. There's also seitan, yum.
- adrian_b 3y ago
  Please say how you can do that. I have heard this sentence for years, but nobody has been able to provide an example whose price was not outrageous. I suppose that this sentence is written by people who do not care whether they pay $5 or $50 for their daily food. Such people are not average people. While it is possible to compose a vegan diet with enough proteins at a reasonable cost, and I do this every day, it is really hard to avoid gaining weight, much, much harder than with a non-vegan diet, where you have access to cheap pure proteins, like chicken breast or turkey breast. Ever since I have switched to a vegan diet, a couple of years ago, I have to monitor my weight permanently and I have to take corrective actions frequently, despite the fact that I eat much less than most people are used to.
  - lupire 3y ago
    Tofu. Problem solved.
    - rmvt 3y ago
      tempeh (also made of soy). rice and beans. chickpeas.
      - adrian_b 3y ago
        Lentils, chickpeas and beans are the best sources of proteins among non-processed vegetables, but they still contain too much starch and it is impossible to use them exclusively to provide enough proteins within a diet of not more than 2000 kcal/day, suitable for a sedentary life style. They are necessary for a vegan diet, but they are not sufficient. They must be combined with some other source of proteins, which must contain much methionine and which must have a better ratio between protein content and calories. The commercial protein extracts from them are much more expensive than meat, so they are a non-solution.
        bartonfink 3y ago
        "suitable for a sedentary life style" change this.
- complianceowl 3y ago
  I'll stick with my rib eye.
PaulHoule 3y ago
Eggs are crazy cheap even at Spring 2024 prices. Also very low-tech and decentralized, I am eating so many of them because we are helping our friends take care of a small flock of chickens and ducks. I hear it is a sophisticated nanotechnology that can self reproduce.
- brnt 3y ago
  Look into where your feed comes from. You might be surprised how centralized that part of the supply chain is.
- rsynnott 3y ago
  > and decentralized The eggs eaten by the vast majority of people in the industrialised world are about as far from decentralised as you can get, and your friends would be unlikely to be able to supply the demand in the absence of factory farming.
  - atrus 3y ago
    I'm not entirely sure about that. An egg a day per chicken (outside of winter) really adds up. I basically supply 3-4 families with eggs with the few chickens I have.
  - Ekaros 3y ago
    They are not that centralized, I think there are parts like hatching the chickens, but for example Finland with population of 5,5 million has 230 farms producing eggs. Which I think is plenty of producers.
    - rsynnott 3y ago
      If you ignore the extremely centralised bits, they're not that centralised, yes. As you say, the hatcheries are very centralised, as is feed production.
chiefalchemist 3y ago
Yes and no. The problem with factory farming - and pardon me but the proper economics term escapes me atm - is not all the costs are directly shouldered by the farm. For example, waste run off... the cost of dealing with that flows downstream, literally. Similar are fossil fuels. They're inexpensive, until you realize the aggregate burning of them increases pollution, as well as greenhouse gases. But cost of impact and resolution isn't in the cost of the product. The point is, competing alternatives that don't have such "cost-free side effects" can't compete until the legacy products' price reflect the true and entire cost of manufacturing.
- slfnflctd 3y ago
  See also: massive subsidies to those same factory farms which further artificially lower the prices of their products for reasons of dubious merit.
- apothegm 3y ago
  The term you’re looking for is “externalities”, fwiw.
  - chiefalchemist 3y ago
    It was worth a lot. Thank you for taking the time to help me / the discussion.
ac29 3y ago
> Unfortunately, neither in this article, nor on the company site, is there any kind of estimated price for their "Bioalbumen" From the article: "Onego Bio is close to reaching competitive price points to traditional ways of making egg proteins"

wezdog1 3y ago

A vegan diet is really not as hard as people make out to get protein from for the average person.

