Those Vegan Cowboys are making their first steps into the US market! They posted their press release to Google Drive (boo), so please scroll down a smidge on their front page to read it, but imo...
Those Vegan Cowboys are making their first steps into the US market! They posted their press release to Google Drive (boo), so please scroll down a smidge on their front page to read it, but imo this is pretty exciting!
Unlike lab grown meat -- which is basically the same problem as lab grown replacement organs (very hard), lab ... milked ... casein is approximately the same problem as producing insulin. Roughly, you convince a domesticated, friendly bacteria (often e-coli or yeast) to produce your target proteins, grow 'em in a big vat, lyse the cells, and purify off your product. It's fairly well treaded technology, so the main hurdles for contenders in the field have been scaling up and reducing costs. Those aren't insubstantial or anything, but they're very well understood, and it seems like this company is confident enough that they're signing deals and pursuing some initial commercial applications!
I've been really, really hopeful this could land sooner rather than later, since a bunch of the flavours + textures from fermented dairy products have proven extremely difficult to replicate (as opposed to, like, meat-esque textures from Impossible burgers and the like). Think, like, cheese stretch on a grilled cheese or pizza; the crumbly but bouncy texture of feta; or the sharp flavour of an aged cheddar. IMO recombinant casein (and dairy as a whole) stands a real shot at blowing up swathes of the traditional dairy market. Hopefully the regulators don't get in the way to protect entrenched interests 🤞
Why is this true, as a layman? I would imagine you need to grow the fully functional organ as a replacement, but meat you could grow homogenous “meat” cells for lab-grown meat. What’s incorrect...
Unlike lab grown meat -- which is basically the same problem as lab grown replacement organs (very hard)
Why is this true, as a layman? I would imagine you need to grow the fully functional organ as a replacement, but meat you could grow homogenous “meat” cells for lab-grown meat. What’s incorrect about my assumption?
In general, though, this news is super exciting. Alternatives to current food products not dependent on animals or farming will be great environmentally, ethically, I think even economically (because of how much inefficient animals are). I’m very hopeful as well.
(just adding to this, IIRC to get nice muscle tissue you also need to electrically stimulate the muscles as well ... so on top of growing the organ, and structuring the cells, you've also gotta...
(just adding to this, IIRC to get nice muscle tissue you also need to electrically stimulate the muscles as well ... so on top of growing the organ, and structuring the cells, you've also gotta give them a workout. Which also entails feeding them extra nutrients + oxygen since now they're burning more energy ...)
That would be amazing. I don’t miss meat and substitutes are pretty decent in burgers and pasta sauce (the only two I care about) once you’ve found a brand/product you like. But cheese. Man do I...
That would be amazing. I don’t miss meat and substitutes are pretty decent in burgers and pasta sauce (the only two I care about) once you’ve found a brand/product you like.
But cheese. Man do I miss cheese. And I grew up in France so I’m serious about raw milk cheese (not the pasteurized thing that passes as cheese in many countries). This is the one single thing I’d eat again without hesitation if there was an ethical way of making it that tastes like the real thing.
Hmm… given that the casein in these cheeses are going to come from clean room settings, I wonder if this will open the door to the FDA approving a non-pasteurized cheese product?
Hmm… given that the casein in these cheeses are going to come from clean room settings, I wonder if this will open the door to the FDA approving a non-pasteurized cheese product?
A company called Perfect Day already makes cultured whey, so I think that the only things we need to scale up and get approved are milkfats and lactose! That being said, it appears that there are...
A company called Perfect Day already makes cultured whey, so I think that the only things we need to scale up and get approved are milkfats and lactose!
That being said, it appears that there are multiple types of casein, and this company has only gotten approval for one type. It's the most abundant type, but the resulting cheese might not be a perfect recreation because of that and the lack of milkfat. It looks like they might already be selling these products in Europe - anyone have any experience with them?
I'm really really hopeful that milkfat and lactose aren't necessary. We'll see, once the good cheesemakers get a hold of this stuff, but I think it tends to be the case that (1) lactose is rapidly...
I'm really really hopeful that milkfat and lactose aren't necessary. We'll see, once the good cheesemakers get a hold of this stuff, but I think it tends to be the case that (1) lactose is rapidly broken down into simple sugars by most fermentation processes, so that might not contribute much flavour (or potential for flavour byproducts), and (2) similarly, milkfat is going to carry very little flavour beyond what an equivalent saturated fat would (e.g. afaik ghee is purified milk fats, and it's flavourless), and would hopefully not have breakdown products which contribute to cheese flavouring.
... I am chock full of hopium, in other words. But fingers crossed!
Gotta dampen your hopes a little. Milk fat is magnitudes of orders more complex than one would imagine, and completely replicating it is not as simple as grow some bacteria and take whatever they...
