Imagine sitting down to a meal with all the sights and textures of a meat-based one, except the beef strips in your stir fry, which happens to be super-charged with flavor, are not actually beef.

Only you don’t have to imagine it. The meat of the future is here and it’s alive—but not in the way you might think. That beef on your plate is a fermented protein product, made to soak up flavors—like the marinade in your stir fry. It’s a product of the push by a growing number of technology companies to tap into the vastness of microscopic diversity to recreate complex animal-based products, such as steak and bacon. The hope is to meet global protein needs in an environmentally friendly way.

There’s an increasing need for products like these. Animal-free eating has grown over the past few years and meat substitutes represent a rapidly growing market. Recognizing this trend, fermented protein companies have exploded, with approximately 80 percent having started up in the past five years. 

I recently tuned in to the Good Food Institute’s 2020 Symposium on Fermentation to hear business leaders discuss this promising new field. To me, fermentation had always meant sauerkrauts, wine, and sourdough bread. And this basic concept—using fermentation and microscopic life forms, or microorganisms, to turn a simple food like raw vegetables, fruit, or grain into something more complex—underpins some of the new alternative protein innovations. A number of companies are using these traditional fermentation methods to create new textures and flavors that allow their products to more closely approximate meat.

But another set of companies is using bacteria (microbes), fungi (mycelium), and microalgae as a primary protein source. Many microbes are very high in protein (more than 50 percent by dry weight), grow incredibly fast, and don’t need much to thrive, according to a report published by the Good Food Institute. These qualities make it incredibly easy to quickly generate a lot of protein—and to imagine a future overrun with protein-rich meat alternatives.

Fermentation-derived proteins didn’t just spring up in the last few years. Attending the conference was Quorn Foods, which launched in 1985. This pioneering alternative protein company is one of the big players in the fermented protein world. Its mycoprotein-based products, including Meatless Fillets and Meatless Steak-Style Strips, are made using a species of fungi to form thin strands that can mimic meat muscle fibers. It’s one way producers are getting closer to fermented protein’s holy grail: whole-cuts of meat, such as steak. And the quality of the protein is high.

“The proteins within these mycoproteins—the amino acid profile—is every bit as good as the best animal source amino acid profiles and better than plant protein,” says Rob Johnson, Science Manager and Fermentation Specialist at Quorn. He shared a 2019 study from the University of Exeter, which found that Quorn’s mycoprotein products were not only more effective at building muscle than milk protein, its protein digestibility score was as high or higher than that of ground beef, pea protein, insect protein and soy protein. 

Quorn Foods isn’t the only company using fungi to replicate the texture and protein power of meat. One company that seems to be having special success is Meati, which produces faux chicken and steak that look an awful lot like the real thing. Through an astonishingly simple process, it’s able to create meats in about a day! Meati products aren’t yet available to the public, but plans are in place to scale up production.

Meat substitutes aren’t the only target of fermentation companies. Developers see a role for fermented protein in egg replacements, alternative dairy products, gelatin, seafood and pet food.

I came to this symposium prepared to learn a thing or two about fermentation, protein and meat alternatives. What I didn’t expect were all the cows. Not real-live cows, but cows as a metaphorical unit of measurement, as in, a certain fermented product is equivalent to 50,000 cows-worth of protein. Cows may seem like a silly unit for equating protein sources but there’s a reason they kept coming up. Beef is a celebrated protein source; it’s also the food with the largest carbon footprint. While other animal products consistently rank high for emissions intensity, beef is king.

One big knock against beef is how inefficient it is to produce. One study shows that only three percent of the protein fed to cows gets converted into human-consumed protein. Meanwhile, cows take up 42 percent of U.S. cropland that could be used for generating more efficient and environmentally friendly sources of protein. 

Raising cows and other livestock is an enormous burden on earth’s fragile ecosystem. According to one report, 26 percent of ice-free terrestrial land is used for grazing while an additional third of arable land is used for growing feed. Creating this space for grazing and growing feed requires clearing land, which accelerates global warming by disrupting carbon stores. By some estimates, cattle accounts for 80 percent of deforestation rates in the Amazon. 

“Business as usual isn’t going to work,” remarked Rob Johnson, when asked about feeding a growing human population. “It’s hard to imagine enough acres of soy feeding cattle to do it. We need a spare planet or three to be able to do that.”

Eating lower on the food chain helps cut down on the amount of resources needed to put a meal on your plate, and microorganisms are about as low on the food chain as you can get. Plus they’re incredibly efficient. By one estimate, fermentation-derived proteins require 90 percent less land, water, and energy to produce.

“It takes a soy farm the size of Texas to produce the same protein as an air facility the size of Disney,” says Lisa Dyson, CEO and founder of Air Protein.

A lighter land, water, and carbon footprint means that fermentation-derived proteins offer new opportunities to improve both food sustainability and access. “You can shorten the supply chain,” said Thomas Jonas, co-founder and CEO of Nature’s Fynd. “[Fermentation] can be done anywhere and at any point in time very efficiently.” 

With fermentation, gone are the days of trucking grain and livestock to far flung corners of the map. Microorganisms can be cultivated in comparatively small spaces and on a wide variety of food, including byproducts from industrial and agricultural processes, making them easy to produce in or near cities all over the world. Nature’s Fynd, located right in downtown Chicago, is a great example.

The more I listened, the more clearly I could envision a future where people no longer need to choose between their favorite meat-based meals and fighting climate change. With the promise of greater sustainability, coupled with comparable flavor and protein content, it’s easy to see why the symposium presenters were so passionate about their products. 

Although exciting, this begs the question, is this growth sustainable? Sometimes production that seems promising in the initial phases proves difficult to scale up to the level necessary to meet consumer demand. Many of these companies are also leveraging new technologies that may need regulatory approval before they can go to market. It also remains to be seen whether devoted meat eaters can be won over by this new kind of eating. For an industry still in its infancy, there will be hurdles to overcome.

Still, I left this symposium inspired by the diversity of innovative solutions and confident that another piece of the sustainable food solution is moving into place. Reimagining a global food system that can feed a growing population while minimizing future global warming will take the creativity and determination that many of these companies show. To me, Thomas Jonas, co-founder and CEO of Nature’s Fynd, put it best: “This is planet Earth. This is where I live. This is where my children live. We’re gonna make this work”.

Emily Anderson is a Stone Pier Press News Fellow based in Burlington, VT.

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