kelipso 3y ago
All I can think of is tofu and protein powders. Everything else, you have to eat a ton of carbs or fat to get to enough protein.
- adrian_b 3y ago
  I agree. Where I live, in Europe, tofu and protein extracts are many times more expensive than meat, e.g. 5 times more expensive than chicken breast per their protein content (chicken breast is only twice more expensive than lentils, both having the same protein content). Therefore neither tofu nor protein extracts are a rational choice for a vegan diet. I have made countless experiments in the attempt of composing a vegan diet that would not make me gain weight very rapidly and which would also be no more expensive than a meat-based diet. At the prices from here, I have found only a single solution. I make at home a special kind of bread that is highly enriched in protein, with up to 50% protein. This is made by washing away most of the starch from the dough, enriching the dough in gluten. While it is possible to extract almost pure gluten from wheat flour, the so-called "seitan", this requires more time and more water than I am willing to spend every day. For the protein-enriched bread that I make, about 5 minutes of dough washing are enough. Fungal ovalbumin would be a good alternative for this process, but I doubt that we would see it at a decent price any time soon.
  - lupire 3y ago
    The solution for that is for the government to stop preferentially subsidizing meat production.
- delecti 3y ago
  Your statement is only true accidentally. A vegan diet does tend to be lower in protein, so you'll end up eating more carbs and fat, but still getting "enough" protein because most people on a western diet get too much protein. If you're a professional athlete trying to be vegan, then sure, you'll end up with a weird diet to meet those absurd protein needs, but omnivorous professional athletes tend to have weird diets too for the same reason.
  - zer8k 3y ago
    > If you're a professional athlete trying to be vegan, then sure, you'll end up with a weird diet Professional athletes that are actually vegan are 4 sigma outliers. For most normal humans it's not possible to even be a more-that-casual athlete in any competitive sport eating plants. Animal meats contain more than just protein including things like iodine, creatine, vitamin D, etc. A quick google brings up numerous studies on the nutritional deficiencies of the typical vegan diet you would need to rely on external supplementation for. Keto diets and other fad diets are also not great for the competitive athlete. If you're vegan because you don't want to eat animals there's nothing wrong with it. When the vegans start pointing to the outliers as evidence "it can be done" it's just a deep cope to make everyone as miserable as them.
    - nicpottier 3y ago
      I'm vegan and athletic. I get about .7g/lb of protein a day which by most any measure is enough for anybody save people doing steroids. People approach veganism as "take out the meat", which leads to nutritional deficiencies. You can't do that, you basically have to reboot the way you eat. I tracked all my food for months when switching to learn what mix of foods gave me the nutrition I needed. Now it is habit and pretty easy. The only new thing I supplement with is vitamin B12 and a protein shake after workouts. (I did the protein shake before being vegan so no change there) It isn't miserable at all, we love how we eat.
    - xenospn 3y ago
      Your comment makes no sense. I know plenty of professional vegan athletes. None of them are outliers and they’re all perfectly healthy.
- seanwilson 3y ago
  Look into beans, chickpeas, TVP (textured vegetable protein, it's processed soy), seitan (wheat based, you can make it from vital wheat gluten powder), tempeh, nuts and seeds for high protein and cheap sources (seitan and TVP in particular) that are minimally processed compared to fake meat products. Also, look into how much protein is actually recommended per day to be realistic about how much carbs and fat on top is fine to eat. It's not like people eat meat/dairy without a serving of fat and carbs next to it, so it should be fine to get some extra fat and carbs from protein sources then rebalance elsewhere on the plate. My understanding is if you eat enough calories with an okay diet without thinking about protein, you'll hit the recommended (non-athlete) amounts without trouble and will easily exceed them if you throw in a couple of high protein sources.
  - kelipso 3y ago
    I'm getting the feeling your recommended protein amount is insanely low or only for super sedentary people... From that list, only TVP, seitan, tempeh has enough protein ratio. Nuts, legumes, seeds have very low protein amounts compared to carbs/fat. You'd pretty much have to eat some kind of fermented soy product every day to get enough protein through semi-normal meals, which is workable I guess though very boring.
    - ein0p 3y ago
      The key tell with folks who don’t lift is they don’t know that to can be somewhat difficult for even a meat eating lifter to hit 2g of protein per kg of lean mass without also consuming a concentrated source like whey. All this “beans” stuff sounds pretty hilarious to me.
      - kelipso 3y ago
        Yeah when I was starting and heard about beans, legumes, nuts as good sources of protein and then actually looked at the protein ratio...I'd have to eat just a ridiculous amount to get a decent protein intake.
    - seanwilson 3y ago
- mitthrowaway2 3y ago
  Lentils are great too. What do you think protein powders are made of? Chickpeas are another delicious and inexpensive option. There's also seitan, yum.
adrian_b 3y ago
Please say how you can do that. I have heard this sentence for years, but nobody has been able to provide an example whose price was not outrageous. I suppose that this sentence is written by people who do not care whether they pay $5 or $50 for their daily food. Such people are not average people. While it is possible to compose a vegan diet with enough proteins at a reasonable cost, and I do this every day, it is really hard to avoid gaining weight, much, much harder than with a non-vegan diet, where you have access to cheap pure proteins, like chicken breast or turkey breast. Ever since I have switched to a vegan diet, a couple of years ago, I have to monitor my weight permanently and I have to take corrective actions frequently, despite the fact that I eat much less than most people are used to.
- lupire 3y ago
  Tofu. Problem solved.
  - rmvt 3y ago
    tempeh (also made of soy). rice and beans. chickpeas.
    - adrian_b 3y ago
      Lentils, chickpeas and beans are the best sources of proteins among non-processed vegetables, but they still contain too much starch and it is impossible to use them exclusively to provide enough proteins within a diet of not more than 2000 kcal/day, suitable for a sedentary life style. They are necessary for a vegan diet, but they are not sufficient. They must be combined with some other source of proteins, which must contain much methionine and which must have a better ratio between protein content and calories. The commercial protein extracts from them are much more expensive than meat, so they are a non-solution.
      - bartonfink 3y ago
        "suitable for a sedentary life style" change this.
complianceowl 3y ago
I'll stick with my rib eye.