Gotta dampen your hopes a little. Milk fat is magnitudes of orders more complex than one would imagine, and completely replicating it is not as simple as grow some bacteria and take whatever they produce like that company does with casein.
The milk fat gobule consists of multiple categories of lipids, phospholipids, enzymes+proteins carefully arranged to keep the globule intact and suspended.
Cheese ripening heavily relies on bacteria and enzymes slowly chewing on that milk fat for flavour creation, also incorporating lactose, by the way.
I'm not saying it is impossible to create cheese with milf fat replacements.
You'll not get a Parmigiano Reggiano out of that lab grown casein, but I'm very optimistic that cheese makers will find a way around the current limitations. We seem to have gotten better at replicating milk fat (vegan spread and butter), and lactose is not that high of a hurdle.
It's only taking a bit more time and effort finding recipes that work and create acceptable products, even if they'll not be a replica of a good Camebert Aromatique or a Parmiggiano Reggiano.
Curses XD perhaps there's some hope in exploring some prior research into developing low fat cheeses, but it seems like the road could be rocky. Bah. It'll still be a step forwards!
Milk fat is magnitudes of orders more complex
Curses XD perhaps there's some hope in exploring some prior research into developing low fat cheeses, but it seems like the road could be rocky. Bah. It'll still be a step forwards!
Lowering fat in cheese manufacturing can be quite easily performed by using totally skimmed milk for production. Still, it is commonly reported that low-fat cheese often suffers from undesirable flavor and texture [9]. Therefore, different approaches have been developed, such as processing techniques, adjunct cultures, use of additives such as fat replacers, and fat removing methods.
I don't think the lactose is particularly important to the fermentation process unless there's some traditional cheese that specifically requires a type of bacteria that thrives on it but not...
I don't think the lactose is particularly important to the fermentation process unless there's some traditional cheese that specifically requires a type of bacteria that thrives on it but not other types of sugar.
Milkfat doesn't have much flavor, but it does have a unique texture, so it might be one of those "missing somethings" in the final product.
I remember seeing a video years ago about a company in California that had a vegan cheese with a lab cultivated casein and apparently used it in a pretty convincing mozzarella. They were selling...
I remember seeing a video years ago about a company in California that had a vegan cheese with a lab cultivated casein and apparently used it in a pretty convincing mozzarella. They were selling it out of like one restaurant. It seemed like a pretty solid idea and I've kept waiting to see it pop up again somewhere but it hasn't.
After a quick search, I think the company I'm thinking of was New Culture Cheese. It looks like the company is still kicking and had gotten a few patents. Looks like they're priorizing restaurants as customers over direct to consumer stuff for now based on their blog. Based on memory they've been at it for maybe a decade and I'm really surprised a direct to consumer lab-cultivated ingredient cheese isn't a consumer product because it looks like there are a few company's claiming they can make it. Wonder if it's turning out to be harder or more expensive to scale than it sounds.
Which is a bummer because I really want to try it.
TIL! Can't believe I missed that. Hopefully Those Vegan Cowboys end up scaling more, and targeting the consumer market 🤞 (or that their entrance into the US market lights a fire under New Culture).
New Culture Cheese
TIL! Can't believe I missed that. Hopefully Those Vegan Cowboys end up scaling more, and targeting the consumer market 🤞 (or that their entrance into the US market lights a fire under New Culture).
I mean, it's not like you can go buy some or even order it. So I'm not surprised the fact that this wasn't something more people were already aware of. Who knows, maybe big dairy is doing their...
I mean, it's not like you can go buy some or even order it. So I'm not surprised the fact that this wasn't something more people were already aware of. Who knows, maybe big dairy is doing their best to surpress news about cultured milk components. xD (only kind of sarcastic, cause that wouldn't be a surprising outcome if true).
Those Vegan Cowboys are making their first steps into the US market! They posted their press release to Google Drive (boo), so please scroll down a smidge on their front page to read it, but imo this is pretty exciting!
Unlike lab grown meat -- which is basically the same problem as lab grown replacement organs (very hard), lab ... milked ... casein is approximately the same problem as producing insulin. Roughly, you convince a domesticated, friendly bacteria (often e-coli or yeast) to produce your target proteins, grow 'em in a big vat, lyse the cells, and purify off your product. It's fairly well treaded technology, so the main hurdles for contenders in the field have been scaling up and reducing costs. Those aren't insubstantial or anything, but they're very well understood, and it seems like this company is confident enough that they're signing deals and pursuing some initial commercial applications!
I've been really, really hopeful this could land sooner rather than later, since a bunch of the flavours + textures from fermented dairy products have proven extremely difficult to replicate (as opposed to, like, meat-esque textures from Impossible burgers and the like). Think, like, cheese stretch on a grilled cheese or pizza; the crumbly but bouncy texture of feta; or the sharp flavour of an aged cheddar. IMO recombinant casein (and dairy as a whole) stands a real shot at blowing up swathes of the traditional dairy market. Hopefully the regulators don't get in the way to protect entrenched interests 🤞
Why is this true, as a layman? I would imagine you need to grow the fully functional organ as a replacement, but meat you could grow homogenous “meat” cells for lab-grown meat. What’s incorrect about my assumption?
