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'"Homogenized bacterial carcasses" (the article's words, not mine,) are going to be an extremely tough sell as a consumer food product.' These seem to sell fin
by krunck 2y ago
'"Homogenized bacterial carcasses" (the article's words, not mine,) are going to be an extremely tough sell as a consumer food product.'
These seem to sell fine:
compressed curdled cow leakage that was left on a shelf to grow mold for up to a few years - cheese
wheat slurry foamed by bacterial activity then baked - bread
- A_D_E_P_T 2y agoThe two of those are about as old as human civilization, and can be made with stone age tech. Besides, the primaries are milk and wheat -- and you can make bread and cheese wholly without yeast and mold. (Tortillas, ricotta, etc.) I don't think that humans have ever consumed bulk bacteria as a food source.
- ben_w 2y ago> The two of those are about as old as human civilization, and can be made with stone age tech. Mainly demonstrating you can literally sell rotten milk so long as you label it "traditional". > I don't think that humans have ever consumed bulk bacteria as a food source. We never communicated across the globe by swiping our fingers across small sheets of transparent fused sand with glowing lights behind them, until one day we did. We never survived having our heart removed and a different one put in its place, until one day we did. We never saw the far side of the moon, until one day we did. But, as it happens, we have already done this with algae: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirulina_(dietary_supplement) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirulina_(dietary_supplement) Not all changes are progress, but all progress involves change.
- bagful 2y ago“Rotting” has a connotation of uncontrolled decay; cheesemaking is a well controlled process that enhances the base material.
- antidiot 2y ago> Mainly demonstrating you can literally sell rotten milk so long as you label it "traditional". Cheese is the coagulated protein of fermented milk, not rotten milk. If it was rotten nobody would be able to eat it without dying often. Cheese is traditional, it's one of the main ways that diverse cultures around the world have harnessed the activity of bacteria to transform food and preserve it or alter its organoleptic qualities to make it more pleasant to eat. Works great without the need for experimental tech of dubious long-term safety, too.
- ben_w 2y ago> Cheese is the coagulated protein of fermented milk, not rotten milk. If it was rotten nobody would be able to eat it without dying often. The difference is fundamentally if the result is one you like. I ferment, you grew a culture, they let their food rot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotive_conjugation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotive_conjugation > Works great without the need for experimental tech of dubious long-term safety, too. Several thousands of years ago, probably by some combination of accident and disaster (or possibly just a dare) that resulted in some humans sucking on a wild aurochs' teat, followed by an unknown duration (estimated to be a few thousand years) of this drink not being consumable by adults (adult lactose tolerance is a relatively recent mutation in humans) before someone in a relatively cool climate forgot to add salt to the cow stomach they were storing it in, the salt having been necessary for preservation in a hot climate but also prevented the necessary bacteria for cheese from growing. Not that any of them at the time knew any of that, because they had no means to see bacteria, let alone perform tests for lactose in the milk and lactase in the drinkers. The cows now milk themselves thanks to tech having replaced the need for the milkmaids whose experience catching cowpox inspired the first smallpox vaccine ("vacca" being the latin for cow). Basically everything invented before the industrial revolution was people guessing wildly, and if their guesses didn't kill them then people copied it. That is the tradition that led to this: a tradition of FAFO and YOLO.
- antidiot 2y agoThe difference is in the chemical process not in the words we say. When you leave some veg in the fridge for too long and it turns black and mushy and eventually liquefies, that's rot. When milk is fermented to make cheese the fermentation is short (around half an hour) and the result is a lowering of the milk pH to at most around 4.0 to 4.5 (from 5.5 to 6.5 of fresh milk depending on species). It's really not a big change and you can't tell just by sight or smell as with rotten food. Sometimes you can't even taste the change in pH because it's so small. The purpose of the fermentation is to create ideal acidity conditions for the rennet enzymes to work. When rennet is added it causes some of the proteins in milk to coagulate. That's when milk becomes cheese. That's when fluid milk turns into a solid and it's exactly the opposite of what happens to food when it rots. Hard cheese will not rot even if you leave it for years. It just turns rock-hard and it's still edible through grating. I don't know how cheese was first crated. We can speculate but we'll never know. I guess everything we eat today took some FAFO and YOLO to try out for the first time. I bet lots of people died before they figured out what mushrooms are safe to eat or at least sat for days on the (paleolithic) loo cursing under their breath.
- throwup238 2y ago> I don't think that humans have ever consumed bulk bacteria as a food source. Spirulina, nostoc, fat choy. They're relatively niche though.
- kragen 2y agoyogurt isn't niche
- throwup238 2y agoYogurt is bulk animal fat, cultured with a tiny bit of bacteria. It’s not bulk bacteria.
- kragen 2y agoyour comment is incorrect from beginning to end - yogurt is not animal fat; it's milk, with or without the fat, but the crucial part for yogurtmaking is the lactose and protein, because that's what the bacteria eat - 'animal fat' is ambiguous but usually refers to adipose tissue cut from the body of an animal, which yogurt essentially never contains - while initially you inoculate the yogurt with a tiny quantity of bacteria, they multiply exponentially, doubling about 20 times, or a factor of a million. most of the bacteria die before yogurtmaking is complete, but the majority of the non-liquid mass of the yogurt at the end consists of living or dead bacteria
- throwup238 2y agoIt's still not bulk bacteria.
- kragen 2y ago[flagged]
- throwup238 2y ago
- tomcam 2y ago> I don't think that humans have ever consumed bulk bacteria as a food source. I’ve been incarcerated in the USA and I think maybe that characterization is false :0
- goda90 2y agoKinda funny that you got the kingdoms backwards there. Cheese is cultured by bacteria, not mold(a fungus). Bread is leavened by yeast(a fungus) not bacteria.
- tomjakubowski 2y agoCheeses grow mold, too. In some cases it's intentional or even desirable. And see my sibling comment about bacterially-leavened bread.
- goda90 2y agoWell the mold is just an add-on to the cheese in those cases, not the cause of it becoming cheese.
- kragen 2y agorennin is the cause of it becoming cheese, except for acid-curdled cheeses like paneer. bacteria and mold don't have much to do with it, traditionally, although nowadays you can buy vegan rennin made by genetically engineered bacteria instead of extracted from the stomachs of slaughtered calves
- tomjakubowski 2y agoBacterially-leavened bread, fascinating! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt-rising_bread https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt-rising_bread
- xedrac 2y agoYes, but cheese and bread taste amazing.
- im3w1l 2y agoYup, at the end of the day people will eat it if it's tasty and safe.
- solardev 2y agoIt doesn't even have to be safe. Why are we so worried about bacteria soup when millions drink carbonated chemical syrups every day known to cause a variety of diseases? People will respond to anything you can market effectively and sell for cheap. You're not targeting their analytical brain, just their primitive taste buds that can be easily manipulated.
- Aperocky 2y agoYeast is not bacteria, nor is mold.