PaulHoule 3y ago

Eggs are crazy cheap even at Spring 2024 prices. Also very low-tech and decentralized, I am eating so many of them because we are helping our friends take care of a small flock of chickens and ducks. I hear it is a sophisticated nanotechnology that can self reproduce.

brnt 3y ago
Look into where your feed comes from. You might be surprised how centralized that part of the supply chain is.
rsynnott 3y ago
> and decentralized The eggs eaten by the vast majority of people in the industrialised world are about as far from decentralised as you can get, and your friends would be unlikely to be able to supply the demand in the absence of factory farming.
- atrus 3y ago
  I'm not entirely sure about that. An egg a day per chicken (outside of winter) really adds up. I basically supply 3-4 families with eggs with the few chickens I have.
- Ekaros 3y ago
  They are not that centralized, I think there are parts like hatching the chickens, but for example Finland with population of 5,5 million has 230 farms producing eggs. Which I think is plenty of producers.
  - rsynnott 3y ago
    If you ignore the extremely centralised bits, they're not that centralised, yes. As you say, the hatcheries are very centralised, as is feed production.

chiefalchemist 3y ago

Yes and no. The problem with factory farming - and pardon me but the proper economics term escapes me atm - is not all the costs are directly shouldered by the farm. For example, waste run off... the cost of dealing with that flows downstream, literally. Similar are fossil fuels. They're inexpensive, until you realize the aggregate burning of them increases pollution, as well as greenhouse gases. But cost of impact and resolution isn't in the cost of the product. The point is, competing alternatives that don't have such "cost-free side effects" can't compete until the legacy products' price reflect the true and entire cost of manufacturing.

slfnflctd 3y ago
See also: massive subsidies to those same factory farms which further artificially lower the prices of their products for reasons of dubious merit.
apothegm 3y ago
The term you’re looking for is “externalities”, fwiw.
- chiefalchemist 3y ago
  It was worth a lot. Thank you for taking the time to help me / the discussion.

ac29 3y ago

> Unfortunately, neither in this article, nor on the company site, is there any kind of estimated price for their "Bioalbumen" From the article: "Onego Bio is close to reaching competitive price points to traditional ways of making egg proteins"