The Last few years have seen immense growth in the industry for plant-based meats and dairy. With increasing demands in the market and environmental concerns, scientists are now dwelling deeper into the sciences of alternative seafood. Leveraging fermentation technology could meet growing demands and at the same time protect the oceans. If we continue to continue current fishing trends, experts claim that by 2048, we will have exhausted all of our wild seafood stocks. The global seafood demand is forecasted to increase by 30% by 2050.
One group of scientists in Copenhagen in collaboration with Alchemist, a two-Michelin starred restaurant, are working on Alternative seafood from Fungi. This merger between Scientists and Chefs working together aims to bring better perspectives to the table, which wouldn’t have been the situation in the case of a lab-based project. Dr Leonie Jahn, project lead from the Technical University of Denmark talked about how an approach from a science and technology perspective merged with a culinary perspective would develop far more superior products.
The goal is to make seafood that is at par with the original one. Seaweed’s fibrous texture is difficult to achieve. The team is trying to use filamentous fungi growing on seaweed to produce a marvel that is the closest alternative to seafood. In the progress picture, the alternate seafood story has somewhat fallen behind the alternate meat and dairy sector. According to Jahn, this could be because of the difficulty in imitating the texture of seafood including softness, chewiness, and resistance all at once.
Currently, the team is experimenting with the use of Mycelia, root-like fungi that resembles yeast. The experiments involve studying and conducting trials of numerous fermentation rates and growth conditions to best imitate the seafood. A whole-cut product, with seafood texture using fungi to ferment seaweed as in tempeh, is the ultimate goal. Mycelia is quite in the buzz nowadays, for also being used as an alternative to plastic. Since the scientists are working with the mycelium growing on seaweed, they also face another challenge here, as seaweed although has a fishy flavor and also checks the boxes for sustenance and nutrition, does not frankly provide optimum conditions for mycelium to grow. Moreover, mimicking the flavors of seafood, while keeping overpowering fishy tastes and other off-flavours at bay is another huge challenge. Rather than working on specific products or species, the team is targeting the study of fungi fermentation and will then work on the recreation of seafood.
The restaurant supporting this project believes that none of the alternatives found in the market so far are good enough to be put on the menu, and thus wants to work on a product so tasty, that it becomes one of the sole reasons to choose it over others. In 2021, Good Food Institute described this sector as a “white space opportunity” implying a huge untapped customer potential. Some products in the market such as ‘faux fish’ launched as solutions to overfishing concerns, only minutely resemble seafood by the use of flavored jackfruit or tofu-
Aqua-cultured Foods is one such organization, that entered this sector back in 2020, jumping back to now where it has imitated tuna, whitefish, squid, and shrimp. Aqua cultured Foods is set apart from the industry because it is whole and unprocessed. The nutrition of seafood is easy to replicate in it. The products are better than traditional seafood as they are devoid of microplastics, cholesterol, mercury, and parasites. They believe that at a higher scale, they’ll be easily able to mitigate high production costs, and produce even less expensive products than traditional seafood.
Fungi-based seafood, how far have we come along?
References
Comentários