In general, though, this news is super exciting. Alternatives to current food products not dependent on animals or farming will be great environmentally, ethically, I think even economically (because of how much inefficient animals are). I’m very hopeful as well.
That might work for ground beef, but any such meat would lack texture that you would expect out of, for example, a steak.
(just adding to this, IIRC to get nice muscle tissue you also need to electrically stimulate the muscles as well ... so on top of growing the organ, and structuring the cells, you've also gotta give them a workout. Which also entails feeding them extra nutrients + oxygen since now they're burning more energy ...)
That would be amazing. I don’t miss meat and substitutes are pretty decent in burgers and pasta sauce (the only two I care about) once you’ve found a brand/product you like.
But cheese. Man do I miss cheese. And I grew up in France so I’m serious about raw milk cheese (not the pasteurized thing that passes as cheese in many countries). This is the one single thing I’d eat again without hesitation if there was an ethical way of making it that tastes like the real thing.
Hmm… given that the casein in these cheeses are going to come from clean room settings, I wonder if this will open the door to the FDA approving a non-pasteurized cheese product?
A company called Perfect Day already makes cultured whey, so I think that the only things we need to scale up and get approved are milkfats and lactose!
That being said, it appears that there are multiple types of casein, and this company has only gotten approval for one type. It's the most abundant type, but the resulting cheese might not be a perfect recreation because of that and the lack of milkfat. It looks like they might already be selling these products in Europe - anyone have any experience with them?
I'm really really hopeful that milkfat and lactose aren't necessary. We'll see, once the good cheesemakers get a hold of this stuff, but I think it tends to be the case that (1) lactose is rapidly broken down into simple sugars by most fermentation processes, so that might not contribute much flavour (or potential for flavour byproducts), and (2) similarly, milkfat is going to carry very little flavour beyond what an equivalent saturated fat would (e.g. afaik ghee is purified milk fats, and it's flavourless), and would hopefully not have breakdown products which contribute to cheese flavouring.
... I am chock full of hopium, in other words. But fingers crossed!
Gotta dampen your hopes a little. Milk fat is magnitudes of orders more complex than one would imagine, and completely replicating it is not as simple as grow some bacteria and take whatever they produce like that company does with casein.
The milk fat gobule consists of multiple categories of lipids, phospholipids, enzymes+proteins carefully arranged to keep the globule intact and suspended.
Cheese ripening heavily relies on bacteria and enzymes slowly chewing on that milk fat for flavour creation, also incorporating lactose, by the way.
I'm not saying it is impossible to create cheese with milf fat replacements.
You'll not get a Parmigiano Reggiano out of that lab grown casein, but I'm very optimistic that cheese makers will find a way around the current limitations. We seem to have gotten better at replicating milk fat (vegan spread and butter), and lactose is not that high of a hurdle.
It's only taking a bit more time and effort finding recipes that work and create acceptable products, even if they'll not be a replica of a good Camebert Aromatique or a Parmiggiano Reggiano.
Curses XD perhaps there's some hope in exploring some prior research into developing low fat cheeses, but it seems like the road could be rocky. Bah. It'll still be a step forwards!
I don't think the lactose is particularly important to the fermentation process unless there's some traditional cheese that specifically requires a type of bacteria that thrives on it but not other types of sugar.
Milkfat doesn't have much flavor, but it does have a unique texture, so it might be one of those "missing somethings" in the final product.
I remember seeing a video years ago about a company in California that had a vegan cheese with a lab cultivated casein and apparently used it in a pretty convincing mozzarella. They were selling it out of like one restaurant. It seemed like a pretty solid idea and I've kept waiting to see it pop up again somewhere but it hasn't.
After a quick search, I think the company I'm thinking of was New Culture Cheese. It looks like the company is still kicking and had gotten a few patents. Looks like they're priorizing restaurants as customers over direct to consumer stuff for now based on their blog. Based on memory they've been at it for maybe a decade and I'm really surprised a direct to consumer lab-cultivated ingredient cheese isn't a consumer product because it looks like there are a few company's claiming they can make it. Wonder if it's turning out to be harder or more expensive to scale than it sounds.
Which is a bummer because I really want to try it.
TIL! Can't believe I missed that. Hopefully Those Vegan Cowboys end up scaling more, and targeting the consumer market 🤞 (or that their entrance into the US market lights a fire under New Culture).
I mean, it's not like you can go buy some or even order it. So I'm not surprised the fact that this wasn't something more people were already aware of. Who knows, maybe big dairy is doing their best to surpress news about cultured milk components. xD (only kind of sarcastic, cause that wouldn't be a surprising outcome if true).